In praise of mavericks

[Administrator]

Civilians who serve as defense secretary rarely inspire the military men who serve in uniform. It is the profession of arms itself that has the job of exhorting, leading and studying the art of war. From time to time, however, it becomes the job of the civilian overseer to deter the military from stagnating and to prompt it to keep up with the times to serve the needs of modern war. We live in one of those times.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2008/07/3521282

[ChiaPsyant]

Originally Posted by Administrator

Civilians who serve as defense secretary rarely inspire the military men who serve in uniform. It is the profession of arms itself that has the job of exhorting, leading and studying the art of war. From time to time, however, it becomes the job of the civilian overseer to deter the military from stagnating and to prompt it to keep up with the times to serve the needs of modern war. We live in one of those times. ...

That more than 30 yr after Col. Boyd retired we still need to issue warnings & admonishments equating maverick with pariah, implying that doing something rather than being somebody will go unrewarded & probably punished, bespeaks a sad state of affairs in the armed forces. I suspect that we've lived "in one of those times" before & that other Col. Boyds have wound up on the short end of a FITREP.

It's the war: if turning a 6-wk incursion into a 5+-yr stalemate isn't enough to convince uniformed & civ. brass @Ye Auld Five Point that things need a'changin', then what will? The notion that people in uniform must cower in fear or resign if they stray from the party line is scarrier to me than all the al-Qaida lieutenants together; after all, they're not our guys. I s'pose we need a Winston Churchill: a guy on the prowl for those that have elicited hostile comment. SECDEF Gates, awaiting his season tickets to luxury box seats @the RAND Corp. & the Hoover Institution, doesn't strike me as that guy. Sorry.

[pennst98]

When I taught in our Marine Corps Professional Schools in Quantico, Va., I often alluded to the old military class of medieval times, the warriors — the knights. We called them nobility. A favorite question I asked my students to ponder was, “Have we, the U.S. officer corps in the 20th and 21st centuries, descended beneath noblesse, or ascended above it?”

Colonel Wyly, first I would like to commend you on a well written essay. Colonel Boyd was a remarkable character, and certainly among the rarest of military thinkers who placed his duty to country and personal honor ahead of professional success or personal recognition. We would all do well exemplify the professionalism and discipline he shone in spades throughout his career in and out of uniform.

My problem is with the quote you ended with, asking if we have risen above noblesse. The United States Officer Corps in all branches IS noblesse. If not, then what is it? To the outsider with no military experience the distinction between Soldier and Officer is stark: the Officer has education, experience, and age which separate him from the 18 year old enlistee. To most of us who have served however, this is laughable. The average age of an enlisted man is well into his twenties, and each year that passes more and more of the highest performers have equivalent or superior education to most officers below the rank of Major.

So what makes them different? I would argue pedigree and tradition. In our military we have a foolish belief that he who graduates college and seeks to lead has moral/intellectual superiority over he who joins the Army to follow. While there is something to be said of an individual who has attained a degree and shown his intellectual bone fides, this in no way grants him any strategic or combat experience. As one of the most hilarious thoughts on religion goes “Sitting in Church makes you no more a Christian, than sitting in a garage makes you car”, the same could be said of college. After recently completing my masters I now know that letters after your title confer no knowledge in and of themselves.

During my years I grew to love the Army, and learn the bizarre military caste system. Much as we learn in leadership and psychology when we study the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” people love to adopt roles even when they make no sense. Much as the guards began to harass and dehumanize their fellow students I too felt as though something was taken from me. Even though I had superior education, better training, and a more thorough knowledge than most of the Officers appointed above me, I could not but resent the way I was constantly micromanaged and spoken to as though my knuckles dragged when I walked.

Even during my 4 years when I performed well above standard, even when I introduced some great ideas to boost morale and readiness I was always dismissed as though I were someone’s house servant. I would be given the “thank you Toby” and was quickly shooed away because it was time for the adults to talk. When I inquired about becoming an officer I was basically told that I would have to beg and plead and do favors to be considered. Even after that process I would be sent to OCS where I would essentially have to go through week upon week of harassment and reindeer games to prove that I was “worthy” of being an officer. This is laughable because I still know more about weaponry and tactics than most mid-grade officers and have to bite my lip from correcting them when the mangle a designation, exaggerate a capability, or just pull some randomly mangled Clausewitz quote out of their nether regions.

