The Best Trained, Most Professional Military...Just Lost Two Wars?

[Ken White]

Ken, you blame a lot of problems on politicians and top brass, or the system.

I'd like to throw some more into the ring; I suppose the U.S. military personnel is poor at learning, adapting and improving.

I agree with that -- but is that not a function of the political factors that shape the institution (and they are pervasive...) and select the top brass? Serving individuals bear some responsibility, of course but the "system" shapes all the factors you cite, it selects the Brass based on very political criteria and they shape the system...

The US forces are comprised of individuals who can learn adapt and improve -- or improvise -- as well as any grouping of people anywhere in the world. However, they are constrained by a system, a set of institutions, that deliberately constrain those attributes in a flawed effort to obtain uniformity, consistency and nowadays, to not embarrass anyone. That's a systemic flaw, not a human failing. That "system" is designed by those politicians and that brass.

My strongest supporting evidence is that the vast majority of those I got in contact with are amazingly thin-skinned and react allergic to criticism, direct approaches against inadequate state of affairs and the like. I have yet to find a professional group that's as defensive.

In addition to that defensiveness, there are few professional groups that are as distrustful of subordinates as the US Army. Is it possible both those shortcomings are introduced by the fact that the members of the institution really know that their training and education are not totally adequate? That they know they're not as good as the common wisdom (or lack of it...) states; they're not really as good as they would like to be?

I cannot imagine heavily armed or other bureaucracy that runs very well without its individuals being able to bear criticism unless it comes from a superior.

Heh. They don't take that well, either...

Two points:

Americans are admittedly thin skinned in the non-acceptance of criticism -- it's not just the Armed forces and it's partly a result of a lot of boosterism and rather foolish promotion of self esteem (at a cost to self respect and self confidence). IOW, it's true and it is as much or more a societal thing is it is a military peculiarity. The Military peculiarity added to that -- fighters tend to see everything as a challenge of some sort -- just compounds it.

US military people, like all groups can be defensive and band together if attacked, verbally or otherwise. Also like all groups, while they may reject the slams of outsiders, internally they can be quite self critical and discerning. I've met those in the services that are unthinking boosters and who are hyper defensive. My rough guess is that they're about 20% of all. Another 20% are self critical and truly concerned with getting it right. Then there's the 60% in the middle who tend toward both ends and meet in the center with a cluster of 20% or so that hew to neither side. I suspect that is pretty much the human norm in most organizations or groups.

What all that effectively gives you is a bunch of overly sensitive and combative Americans wherein about a third are blind to the flaws and prone to boosterism, another third who are well aware of shortcomings and work, usually not publicly, to improve things as much as they can within a system that is excessively heirarchial and which is often politically manipulated for non-military purposes. Then there's yet another third that are really just sort of there, they don't do much either way. It's noteworthy that the "system" is a creature of the Politicians and the Brass so they tend to be over-represented in the Booster category, publicly anyway -- hard for the folks in charge to admit they've screwed things up...

Sounds like any other grouping of persons from most anywhere in the world to me -- except many if not most are thin-skinned, defensive Americans.