William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[Fuchs]

As to question number two of course not! We never should group people by color or custom or any other Commie collective grouping system but by performance standards. THAT IS WHAT MAKES AMERICA EXCEPTIONAL! If you work for it you get, not who your daddy is or what you look like or where you went to school or how much money you have.

LOL, no. That's just a horrible caricature of some modern (U.S.) American mythology.

Being the by far biggest Western country and shielded by two oceans is what makes it exceptional.
Meritocracy (aside from being suboptimal*) is not much more at home in the U.S. than in plenty other countries.

In fact, the American idea of how to create a lieutenant is stuck in the 18th century when the ancien rgime supposed that nobles were by birth suitable for serving as officer and didn't need proper training or practice. It's a laughingstock in comparison to most other developed countries' ways of creating lieutenants.

The German way (to let them serve as a special kind of NCO first and educate/train them before they get commissioned) goes back to Carnot during the French revolution and isn't exactly fresh, but at least not stuck in the ancien rgime.


*: Now about how and why meritocracy is suboptimal:
Peter principle, that's why.
Losers and undisciplined men shouldn't be promoted, but other than that promotions should be done based on potential. A very good colonel may be a horrible general. It's thus wrong to promote all very good colonels. It's correct to promote some mediocre colonels who show much potential for the General's job while holding some very good colonels back in their rank.

The German army accepted this shortly after the First World War and invented what's today known as assessment centre. The impetus was that it was forced to enlist men for 12 years only (and as minimum) and was very much restricted in size.

Not macht erfinderisch.
(~"Necessity is the mother of invention." More accurately: Distress drives you to be inventive.)

The had to get the very best candidates for the job, so they paid more attention to candidate selection than an other army.

[former_0302]

In fact, the American idea of how to create a lieutenant is stuck in the 18th century when the ancien rgime supposed that nobles were by birth suitable for serving as officer and didn't need proper training or practice. It's a laughingstock in comparison to most other developed countries' ways of creating lieutenants.

I'm curious, given this statement, as to exactly how you think Americans create lieutenants?

[AmericanPride]

former_0302,

The ratio comes from Army Recruiting Command estimates while I used the census population data you provided. It's due to a combination of education, physical fitness, health, and moral/legal.

[former_0302]

former_0302,

The ratio comes from Army Recruiting Command estimates while I used the census population data you provided. It's due to a combination of education, physical fitness, health, and moral/legal.

Right, the MCRC data is based on the same factors as far as I know. I saw the numbers in some brief I had to sit in during 2010/11-ish, but IIRC their recruitable number total across the US was over 10 mil. Again, it was for 17-24 year-olds.

Perhaps the Army uses different metrics, or maybe the method for counting has been updated.

[Fuchs]

I'm curious, given this statement, as to exactly how you think Americans create lieutenants?

ROTC or academy, but mostly through ROTC.

The German path for reserve (2 or 3 years active service) officers: link
Active service officer candidates have a more comprehensive path.

[former_0302]

ROTC or academy, but mostly through ROTC.

The German path for reserve (2 or 3 years active service) officers: link
Active service officer candidates have a more comprehensive path.

I don't know how true that is of the other services, but it is largely not true of the Marine Corps. You can google the Marine Corps Almanac and check for yourself, but the breakdown for 2013 officer accessions (which one assumes is a garden-variety year) is this:

MECEP/ECP/MCP: 218
Naval ROTC: 212
Officer Candidate Course: 344
Platoon Leader Course: 591
Academy: 267

The MECEP/ECP/MCP are competitive enlisted to officer programs, in which enrollees wind up joining an ROTC unit, so they technically enter the service through ROTC. However, they need to have some minimum enlisted service time before they're eligible for the program, and they need to have been pretty good Marines to get into the program. It should also be noted that a significant portion of the OCC/PLC accessions are prior enlisted personnel.

In any event, no argument that we could do better, but the timeline in the link you provided is not too different from the path that Marine officers take through OCS/TBS/follow-on MOS school. All of that takes a minimum of one year, before a lieutenant is ever in a position to lead anyone, following their graduation from whatever college they came from. Your first job as a lieutenant is effectively a sort of internship anyway; a not-insignificant number of lieutenants are relieved for cause. I guess I'm not seeing an enormous difference.

Edited to add: I think our philosophy is that the best way to learn how to be an officer is to actually go be an officer. While there are certainly some who are not ready when they get there, I'd say most are ready enough.