For years during and after the military I never understood why even the good Officers, the ones who I knew “got it” would never speak up to challenge bad ideas, or offer alternative solutions. Why our rifles were pathetic, and most of our plans crap. I never understood with so many good men and women serving why things never seemed to get better? Why was it/is it that in a profession that professes “professionalism” and merit so little of it is to be found?

I have found the answer to those questions Colonel, and the answer is our rank and promotion system, our military tradition of noblesse. We have not risen above tradition. Our Officer Corps selection, assignment, and promotional system would make Machiavelli proud. It promotes those who fall in line and remain silent, and punishes those who actually put foot to ass. It is predicated on keeping the insiders at the top, and the outsiders at arms length. So long as good officers are told to retire for speaking up, bold leadership is punished and micromanaged we will continue to see only men and women of little distinction promoted. Their only virtue being that they came out of the zero defect obstacle course unscathed.

Yes, great men such as Colonel Boyd have shown us what greatness is, however we continue to ignore it. Until we punish cronyism and noblesse and begin policies and procedures to promote merit and talent above connections and shiny rings we will not see any real change. While I agree Secretary Gates is moving in the right direction, he is not moving far enough or fast enough. He needs to go to the heart of the matter and ensure that the best and brightest lead, not leave the service to write policy for think tanks or post articles in AFJ.

Thank you for your service, and your article.

[ChiaPsyant]

Originally Posted by pennst98

...Much as we learn in leadership and psychology when we study the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” people love to adopt roles even when they make no sense. ...

This sorta thing has been written about in lotsa other places too: curious people that were dealing with mental patients back in the 50s, early 60s concluded that people were in hospital because they were acting & doing the way they'd always acted & done ("That's the way we've always done it here!"), long after there was even the remotest advantage in acting & doing that way.

Originally Posted by pennst98

...though I had superior education, better training, and a more thorough knowledge than most of the Officers appointed above me, I could not but resent the way I was constantly micromanaged and spoken to as though my knuckles dragged when I walked. ...

This is a great post. I was a Navy J.O., a former enlisted, & I left the Navy an abject failure with nothing but contempt for my fellow officers. I know my parents raised me without any notions of superiority, & I long ago thought that this noblesse oblige business didn't begin in the wardroom or ROTC: these people independently decided that an armed forces commissioned officer corps was a great place to be if you wanted to feel superior; especially, incompetent & superior.

We drilled & drilled, operational & saftety procedures, standard commands, & I took this stuff seriously & insisted my div. do so & they did, but when it came to the crunch during a live fire exercise, the panic-riddled Capt. called an unwarranted cease fire, & with a genuine hang fire procedure in progress, implored me to "shoot the f**k**g gun!" Thru the raging enfilade of spittle, all I could think of saying was, "Sir, that's not a standard command." End, as they say, of career.

Originally Posted by pennst98

...sent to OCS where I would essentially have to go through week upon week of harassment and reindeer games to prove that I was “worthy” of being an officer. ...

That reminds me of one old div. E-6: when I had duty & the requisite gaggle of O's'd gone ashore in a foreign port, he'd say, "So they won't let you join in their reindeer games?"

I was already old when I enlisted (& already had a degree; in a foreign language, with my WWII vet dad recommending something called "intelligence" or "cryptology") & even older when I went thru OCS [& why? 'Cause I was tryna avoid shipboard duty! (& my future spouse insisting this was possible!: ha ha) Ha ha: 3 yr 'board a gator: ha ha!]. (The unbearable dichotomy was that I hated being away from home, but I loved being @sea!) My co. off. @OCS once asked me, "So you see OCS as an obstacle to getting a commission?"

Originally Posted by pennst98

...So long as good officers are told to retire for speaking up, bold leadership is punished and micromanaged we will continue to see only men and women of little distinction promoted. ...

Col. MacGregor wrote in his Fire the Generals! how Army CoS Marshall retired 54 generals in his first year; evidently, those of little distinction have been promoted for some time, whereas Marshall himself waited 36 yr for a flag rank. A pleasant diversion from this sorta thing is the tale of Aaron Bank, who was in his late 30s when he joined the Army in the late 30s; ironically, it was superiors' firm conviction that he was too old for combat that chased him into the eager arms of the OSS, where he was the topic of Wild Bill Donovan's directive, "Tell Bank to get Hitler!"

