Summary: Today we review the good news about signs of reform from within the US military, reforms starting at the core — enforcing high ethical and performance standards on its senior officers. It’s a big story, something reformers have long demanded. More broadly, it’s a strike against the system of high, middle, and low justice …
Summary: Concluding this series about our senior military leaders we have a typically brilliant and brutal analysis by William Lind. This would have been shocking news in 2000; a decade of failed wars show it to be the simple truth. We can do better, but the Pentagon will not reform without pressure from us. Rightly …
William Lind looks at our generals, sees “rank incompetence”. Read More »
Summary: This chapter of our series about the US military’s officer corps examines what previous posts described as one of its crippling weaknesses — bloat. Having too many officers runs up the military’s cost while making it less effective. The data shown here should be dynamite blasting DoD from their comfortable niche into reforms. But …
The cost of too many generals: paying more to get a less effective military. Read More »
Summary: Obama can take a bold step to begin reform of the DoD & so end our series of defeats at 4GW discussed James Fallows’ brilliant idea of appointing military reformer Donald Vandergriff (Major, US Army, retired) to a key post at the Pentagon. Today’s two posts discuss why that would be important, and why it …
Summary: After eleven years our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced no gains for America, despite the expenditure of money plus our troop’s work and sacrifice. Generals rotated in and out of senior command to punch their tickets, but unrelated to their actual performance. What would Lincoln have done? This is #9 in a …
How many generals would Lincoln have fired to win in Iraq & Afghanistan? Read More »
