No academic curriculum can adequately replicate actual combat experience in preparing for the proverbial “fog of war,” but an ash-leaden haze of eye-stinging, lung-clogging smoke could offer a good and sooty semblance of battlefield murk.
That must have been the National Defense University’s (NDU) thinking when it refused to move its June 8 graduation ceremony indoors despite Washington being encased in a smothering smog from raging wildfires in Quebec, surmised keynote speaker U.S. Army Gen. and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
“Thinking strategically,” he joked in his opening remarks.
Founded in 1976, the NDU at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington is a fully accredited five-college institute run by the Department of Defense that offers degrees in education, training, and professional development for current and future “national security leaders” from the U.S. and allied nations….