Life is tough enough already
Hey Shek, how is the baby?
Quote:
At Fort Hood, Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, the top general at the sprawling base, summoned all of the captains to hear his response to Col. Yingling's critique. About 200 officers in their mid- to late-20s, most of them Iraq veterans, filled the pews and lined the walls of the base chapel. "I believe in our generals. They are dedicated, selfless servants," Gen. Hammond recalls saying. The 51-year-old officer told the young captains that Col. Yingling wasn't competent to judge generals because he had never been one. "He has never worn the shoes of a general," Gen. Hammond recalls saying.
The captains' reactions highlighted the growing gap between some junior officers and the generals. "If we are not qualified to judge, who is?" says one Iraq veteran who was at the meeting. Another officer in attendance says that he and his colleagues didn't want to hear a defense of the Army's senior officers. "We want someone at higher levels to take accountability for what went wrong in Iraq," he says.
Makes you wonder how wide the gulf is? Since I was not there, and the article sounds like second or third party info, I have to wonder how it went. It seems things like that go one of two ways. Way one might be - "OK - listen up, its like this...." Way two might go, "Hey I think we have a problem, and I need you guys to help me understand it so I can help to solve to it....."
I think senior leaders should be personally engaging their company and field grades on a number of issues. For me, even if a guy can't give me the answer I want to hear, his acknowledgement of the problem, the useful dialogue that accompanies it, and the ensuing dialogue of the 06 crowd and below is very important. It creates the conditions to solve not only the problem at hand, but to identify and solve future problems the organization faces.
We can't hide from this problem any more then the civil military-relations one, or the Inter-Agency one, the officer attrition problem, or the future shape of the Army one, or the host of others – which is why I’m glad somebody finally put them in one article. They are all related in that they stem largely from the post 9/11 operating environment and the problems that has engendered. We can either get through this together, with our volunteer Army intact and adapted to meet these long term new problems, or we can polarize our views, risking irrelevancy and the type of stumbling that is hard and painful to recover from. While we can absorb a great deal of pain, I’m not sure we can absorb that much at this rate.
I believe that both ends need to listen. The seniors have a problem set with responsibilities that more junior leaders really can't comprehend. Conversely, this post 9/11 world has created challenges and pressures at the most tactical end of the rank structure that senior leaders probably find difficult to put in the perspective of their previous experiences. Any useful dialogue has to start by acknowledging things are different, and that the concerns of both are relative to the health of the Army.
We can't afford an "us and them" set of camps, there are too many of those on the battlefield right now that illustrate the danger in that, but we also can't afford to ignore the problem since the war cannot be put on hold.
Interesting Counterpoint in AFJI
I ran across this counterpoint to LTC Yingling's commentary on the AFJI website.
It's entitled "The 20/20 Hindsight Gift" by LTC John Mauk.
A brief excerpt that kind of shows the tone of the rebuttal:
Quote:
Yingling knows and apparently ignores that our military trains for both unconventional and conventional warfare. He now appears to enjoy unimpaired hindsight and preaches the merits of counterinsurgency as though he experienced a bolt of bright light from the heavens on the road to Damascus.
Not that I'm an expert in linguistics or anything, but this just sounds flip and condescending. I agree with his call for a cultural change, but it's kind of lost on me because of the chosen method of refuting LTC Yingling's commentary. That being said, I didn't agree with some of LTC Yingling's recommendations, and am still on the fence about some of his assertions. But when you couple this with the recent discussions around COL McMaster's non-selection, the conspiracy theorist in me comes out. Dissent is not welcome, is it?
So what is the "right" way to challenge the Sacred Cows that need to be grilled? How do you push for change with a giant hammer hanging over your head?
Not that I plan on leaving until they drag me out, but I can certainly understand why so many may be looking for the door.
Regards,
Mike.
Major, MAARNG