Combat arms classic maintenance11/12/2022 ![]() ![]() For the member of the profession of arms, fulfilling society’s demands and expectations means investing one’s best as a professional and as a person. Society invests much-its safety and security, its hopes and ideals, much of its treasure, and the best of its men and women-in the Armed Forces. The commitment to the Nation is a two-way street between the individual military member and the larger society. Soldiers serve the Nation they fight and die for each other. Theirs is a higher loyalty and purpose, or rather a hierarchy of loyalties, which puts nation above service, service above comrades in arms, and comrades above self. It is ultimately because of their willingness to endure hardship and risk life and limb on behalf of the Nation, not the willingness to kill and destroy in the Nation’s name, that members of all the Armed Forces enjoy the respect and gratitude of the American people. #Combat arms classic maintenance fullIts members must always be conscious of their commitment: to be prepared to give that “last full measure of devotion.” 5 They serve at frequent cost to their convenience, comfort, family stability, and often their limbs and lives. Because those responsibilities include the potentially wholesale taking and losing of life, the military profession stands alone, in its own eyes and in the eyes of those it serves. ![]() Whatever its particular forms, this unique and specialized service to the Nation gives the military profession its own nature and distinctive status. It is the warfighting mission that determines how forces are organized, equipped, a nd trained. ![]() As the 19 th-century Prussian strategist and student of war Carl von Clausewitz observed, “For as long as they practice this activity, soldiers will think of themselves as members of a kind of guild, in whose regulations, laws, and customs the spirit of war is given pride of place.” 4 The defining mission of the Armed Forces is the preparation for and the conduct of war, which includes securing the military victory until peace is restored politically. In its most elemental sense, the profession of arms is all about fighting and all about war. The most basic task of the profession of arms is the armed defense of the society, its territory, population, and vital interests. With rare exceptions, a society’s government identifies the problems to be resolved with force, and it then turns to and relies on the professionals to handle the always difficult, usually dangerous, often bloody details in a manner acceptable to the citizens and supportive of th eir goals. In his classic study The Profession of Arms, General Hackett stated, “The function of the profession of arms is the ordered application of force in the resolution of a social or political problem.” 3 The essential task of its members is to fight, individually and collectively of its officers, to direct and lead those who apply the instruments of destruction to achieve assigned ends. As Samuel Huntington put it in The Soldier and the State: “The justification for the maintenance and employment of military force is in the political ends of the state.” 2 In wartime or in peacetime, at home or abroad, the Armed Forces serve the larger society and perform the tasks their government as signs them. The profession of arms exists to serve the larger community, to help accomplish its purposes and objectives, and to protect its way of life. It is a basic premise of civilized societies, especially democratic ones, that the military serves the state (and by extension, the people), not the other way around. Whatever the formal name or title given to these groups, theirs is the profess ion of arms. recorded history physical force, or the threat of it, has always been freely applied to the resolution of social problems.” 1 Human societies-from tribes and city-states to empires, organized religions, and nation-states-have regularly established and relied on groups of specialists who, willingly or unwillingly, assumed the burden of fighting, killing, and dying for the larger group. As noted by General Sir John Hackett, “From the beginning of. Others fight for love of country and civic duty. Some fight primarily for money, some for love of fighting, and some for lack of alternative opportunities. Humans fight as individuals and as groups. ![]()
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