[pennst98]

The only thing I’d like to add is that I would not go so far as to say that I felt any particular distain for officers, rather I became fed up with a system which everyone can see doesn’t work. The current promotional and organization structure reminds me of communist Russia in the early 1980’s; a propagandist and ineffective form of governance which had been dead for decades. Yet despite having lost all ties to legitimacy somehow continues though the collective malaise of its citizens. Only in refection can those who were a part of it look upon its legacy and wonder how it lasted as long as it did.

I am currently watching the HBO series “Generation Kill.” From my understanding much of what transpires is a re-creation, or at least based in actual events. Maybe it is this is why I feel entranced by it. It doesn’t show the officers or enlisted as anything special; rather simply show them as people who react differently to various stimuli which are both negative and positive. If you haven’t seen the series I suggest you buy it when it comes out, it is worth its weight in gold.

I mention the series not to plug it, but rather because unlike Band of Brothers and other myths of the military there is not halo or mystique surrounding the figures. There’s no theme to who’s better or “right.” Rather there is a sense of malaise that I vividly remembered from my time in uniform. That feeling that the no one was really in charge, or at least if someone was they surely weren’t doing their job.

It isn’t that officers are inherently better or worse than the rest of the military, they’re just more visible when they screw up. If I were green LT just out of college I would have been a DISASTER on a platoon. After all what do you really know when you first join the service? Which makes me question why do we still run the military as we have for centuries? Dose a college education really justify granting someone a rank higher than 80% of the military? How can someone new to the military occupy a rank higher than a veteran NCO of 30 years of service with no record of performance or particular skills?

It just makes no sense, no sense at all.

We all react differently to a little bit of power. Some people take mistakes seriously and learn from them, others simply pass the buck and blame those around and below them. Some command with a fair and firm hand; others become warlords of their new fiefdom. In the end it isn’t the rank, but it’s the individual. If you take rank and the authority given to as a right, privilege, or sign of divinity then you are bound to abuse it. If on the other hand you view your authority as an awesome responsibility, you’re more likely to succeed. Either way you shouldn’t be granted command of troops until we have been evaluated how we react to that responsibility.

But lest you believe this is all about character, do not forget that the promotional system also plays a role in determining the type of leaders the military produces. As many famous management textbooks will tell you, “WHAT GETS REWARDED GETS DONE.” So long as loyalty is something you do to cover down and cover up for the guy who writes your OER, NCOER……don’t expect to see individuals challenge the incompetence of those above them. The current promotional system is like a game of “king of the mountain,” except instead of the strongest rising to the top and being challenged by those below, those at the top decides who can advance and who has to leave the mountain……

How do we expect Generals to think rationally and independently when the system and leadership just spent 20 years tossing out anyone with those character traits and abilities? As I told a Colonel one time at a strategy conference, “Yea, I think I would have made a good military strategist; but I wasn’t going to wait 20 years for someone to ask my opinion. By then what would the point be? I would have become the system! All my ideas would be out of date and my mind set.”

In the end we don’t know how someone enlister or officer, young or old, will react to the responsibility an stress of leadership. What we can do is make sure that however they enter the military those that show composure, accountability, and competence are promoted while those who are arrogant, abusive, and incompetent are quickly show the door. Until we do we will be left with a leadership corps who is chosen not by their character or demonstrated performance, but rather one that is the very definition of aristocracy.

“Duty is heavy as a mountain but Death is lighter than a feather.” – Japanese Proverb

[BENNIS]

" it becomes the job of the civilian overseer to deter the military from stagnating and to prompt it to keep up with the times to serve the needs of modern war. "

-Well really anyone of their own accord should call a turd a turd. I cant tell you the number of times I wanted to choke-out a " superior " who pooh-poohed a good idea.


It boils down to this : " command power derives only from recognition of authority. "

You get that? I, don't see many inspiring leaders and too few " technically and tactically competent " soldiers, not just those of " rank ." Don't insult my intelligence, we got long term problems that most CANT EVEN CONCEPTUALIZE, let alone articulate.


Put down that g.d. gps and pick up a compass!! Hows your map-reading skills? THE STUFF THAT IS INFANTRY meat-n-potato's?

How about that H.K 416? Or Dragonskin or da wunderveapon " Stryker " Like I said..choke someone out over them, and then kick them good.

Keep putting sugar on it.

How about that " dont ask.." beret? I sure like the way it sucks in the sun.. yet the " patrol cap, " aint. Slogans over substance. CHOKE YOURSELF!



Fire the Generals damn right.