Basically the gist of the article is "you all suck and here's why." It was a lovely read which really offered no true insight or implementable ideas to fix the things that the author is clearly agitated about.
-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Interesting take on current officer corps
- Thread starter Fallonflyr
- Start date
Care to elaborate?
Well this is why I still check on this message board! Muuwah! This was absolutely riveting... and one of the poorest & least convincing articulations I've seen of any serious argument in recent memory.
If anyone is ready to throw stones at the current system, it's me. But this is a provocative subject for the sake of being provocative. The same shtick that Rick Reilly now has on ESPN. Its so superficial and poorly conceived that it's actually is kind of entertaining. Its like when Sarah Palin becomes the mouth piece for the right... you just wish it was at least someone coherent so we could have a real debate.
The civilian world has better HR, more authentic leadership, promotes more on talent versus timing, pain points, or shoe shining... but one thing that is immediately obvious is that there are nothing but 100% yes men everywhere. There is no other place in corporate America that a 29 year old voices their opinion and is influentially opinionated like the military. If the officer corps is one thing internally, it's honest, especially compared to what everyone else on the planet endures professionally. And yeah, sure there is inertia with the 20 year pension and up-or-out... but tying these to a broad and historic lack of moral courage... mwah, my compliments to the chef on another piece of air warriors .com allure.
If anyone is ready to throw stones at the current system, it's me. But this is a provocative subject for the sake of being provocative. The same shtick that Rick Reilly now has on ESPN. Its so superficial and poorly conceived that it's actually is kind of entertaining. Its like when Sarah Palin becomes the mouth piece for the right... you just wish it was at least someone coherent so we could have a real debate.
The civilian world has better HR, more authentic leadership, promotes more on talent versus timing, pain points, or shoe shining... but one thing that is immediately obvious is that there are nothing but 100% yes men everywhere. There is no other place in corporate America that a 29 year old voices their opinion and is influentially opinionated like the military. If the officer corps is one thing internally, it's honest, especially compared to what everyone else on the planet endures professionally. And yeah, sure there is inertia with the 20 year pension and up-or-out... but tying these to a broad and historic lack of moral courage... mwah, my compliments to the chef on another piece of air warriors .com allure.
You had better stop trying to kiss me and leering as I climb a ladder well before I call SAPR.
Do some homework on the author, William Lind. Not everything that gets published on the internet is authoritative - and some people make a career out of being contrarians.
Does he raise some interesting points? Yes. So did "Bus" Snodgrass's white paper.
Look at :Small Wars Journal, JO Rules, USNI, Cdr Salamander, I Like the Cut of His Jib, Steel Jaw Scribe, Sailor Bob, The Long War Journal, Wings Over Iraq. Even Duffel Blog, despite the satirical nature is smart and insightful. These blogs are full of young and mid-grade military officers writing critically. Maybe Lind doesn't recognize them as legitimate because the blogs have ironic or irreverent names. His loss. Not everything can be called something as "dignified" The American Conservative...
Here is a good rebuttal, but do your own searches because there are plenty.
Does he raise some interesting points? Yes. So did "Bus" Snodgrass's white paper.
Look at :Small Wars Journal, JO Rules, USNI, Cdr Salamander, I Like the Cut of His Jib, Steel Jaw Scribe, Sailor Bob, The Long War Journal, Wings Over Iraq. Even Duffel Blog, despite the satirical nature is smart and insightful. These blogs are full of young and mid-grade military officers writing critically. Maybe Lind doesn't recognize them as legitimate because the blogs have ironic or irreverent names. His loss. Not everything can be called something as "dignified" The American Conservative...
Here is a good rebuttal, but do your own searches because there are plenty.
Good stuff here. Back in the 80's, Lind did have the ear of some Generals. At that time the USMC was developing Maneuver Warfare doctrine. Most of the junior officers subjected to him considered him to be a pompous academic who never served a day in his life...some things never change.
This is probably the most intellectually honest article about what the officer corps (and the military in general) have become. I can see the discord with most of you, it strikes a nerve doesn't it... i wonder why? Most people who revile in their indignance do so because they are ashamed of the truth, not becuase its a basket of lies.
You don't think most officers to go where they are for being a bunch of ass-kissing sycophants? OK ,bullshit, after two tours on two seperate major command staffs, I can say this is mostly true. People who don't walk the line, play the game, and learn absolutely everything from monkey-see/monkey-do, are usually left one or two places below on the pile of FITREPs than the people who DO. We are a peace-time Navy, we measure our proverbial careers proclaiming how much admin BS we can say we did over the next guy. Go read some of this crap, the numerology indexes and references have become absurd, "flew 197 sorites with zero defincicies and over 210 mishap-free pieces of paper printed on 7 copy machines with a 98.97% toner-renewl rate". This is only a midly sarcastic bullet on someone's annual evaluation. I'd be laughin my ass off at this if it weren't so sadly valid; you can imagine what a country that sees us as an enemy is thinking about this.
The first thing that happened when actual bullets started flying back and forth during WWII is we got RID of all the bean-counting admirals and captains that infested the Navy and started putting leaders in place that were willing to get the job done and push the file cabinet off the fan-tail.
But I digress, I dont have the time or will to go point-by-point with this article. For the most part, I put down the cup of Kool-aid a long time ago when it came to pushing the "I-believe" button- yes that old flight school addage where we just nod our heads up and down because its easier to pretend we just don't have the time or capacity to understand something. A vast majority of our leaders have simply played the game better, and are only in their positions becuase the military has structurally enforced an officer corps that is desperate for promotion to avoid permanent dismissal. Up or out, check the box, punch your ticket, get the nod, yes sir-yes sir three bags full. You honestly think these terms are rooted in a culture of indepedent thinkers and tacticians? No, they're firmly planted in a concrete, bureaucratic quagmire apathatic officers who thrive in a system that they believe they can master, and tool their way to promotion and/or retirement.
