Quote Originally Posted by Bill Jakola View Post
We want to ignite a discussion across the Army and beyond to take stock after nine years of war of where we are as a profession of arms and draw lessons to better prepare for future challenges.
GEN Chiarellia, the Army's VCSA, asked a very similar question on the CAC blogs back in February of this year.

In Provide Me Your Perspectives he wrote:

In the past eight years plus our Army has transformed its organization, how it fights across the spectrum of conflict, and how we create and define mission success. From where I sit, it has been an amazing performance, but I wonder about the long term impact persistent conflict is having on our Army, our shared values, and our professional military culture.

I am interested in gaining your perspectives on how eight years of war, modularity, decentralized operations, and ARFORGEN have affected our core leadership attributes. I believe that a professional dialogue is essential to clarifying the issues we need to address to ensure the future health of our Army.

GEN Pete Chiarelli, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army

Between February and early September his query drew over 70 public comments.

The distribution of the comments is very interesting and, in my opinion, very enlightening as to the relative acceptance of open and transparent communication methods.

I broke the respondents down into five general categories: Civilian, Officers 1 (CW1 through O-5), Officers 2 (O6+), Enlisted, and Indeterminate/Anonymous.

Civilian - A handful of comments (less than 10 or so)

Enlisted - Several comments - ranging from SSG to CSM - about a dozen total.

Officers 1 - 30+ (Several warrant officers, a few Captains, mostly Majors [or equivalent] and a few Lieutenant Colonels)

Officers 2 - Five responses. Four Colonels and a follow-up comment, on Feburary 19th, from the VCSA.

In that comment he thanked everyone that had responded thus far and encouraged readers to continue spreading the word.

Analysis

This blog article and solicitation of comments is public facing and not restricted to CAC only. Across the entire Army, when solicited directly by the VCSA for feedback, only four Colonels responded and no general officers.

On March 1st BG Cardon, in his capacity as then acting CAC CG, initiated a CAC tasker "Encourage participation in VCSA blog post" which sent out to all organizations within CAC. In that tasker he did not direct participation, stressing that partication was encouraged but not mandated. At the same time, he emphasized that the Directors of the subordinate organizations should be leading by example.

Anyone caring to examine the comments in the article referenced above will readily note that tasker and the associated encouragement to partcipate provided no measurable results.