Agreed.Originally Posted by Patriot
I'm not always a fan of everything posted over at Defense and the National Interest, but this article captured what I had been thinking.
What we are seeing now is little more than the bill coming due from the issues identified and discussed in 2000-2001 when my peers were leaving the force in high numbers due many of the same issues we're discussing here. 9/11 caused a stir of patriotism and service that caused many to decide to stay in the army to fight the enemy. Hence, the low exit rates in 2002-2004.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost. The army never dealt with the issues in the 2000-2001 studies, and the stress on the force (which people thought was bad then!) has grown exponentially. The Army didn’t deal with the structural and generational issues.
In a way, a perfect storm is here. Officers are generally getting out for a mixture of the following reasons:
1) OPTEMPO. Many officers I know that left the army enjoyed their service, but just can’t handle the repeated deployments. It is particularly hard on those who were LT’s since 2002. Most are facing their third or fourth deployment, and they don’t have an “exit option” to a slower job in the immediate future. All they see are additional deployments. If married, this means usually having been deployed to training or war the majority of their marriage. If single, it means they have no opportunity to develop meaningful relationships.
The cumulative effect of deployments cannot be underestimated. The “12 months dwell time” between deployments is more aptly described as “12 months of lighting your hair on fire and running in circles” to prepare for the next deployment. In effect, soldiers really get between 4-6 actual months of deployment time at home, and only the leave period is truly restful.
2) Leadership Failure. This is the issue from the 90’s that remains unaddressed, and the link above has all the studies and essays that define it. 9/11 gave the army a "hall pass" on the issue. Many young officers I know exit because their first boss was a “bad” boss. The army has no institutional incentive (unless another Marshall comes along) to reform it’s officer training and leadership system with respect to junior officers. That attitude is derived from “After all, the system obviously works because it recognized *my* talent and made me a LTC, COL, General, etc., and those who didn’t get promoted didn’t deserve it anyway”
It does all come down to leadership, and many junior officers don’t see that their leaders or the army really care about them. It’s not because the words aren’t right, it’s the actions and “can-do”/”suck it up, it will pass” attitude that comes out. We’ve all watched leave cancelled, equipment shortfalls, training corners cut, etc. It communicates a very clear message. I was fortunate that in my most wavering time I worked for an exceptional battalion commander, who built the best team I’ve seen in the army and made the army “fun”. Even through 15 months of OIF. Unfortunately, he’s the exception.
3) The Peter Principle. 100% of my peers in my year group got promoted to major. I know my peers. 100% of us didn’t need to get promoted. My former company xo, who left the army, citied high promotions as a factor before he left. Pointing to a universally known, subpar peer of mine, he said “If the army’s willing to make him a major and put him in charge of troops again, this isn’t an army I want to be in”.
Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, writes in his book “Winning” about the criticality of differentiation. If you reward everyone equally, the middle “good” performers lose their motivation quickest (the top generally perform that way because it’s in their nature) and leave the organization. Hence Welch ruthlessly culled the bottom 10%. It resulted in better performance in the organization because people knew performance was rewarded and incompetence and underperformance was cut.
The army is turning into a version of the Special Olympics – in promotions, OER’s, and medals. Everyone’s a winner, but some of us are still handicapped. There is no block check on CPT OER's anymore. Everyone of certain grades (with rare exception) gets a Bronze Star at the end of their OIF rotation, deserved or not, fobbit or not, role or not. When a medal doesn’t differentiate from the population, it loses its meaning. How can someone differentiate what I did for mine versus theirs? What do you tell a young Sergeant who patrolled Ramadi every day and got an ARCOM when individuals who never left the wire walk away with Bronze Stars? (Don’t get me wrong, some supporters deserve every bit of it for keeping the line supplied, but since everyone gets it, it’s meaningless)
4) A mismanaged war. Kaplan’s article, and LTC Yingling’s, describe this one well. Our junior officers see this all unfolding, they have been closest to the line, and seen the most suffering among their soldiers and peers. It's personal, painful, and emotional to them, and they want someone to blame. That's natural (to a point) in all wars.
That said, I remain optimistic. I think that, like after Vietnam, those that remain and went through the crucible as a junior officer will enact significant change on the system. And I think that today’s leadership are actually slightly more attuned to the issue than the Vietnam generation, and are at least beginning to try to find solutions. But I think the calculus is that for now it is easier to bribe them to stay in (bonuses, grad school) than to address the real systemic problems while at war.
Finally the whole discussion and GEN Cody brief reminds me of this incident with GEN Abrams while chief of staff in the early 70’s. Will our leadership be as perceptive?
"A Sherman can give you a very nice... edge."- Oddball, 
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