Posted on 08/26/2007 10:21:51 AM PDT by rahbert
On Aug. 1, Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s vice chief of staff, flew to the sprawling base at Fort Knox, Ky., to talk with the officers enrolled in the Captains Career Course. These are the Army’s elite junior officers. Of the 127 captains taking the five-week course, 119 had served one or two tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly as lieutenants. Nearly all would soon be going back as company commanders. A captain named Matt Wignall, who recently spent 16 months in Iraq with a Stryker brigade combat team, asked Cody, the Army’s second-highest-ranking general, what he thought of a recent article by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling titled “A Failure in Generalship.” The article, a scathing indictment that circulated far and wide, including in Iraq, accused the Army’s generals of lacking “professional character,” “creative intelligence” and “moral courage.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What is being described here is bureaucracy.
The problems in he military, are no different than in any other government agency or large corporation, they are just more critical.
Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric, advises corporation to keep their management levels and numbers low, especially middle management.
It is the nature of large organizations to promote those who have performed well or who have been there a long time. This generates bloat, conformity, and descent in the ranks.
It is human nature.
It is possible the problem was replacing retired Gen. Garner with Paul Bremmer, a state Department choice. Garner knew how to handle that kind of situation, Bremmer was a bureaucrat with a smarmy personality and approach.
It is possible that promoting McMasters would promote him out of the function he is now performing, one that is extremely valuable and successful. Would a General be doing what he is doing?
He will get his when the time comes.
Eric Shinseki spoke up and didn’t get a warm reception from Rumsfeld and Bush.
Rumsfeld ignored the Weinberger-Powell doctrine.
It's not Junior vs Senior Officers, it is Gen X (Majors and Lt Colonels) and Gen Y (Lt's and Captains) vs Baby Boomer Colonels and Generals.
I saw it when I was in. A Colonel was giving a big OPD (Officer Professional Development) Speech on passing promotion boards. He talked the usual straight line bullshit about command positions and making sure your photo looked good ignoring the fact that the army had half as many divisions and thus command positions as it did when he was getting promoted.
I asked him: "How many boards have you been through?" and he said: "Well, up to Major was pretty much automatic--90% promotion rates in the 80's, but I got a real hard look making LTC and Col."
I responded: "Yes sir, I've been through an accession board in my last year of ROTC, 1991, to determine if I would go on Active Duty. In my first year I went through a retention board to remain on active duty. I was boarded to 1LT (unheard of previously), made it through another retention board in my 3rd year and then made it through a Captain's board where they only took the top half (1994)."
It's pretty much the same thing as the boomer program manager giving career advice to the software engineer working as a waiter--'cuz the money is better, the hours are better and they can't outsource you!
The world has changed incredibly in the past 20 years, but because there is a huge echo chamber that reflects the ideas and biases back to the senior managers and leaders (boomers), nobody at the senior level recognizes any changes....
Yeah--a rotten philandering old fart who ran GE into the ground.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Nor from a lot of armchair military experts around here.
I suspect a lot these resident experts have little exposure to the military. Certainly Limbaugh and Hannity don’t, despite their enthusiasm for the troops, and they promote the idea that all disputes can be seen through the lens of Democrat vs Republican.
So criticisms of Rumsfeld and the Administration got dismissed as being liberal or pro-Democrat posturing. Disputes inside the military or between the uniforms and their civilian bosses have a life of their own and we’d all be better served if the public had a better grasp of this.
Shinseki was a Clinton holdover.
quit blaming Rummy. He won overwhelming victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, when the naysayers said it couldn’t be done. If the Democrats and the MSM hadn’t given aid and comfort to the enemy, this would be over by now. Rush may not have served, but he’s a brilliant man who would be a pretty good military strategist if he had the opportunity.
This is nothing new. When I was in SEA I once had some duty at a Special Forces camp. Over drinks, one of the SF guys told me about an Army officer who had been assigned as advisor to the Commandant of the Thai Army War College. It turned out that the Commandant of the College was a graduate of the US Army War College, but the advisor had not attended the US Army War College.
I thought this problem might be unique to the US Army. However, long after I retired I attended a conference on US military doctrine. At lunch I sat with a retired General from the Syrian Army. He had been a division commander before retirement. He related that the Soviets had sent two advisors, for himself and his deputy. Both he and his deputy were graduates of the Frunze Academy, the Soviet Union's top military school. Neither of the two Soviet advisors had attended the Frunze.
There is apparently a tendency in all armies to treat the position of "advisor" as something almost anyone can do. No prior experience, no prior training, needed.
Interesting article, even given the odious nature of the newspaper.
I wasn't aware GE had been run into the ground. Last I heard it was still one of the most successful and admired companies around, as is Mr. Welsh. Can you give me a clue as to what you are talking about?
Well, he was porking Suzy Wetfinger, or whatever her name was from Harvard Business Review.... She had to resign and his wife got the largest divorce settlement in history.
He rode the boom from 1980 to 2002 while he spun off companies and cut workers. The economy was so strong a chimp could have done it....
Let me be more precise: he gave a lot of other old dopes ideas that allowed them to run a lot of companies into the ground in the 90's.
Jack Welch is no more a fantastic business man than Ted Turner--and just as dopey.
As I understand, that was his big research project while he was a history instructor at West Point. He left for CGSC right before my plebe year there.
I’m quite certain H.R. McMaster was a troop commander (E 2/2 ACR) at 73 Easting. His troop initiated contact with the Tawakalna Division, and his attack was what decided the battle.
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