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From: Emery Nelson, Citizen and Former Soldier
Date: 28 Nov 2000
Time: 03:33:01
I have some comments (not criticisms) to make about Capt. Lewis's excellent piece on army retention. Although I think he nailed the problems perfectly, one of his solutions left me a little uneasy. I'm concerned that if we don't do a clean sweep we will offer plenty of incentive for the senior officers to sabotage any real reform which will kill any real incentive for the junior officers to stay.
If we are honest about the nature of the army (or any other service) we see a large bureaucracy that suffers from the same problems as say the Forest Service or the Dept. of Education, only it's harder to tell if the army is doing its job. It runs on inertia from its past accomplishments and lacks the means to reform itself from within (during peace time) because its mission and reason for being is not governed by any measurable test. Corporations undergo the ultimate in testing every quarter and if they don't get it right, they don't survive.
In all corporations, both large and small, the profit motive drives change and ultimately it's survival. If a corporation is to survive it must make better decisions than its competition and work at keeping its brightest people. An army during peace time is driven by preparing for war. If it doesn't come for a while, then all that preparation is never put to the test. This allows situations like our current fraudulent readiness figures to be presented without serious protest.
General Granges leadership retreats were undoubtedly a success but what happened to officers who didn't measure up as capable commanders in Grange's estimate. Did they receive bad evaluations and loss of command? One can hope, but I'm guessing they ended up at TRADOC, making sure that this Mangudai nonsense never happens again.