Scribner Seminar Program
2006-2007 Titles
Warfare Today
Instructor(s): Steve Hoffmann, Government
Description: What can thinking people in the United States learn about the latest
war from studying past wars ? Today’s war seems to go well or badly, mostly depending
upon the political slant of the news media we prefer to use. In this seminar, we study
American military methods employed during the present war in Iraq, an how many of
them first appeared during World War II. We see how they proved themselves, or failed
to do so, in wars fought in Vietnam, Somalia, and Iraq, and became linked to further
military innovation. Application of thinking drawn from political science enables
us to draw powerful lessons from military history. Those lessons do not ignore the
drama, triumph, tragedy, horror, humanity, and even humor, found in good writing by
military historians. Students discuss and learn to write insightfully on such military
matters as: should the war in Iraq be fought by small numbers of American soliders
or by the much larger numbers of the World War II days ? Can innovative American high
technology overcome the low-tech innovation achieved by the opposing side? How do
our own political wishes shape our own understanding of a particular war, and what
happens to it ?
