I say three cheers for LTC Yingling. He speaks the truth. But it is (as he indicates) an old truth, an old story.

During my relatively brief time in the Army, while working on counterinsurgency in Central America most of the problems of the personnel system discussed by Yingling were glaringly apparent. Even to a lowly Captain.

Several of us are helping to fill library book shelves with detailed descriptions of the in-the-field consequences that this kind of folly had in previous conflicts. Sadly, it seems that little has changed.