Emrah Goker posted the following at Marxmail:
I was curious, so I downloaded Westhusing's philosophy dissertation from Columbia's server. The abstract reads:
"The competitive and cooperative aretai within the American warfighting ethos" by Theodore Scott Westhusing
Abstract (Document Summary)
In this study, I seek self-knowledge concerning the excellences ( aretai ) that American warriors must have to fight and to win their nation's wars decisively. Employing broadly an Aristotelian eudaimonistic perspective, I determine an ideal functional description of the American warrior. This ideal makes heavy demands of the warrior's entire being in supporting and defending the United States Constitution to which he has sworn his allegiance. The ideal functional description then serves to justify characterizations of various warrior competitive, cooperative, and bridging aretai essential for harmonious excellence within the American warfighting craft. The American warrior exemplars George Washington, Matthew B. Ridgway, James M. Gavin, and Robert E. Lee serve as historical examples to throw further practical light upon the theoretical treatment of each warrior excellence.
Here are the final two paragraphs of the 300-page text (the citation of Michael Walzer is telling):
"I follow Plato in maintaining that only the dead have seen the end of war. But forms of war are always evolving for living American warriors. If understanding of the American warfighting ethos and warrior self-knowledge fails to evolve along with these new forms, theorizing within the American martial ethos (about which American warriors should be the experts), may soon find itself next to useless. Ethical theorizing may then be unable to assist the members of the American military profession in becoming more noble in the execution of their craft.
"But we must improve our understanding of American warfighting and achieve proper self-knowledge of our warrior roles if we are to meet the challenge, emphasized by Michael Walzer, that war is the hardest place to make ethical judgments. The good news of this dissertation's stduy is that these same difficult demands of contemporary war can also assist by motivating us to think clearly and revise intelligently in the face of newer and even harder judgments. It is my hope that my characterization of the American warfighting ethos may help in some way to make the US Armed Forces wiser, more noble, and greater in the proper ways demanded of them by the Constitution and the American peoople."
Only the dead have seen the end of war, indeed.
Emrah