Op-ed discussion &ndash The Academies' March Toward Mediocrity
Facts
Professor of English at the Naval Academy for 23 years.
Served on Admissions Board for a year and learned that about half of all appointments are
set-asides for minorities, athletes, and serving enlisted.
Set-asides: students with lower grades and SAT scores than the published minimums.
Also known as: "two-track" admissions system.
Set-asides are routinely sent to NAPS for a year of remedial work, a C average gets them to
the Naval Academy the following year.
Set-asides can be helped to pass courses by massive applications of extra instruction from
the professors.
African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are considered as their own group and
admitted using different criteria than nonminorities.
The English Department gets complaints from flag officers that our graduates
cannot think cogently in words.
A cruiser skipper reported he spent half of his time correcting grammar on
memos that crossed his desk.
Assertions
He raises lots of valid (and sometimes disconcerting) issues.
The education costs nearly half a million dollars per student, more
than four times what an ROTC-trained officer costs.
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The Superindendent says, "When a midshipman fails to complete the
academy program and is charged for their four-year education, that bill
comes to $170,000, a figure established by the Department of the
Navy." I suspect you can pick and choose your component costs to
come up with any dollar figures you want for the price of an academy
education and an ROTC scholarship.
I know of nobody in the Navy or other services who would argue that
graduates of Annapolis or West Point are, as a group, better than those
who become officers through other programs.
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Professor Fleming lives in the world of academia, has his days punctuated
with the soap opera of Sampson Hall versus Bancroft Hall, and is
saturated with the grousing of midshipmen (whose prominent collateral
duty is to complain). In October of 2008, I browsed the
doors and bulletins boards of the offices of about 12 history professors,
and was amazed at how fairly homogeneously liberal all
the cartoons and comments and handbills were. I think this
comment is like reports you hear on talk radio, "I don't know
a soul who supported my candidate's opponent. Who cast all
those wrong-headed votes? There must be outrageous amounts of vote fraud."
To keep our teams in the top divisions of the NCAA, we fill
officer-candidate slots with students who have been recruited primarily
for their skills at big-time sports. That means we reject candidates
with much higher predictors of military success ...
Sports stars avoid many of the onerous duties other midshipmen must
perform, and know they're not going to be thrown out. Instead of zero
tolerance, we now push for zero attrition: we "remediate" honor code
offenses.
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I'm sure there is a lot of truth here. I assume one response is, "You're
got to spend money, to make money." That is to say: success breeds
success. Successful sports teams are an excellent medium for visibility
and general recruiting. TCU took out a full page, full color
advertisement in the Dallas Morning News (18 Jun 2010, page 12C)
touting its College World Series berth, its crashing of the BCS in January,
and oh-by-the-way, its academic prowess and beautiful residential
campus.
Another response is: sports are one of the
prime venues for developing/practicing leadership, esprit de corps,
and tenacity.
Another program that is placing strain on the academies is an
unofficial affirmative-action preference in admissions. I can confirm
from the years I spent on the admissions board in 2002 and '03 and from
my conversations with more recent board members, if an applicant
identifies himself or herself as non-white, the bar for qualification
immediately drops.
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I'm sure there is a lot of truth here. The Chief of Naval Operations has
said his number one priority is getting a student body that "looks like
the fleet" – which means 42 percent minority members.
Here is a quota anecdote from a co-worker with a PhD in Electrical
Engineering ...
The issue of recruiting minorities versus recruiting the best people
(without regard to race/gender/orientation/etc) crops up in all levels of
society, and I doubt we'll get past it in our lifetimes. When I was at the
Agency, we took some flak one year from one of the Inspector General's
diversity people
because there weren't enough American Indians in the herd of mathematicians
that the Agency looks after. This (apparently) escalated to the Director's
level, where it was found that - yeah, verily - we had the one American
Indian with a mathematics degree already on board; there simply weren't
any more out there who were qualified to do the work. Sometimes we don't
reach our diversity goals, but it's not for lack of trying.
Achieving the desired demographic/diversity mix can be: an exercise in
futility, a Pyrrhic victory, a case study in unintended consequences.
I've taught low-track English classes; the pace is slower and the
papers shorter than in my usual seminars, but the students who complete
them get the same credit. When I've complained about this, some
administrators and midshipmen have argued that academics are irrelevant
to being an officer, anyway. Really? Thinking and articulating are
irrelevant to being an officer?
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On the face of this accounting, I am appalled. I suspect some amount of
personal perception and pet rock dynamics may be in play. The fact that
a midshipman might assert something this brash, is neither surprising
nor alarming. This kind of statement is precisely what you would expect
from someone with boundless drive and little to no experience.
Instead of better officers, the academies produce burned-out midshipmen
and cadets.
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That is a real possibility, but hardly the rule. If you go right to the
fleet, most will hit the ground running. If you go to follow-on training
(nuclear power, flight school, The Basic School), then overcoming burn-out
is an act of the will.
