The following is correspondence from Paul Kotik, a longtime NR reader:

Your article “Thin Red Line” is an all-too-rare reminder that the next generation of Westerners is in school just now. Since Islamic imperialism is a pan-generational affair, the matter of curriculum ought to be front-and-center. And thus my question: How come we don’t teach war in our schools? We teach about the other fundamental forces which shape our existence (physics, mathematics, language, etc.) but systematically avoid addressing the critical phenomenon of war. We teach a bit about wars – dates, places, names of commanding generals, battles – and that it is a nasty business. But our high school and university undergraduate curricula (with a few obvious exceptions like military academies) don’t address the general matter of war itself as a distinctive phenomenon. What is war? What’s the difference between “war” and “combat”? How do we know when a war is taking place? What is peace? What lessons are to be learned from war strategists such as Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz? What is the relationship of war to other elements of culture? Among the results of this willful avoidance of an unfashionable but crucial body of knowledge are the astoundingly stupid questions asked by Pentagon correspondents at press conferences and the sandbox-level strategic analyses peddled to a guileless electorate by politicians. The next generation urgently needs some generalized knowledge of war. How on earth are we to support prosecution of the present epochal war when increasing numbers of our citizens don’t even know what war is?