This series has been a great read, and a number of interesting points have been raised. I won't turn this into an overly long post (I can hear the cheers), but I will review some of the points I made on the One Year Anniversary MIDRATS Internet Radio Program.
The article that got this all started concentrated on the Army. Putting aside for a moment that it was a thoroughgoing retread of a similar article that got play four years ago or so, there are the small matters of causality and evidence to be considered. Does anyone really think that after nine plus years of war there wouldn't be a cost? That good people wouldn't vote with their feet because of extreme burdens on families and the like? Come to think of it, bad officers are leaving the Army for the exact same reasons, as are average officers. There's nothing that ails the Army that ten years of relative peace won't cure.
Secondly, what evidence is there to back up the initial argument? Better yet, how seriously are the numbers put forward questioned? Like the Navy, the Army is a pyramidal structure, with considerably fewer people needed at the top than at the bottom. So what if lots of good people get out...the Army CAN'T POSSIBLY KEEP THEM ALL. Are Army General Officers complaining that the group of Colonels sitting for one-star looks are somehow not up to snuff? Heck, it was only a year or so ago that Tom Ricks was dining out all over town crowing to the world how smart and strategic senior Army officers were, unlike their counterparts in other services. Can it be had both ways, that the Army is hemorrhaging its best and brightest yet it continues to crank out a series of strategic geniuses? The answer is that it just isn't so on either count--plenty of great officers stay in the Army (as a matter of fact, at least enough to populate the Army with a corps of competent, smart senior officers) and Army senior officer are no better or worse than their other Service counterparts.
In 21 years, I watched a ton of great people leave the Navy, some of whose departures hurt on a deeply personal level. I tended to ask myself, "what is it about my chosen profession that they find wanting"? But I also moved forward surrounded by superbly competent men and women, many of whom are on the cusp of their first stars--selection boards that I thank the Lord I am not a part of, as choosing among them would be a grind. Did I wish more good ones stayed? Of course. Did I find that the ones left behind were substandard? Not by a long shot.
Admiral Harvey (below) speaks eloquently to the restrictions Congress places on our system of promotion. Tis true--but it is not the whole story. How many selection boards have gone by where the full quota of potential "deep selects" was not made? If we truly believed that our hierarchical system was inhibiting our organizational progress, it seems to me we'd be "more nimble" "less bureaucratic" and "more like industry" and promote more people below zone. But we don't--because to now, it just hasn't been that important to us.
The system I am offering a qualified defense of treated me well; I was in command at 16.25 years of service, which seemed fast then. Ten years earlier however, a CO put on one of my fitreps that I was "...ready to command my (his) ship today!". Fitrep hyperbole? Of course. But deep down, I sorta believed it. I thought, "heck, I'm a TAO, SWO, OOD, EOOW, CDO, etc.....there's nothing left, he's right--I can command this ship now." Ten years later in command, I was thankful for the seasoning I had in the interim, for the Washington tours that taught me how Big Navy worked and that gave me the ability to more professionally render advice and counsel to my wardroom.
I'm not trying to say all is well, and I'm not trying to say there aren't places where the system could be made more effective. I'm just trying to add a bit of balance to the notion that all the good ones are leaving. They're not. Look around the waterfront, look at the person next to you at the Pentagon. These are truly talented people, not the leavings of a process that removed the truly gifted.
Bryan McGrath
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