And for the love of God, all of you who want to translate this article, and my endorsement of it as some sort of personal attack on YOU, the individual, i've got news for you, this aticle isn't about YOU, its about the officer corps in general. Stop using your personal anecdotes and contrasts from the generatlities purported in order to discredit something of which you have zero premises. It was written in the third person for a reason, try and keep it there.
Oh, and I loved his part about the briefings.... yes, most "briefs" have absolutey no content, and are full of people that have no business being thee.
You don't think most officers to go where they are for being a bunch of ass-kissing sycophants? OK ,bullshit, after two tours on two seperate major command staffs, I can say this is mostly true. People who don't walk the line, play the game, and learn absolutely everything from monkey-see/monkey-do, are usually left one or two places below on the pile of FITREPs than the people who DO. We are a peace-time Navy, we measure our proverbial careers proclaiming how much admin BS we can say we did over the next guy. Go read some of this crap, the numerology indexes and references have become absurd, "flew 197 sorites with zero defincicies and over 210 mishap-free pieces of paper printed on 7 copy machines with a 98.97% toner-renewl rate". This is only a midly sarcastic bullet on someone's annual evaluation. I'd be laughin my ass off at this if it weren't so sadly valid; you can imagine what a country that sees us as an enemy is thinking about this.
The first thing that happened when actual bullets started flying back and forth during WWII is we got RID of all the bean-counting admirals and captains that infested the Navy and started putting leaders in place that were willing to get the job done and push the file cabinet off the fan-tail.
But I digress, I dont have the time or will to go point-by-point with this article. For the most part, I put down the cup of Kool-aid a long time ago when it came to pushing the "I-believe" button- yes that old flight school addage where we just nod our heads up and down because its easier to pretend we just don't have the time or capacity to understand something. A vast majority of our leaders have simply played the game better, and are only in their positions becuase the military has structurally enforced an officer corps that is desperate for promotion to avoid permanent dismissal. Up or out, check the box, punch your ticket, get the nod, yes sir-yes sir three bags full. You honestly think these terms are rooted in a culture of indepedent thinkers and tacticians? No, they're firmly planted in a concrete, bureaucratic quagmire apathatic officers who thrive in a system that they believe they can master, and tool their way to promotion and/or retirement.
And for the love of God, all of you who want to translate this article, and my endorsement of it as some sort of personal attack on YOU, the individual, i've got news for you, this aticle isn't about YOU, its about the officer corps in general. Stop using your personal anecdotes and contrasts from the generatlities purported in order to discredit something of which you have zero premises. It was written in the third person for a reason, try and keep it there.
Oh, and I loved his part about the briefings.... yes, most "briefs" have absolutey no content, and are full of people that have no business being thee.
RadicalDude
Social Justice Warlord
There are some communities where this is already happens...
This seems like decent advice....
Well at least for me the problems were that he 1) unfairly categorized military officers as having no moral courage when by his definition most of humanity has no moral courage, and 2) made his point in a very sloppy, lazy, incoherent way.
If he'd stuck to "You guys aren't really doing too hot on the scoreboard, and you need to figure out how to do it better" that would've been fine. Plenty to discuss on that alone.
But the fact that there's plenty of publicly voiced angst from all ranks about it means his tangent about passivity is when he sticks his foot in his mouth and makes it clear he's badly out of touch with what's happening within the services, and has lost whatever backroom "insider" privileges he may have once had.
No, the problem is that the author says that we've lost several wars, continues by outlining several very real structural problems with the officer corps, and completely fails to establish a causal link between the two.
It's pretty obvious to anyone with even a cursory understanding of how our promotions and retention work that there are some pretty perverse incentives at work that can create less-than-ideal outcomes, especially in the O-4/O-5 ranks. But what the article completely misses and you seem to ignore is that we accomplish nearly every tactical mission that is handed down to us. However, winning wars is not just about winning battles--a large part of winning wars is actually having a concrete, realistically achievable objective when you go to war. This was not the case in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq.
Officers in our military are completely subordinate to civilians who decide when, where, and with whom we go to war. Sometimes those civilians, as mentioned above, are not aware of the limitations associated with military force. Sometimes there's political pressure to "do something," and when that something turns out badly the military is a convenient scapegoat.
Yeah, the military is a huge bureaucracy, and people with bureaucratic skills are valued more at a certain point than are your garden-variety "shoot from the hip, tell it like it is" heroes. I can't think of many large organizations where this is not the case.
Well, at least from your perspective anyway (i.e. your own personal anecdotes), right?
Well aren't you a peach? Actually, you seem like more of a dick. You're so sure you're smarter than the rest of us that you aren't even taking a step back and looking at the big picture here.navyavi469 said:
You mean, according to your own anecdotal experience? According to my experience, the vast majority of officers I have worked with are NOT ass-kissing sycophants. But it seems pretty clear you think you know everything, so why even bother argue the point?navyavi469 said:
This is a system issue, not a problem with the officer corps in general.navyavi469 said:
Why not? You seem perfectly capable of telling the rest of us that we don't know what the fuck we're talking about. Maybe it's just laziness on your part. I'm not surprised.navyavi469 said:
So what the fuck is your solution? I've yet to hear anything from you on how to fix whatever it is that you think is broken. Give me a solution or shut the fuck up.navyavi469 said:
Yeah, let's stop using anecdotes to make a point, right?navyavi469 said:
