วันเสาร์ที่ 26 กุมภาพันธ์ พ.ศ. 2554


The Loss of Identity 
จาก http://www.our-teacher.com/home/space.ph...ead&id=238
By Colonel Sutat Jarumanee
 
It is undeniable that English is not just a form of communication, but is also concepts and sets of ideas. English is not only a language, but knowledge itself.

Some officers believe that the Army must develop its own unique doctrine, (How the Army fights to win wars and how it operates to achieve its goals) without the need to learn from other nations doctrines, (especially U.S. Army doctrine), due to a wide “technological divide”. This perception is impractical.

These same officers ignore “Military Professional English” which can only be cultivated through English military texts of others nations. Ignoring means losing. Losing “Military Professional English” means losing “Military Professional”. Losing “Military Professional” means losing values, identity, ideology, and finally losing all! Again, English is not just a language, it is knowledge itself.

Additionally, these officers make no contribution to the development of Royal Thai Army doctrine. Instead they attempt to utilize other career values, identity and ideology, especially in profit-making or other forms of self-service. They attempt to import attributes from civilian educational institutions and then try to use them in Army institutions.

Broad based education from civilian sources is useful and beneficial, but those who ignore the Army’s core values while embracing the flaws of other instituions have wasted their education, time, and money. Civilian education must be combined with your Military Professional Values, identity and ideology to be beneficial to the Army. 

While some Army officers do not use English military texts, doctors who do not have their own “disease fighting doctrine” are still doing their diagnosis, prescribing and administering medicines with their English texts. The same is true of other professionals like lawyers, engineers, architects, etc. 

Having our own doctrine in the 21st century without learning from English military texts sounds to me like having doctors cure patients only by Thai medicines, lawyers having nothing to do with international laws, engineers use only local materials to build sky scrapers, and architects creating no other style than Thai architectures. 

As the Incubator of the Nation’s Professional Military Leaders, though some must be same to others, what makes the CRMA different from other civilian institutes is not just our curriculum. The major differences are morals, ethics and discipline, things above and beyond what civilians can understand without the same training and commitment you have.

Why then are civilian business standards to be used as the tools to gage military performance instead of Military Professional ones? Clearly the social chasm between civilian and military provides a different lens through which each side sees the world.

Soldiers must adhere to their core values instead of trying to embrace the values of others when it is convenient for them. Soldiers who do not maintain their core values will gradually continue to lose their identity until they are no longer soldiers at all.

Civilian academics must be more open-minded, as they are now unwilling to accept, or unable to understand other points of view other than their own. Worse yet, they arrogantly impose their one-sided standards over others who uphold higher moral and ethical standards than they do.

At this point, I welcome arguments.

- Trying to do much of “civic actions, public relations”, “public appeasing operation” in shallow and narrow sense of professional ideology, 

- Trying to be and know and do like civilians be, know and do,

- Trying to compete with them in the way the Army does not belong(profit – making/self – serving capabilities instead of selfless – serving ideology);

- Trying to be accepted/rewarded in accordance with other standards 

where the Army is not a type; 

Are not only of useless efforts, but also widening the gap of social chasm, yet causing the Army to be on the blink of identity extinction. 

There are more to Soldiers than being understood by Others. 

Only if Soldiers were exactly what they must be, embraced with what they really must know, and focused on what they absolutely must do; 

the Army would then no longer be prejudged and stereotyped by others; and the social chasm would then be bridged.

(The Be/Attributes; Know/Perspectives; and Do/Imperative of Professional Soldiers are to be discussed later).

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