We lose trust in institutions when prospective government employees cheat on maths tests, but when they dropped the white phosphorous on villagers, massacred children, burned down peoples farms, etc in the war that occured between 2001-present... we wondered about brad pitt, paris hilton... and kim kardashians hair colour.
We want them to be really really good at following orders and not to think too much about the moral aspect of bombing civilians. The reason cheating is banned in West Point is not because it is wrong, but because it displays that people prioritise their own individuality over that of the institution, and that they do not blindly believe in its ideals
>We want them to be really really good at following orders and not to think
I know this is common trope but tends to be more widely held by those with limited military experience.
For example, U.S. Marines are often considered highly disciplined (sometimes conflated with being very good at blindly following orders). From boot camp onward, they are encouraged (sometimes mandated) to read from the Commandant’s reading list. A perennial favorite to assign junior enlisted is A Message to Garcia. However, after nearly 40 years, it was removed from the list explicitly because the message was often misinterpreted as advocating strict obedience and went against the intent to promote independent thought.
Particularly in counter insurgency, the military wants/needs critical thinking, not blind obedience.
Does the military want critical thinking from its lowest soldiers? As a person with close to no military knowledge, my understanding is that the U.S. Marines are more of an "elite" group and might therefore be more empowered as decision-makers.
In general, I would say yes. I think there is a realization that a counter insurgency will struggle if low ranking troops are not thinking clearly. A single bad decision from a Lance Corporal can erode months/years of effort or escalate into an international incident.
Actually, I believe the Marines have the lowest intellectual bar of entry and the highest physical one for any branch. To your point, they do push small unit leadership to a lower level, which may be why they try to advocate a leadership mindset at low levels.
The critical thinking that the military does not want is "Why am I here" or "Why is the United States here". Tactical/execution ingenuity is favoured; philosophical or political consideration for whether or not a war should be happening in the first place is more likely to be pathologised as "treason"
I don't think we should overlook the fact that a larger part of the issue may be that there simply was much less to sweep under the carpet in previous eras. Society today is much, much larger and more complex than society in George Washington's day. (Much more complex than in any time in history in fact.)
This is not to imply that George Washington is no better than the corrupt politicians, judges and police we have today. George Washington was, by all accounts, a very good man.
My only point was that it was far easier to actually be a good man in the time of George Washington than it is to be a good man or woman today. Not even a tenth of the opportunities to get yourself in trouble back then.
-> when they dropped the white phosphorous on villagers, massacred children, burned down peoples farms, etc in the war that occured between 2001-present
"But within a year, Operation Iron Tempest had fizzled out. Many of the suspected labs turned out to be empty, mud-walled compounds. After more than 200 airstrikes, the U.S. military concluded it was a waste of resources to keep blowing up primitive targets with advanced aircraft and laser-guided munitions."
We want them to be really really good at following orders and not to think too much about the moral aspect of bombing civilians. The reason cheating is banned in West Point is not because it is wrong, but because it displays that people prioritise their own individuality over that of the institution, and that they do not blindly believe in its ideals