TC,

After thinking about this issue some more, I don't think the problem is exclusively military. I agree that the military is facing a substantive problem in what Lind describes as "intellectual and moral courage", however the military as an institution cannot be separated from the social and political fabric in which it is embedded.

From the beginning of the War on Terrorism, the generals viewed the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq (especially Iraq) as 'short-term'. 11 years is only 11 cells across the horseblanket chart in the operations shop. When the lives of weapon systems are mapped out as far as 2050 and beyond, it's easy to dismiss the structural changes necessary to address the problems faced in the present, especially if they're expected to last only a few years.

I don't think tweaking the officer management system will effect the change needed to address the problems identified by Lind. It has to be both cultural and structural - in fact, Lind states this as well. Officers need to be more effectively educated (before and during service) and there needs to be substantive changes in the country's defense political economy. Education overcomes institutional self-selection, which breeds institutional decay and intellectual stagnation. That said, many of the prescriptions here and in the comments quoted by JMA only address the tactical or surface symptoms of the fundamental problems, which are inherently cultural and structural (and perhaps primarily structural since culture is often a reflect of structure).