The students who find this most demoralizing are those who have already
served as Marines and sailors who know how the fleet works and realize
that what we do on the military-training side of things is largely
make-work.
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Yes – that's a challenge. But if you're coming from the fleet,
then you're more seasoned and mature, and understand about
improvising, adapting, and overcoming. Plus – you know all about
make-work, rules for the sake of rules, frustration, hurry up and
wait, and man's inhumanity to man.
We're a military Disneyland, beloved by tourists but disillusioning to
the young people who came hoping to make a difference ...
The service academies are a huge disappointment to their students, who
come expecting reality to match reputation ...
My most promising students tell me, "Sir,
this place shows you what not to do."
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As odious as Professor Fleming has made himself to the Academy's
administration, I'm thinking he is assigned to teach more than his
fair share of low-track and remedial English classes. That being the
case, then he is over-exposed to midshipman that are chafing,
thrashing, and struggling.
I had "what not to do" feelings about The Basic School and flight school.
A good friend that made a career in the Marine Corps recently had the
following to say about The Basic School staff (34 years later), "I did
learn a lot about what to do from watching them (and doing the opposite)."
So ... "what not to do" feelings are probably all too common when you
combine large numbers of high achieving alpha personalities, close
quarters, intense requirements, and a little bureaucracy thrown in for
good measure.
I think some background on Professor Fleming is important. Here is a
transcription of two minutes of audio from his Web site ...
BBC interview, Dan Demon, 24 May 2010 ...
Is traditional military culture at West Point and Annapolis out of step
with the rest of society? This is the belief of Bruce Flemming. He's
an english professor at the US Naval academy in Annapolis. He says the
service academies are a net loss to the taxpayers who finance them, as
well as a huge disappointment to their students, who come expecting
reality to match reputation. I asked him what the fundamental problem is.
Professor Fleming's response ...
I would say the military is holding on to a Victorian paradigm that has
largely been replaced by much more efficient ways of dealing with the
world. I would say that the military prizes what it calls leadership
which comes out of the same grab bag of terms with gentleman - which is
kind of an essentialist notion. The idea is that you show leadership
- its kind of like waving a magic wand. Another one in the same
category is character - you have character, you are a gentleman.
The civilian world since the 19th century has basically abandoned that
way of thinking about the world. We teach skills in the civilian
world. We are expected to not show leadership but to perform a job and
so on. A little bit less glamorous perhaps, but that is the direction
the world has gone into; the military not.
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I wrote the following email ... I appreciate your tenacious
whistle-blowing on set-asides in the Naval Academy's admissions
process. Am I correct in understanding that you consider the United
States' military culture passe? Are "Victorian" and "essentialist"
undesirable qualities as used above? Did I understand correctly that
military culture and civilian culture form a dichotomy?
military culture civilian culture
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Victorian paradigm more efficient ways of dealing with the world
leadership teach skills
character perform a job
gentleman
I received the following response ...
I'm guessing I've got your point right but I'm not sure, so briefly:
I'm saying that "leadership" is nothing besides the sum of its
components. We need to teach/model the components and stop saying we
(academies) can teach this magic thing called "leadership" whereas ROTC
can't. My position is that you can't TEACH leadership. People become
leaders because of personal talent and desire.
Components of what we call leadership are:
- intelligence
- ability to see the other side
- physical charisma
- ability to interact with people
- big smile/positive attitude
- intelligence
We can teach some of these and model others. The result MAY be a good
leader. But it also may not be if the person can't put the elements
together.
The reason given for the academies in their current state is that they
teach this magic "leadership." They don't, partly because they show bad
leadership (and no, you can't say that's their purpose), but partly
because leadership can't be taught. As Clausewitz said, leaders are
born, not made.
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I wrote back ... Thank you for your energetic response. The question
of whether leaders are born or made is important. But I was asking
about my understanding of your characterization that: leadership and
character are outmoded modalities of the military culture, while
teaching skills and performing a job are modern means of the civilian
culture. Did I get that correct?
And Professor Fleming's reply ...
I don't so much think outmoded as abandoned for other ways of doing things, and
as a result defended precisely because they have no visible application. This
in turn lends them a sort of "magic" aura that makes their practitioners able
to claim powers unavailable to the world at large. The military gets to feel
smug that it alone teaches/shows "leadership." What's wrong with this is that
the military serves the civilian world, not the reverse. And it's like being
proud of not being able to drive or use a computer. Gentlemen in the l9th
century were proud of having nothing to do with new developments - and they used
being a "gentleman" as the same sort of club that the military currently uses
"leadership" and "character."
If you're interested the point is developed in an article of mine in the
current Yale Review, attached.
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The title of Dr Fleming's 21-page paper is "Bridging the
Military-Civilian Divide". In it, he asserts there exists an
unnavigable chasm between the military world and the civilian world,
because the military skill set is stuck in the 19th century and the
civilian skill set has responsibly matured.
The military needs civilian skills, and the civilian
world needs the military. Both can benefit from unclenching
their fists, dropping their defensive crouch, and talking to each
other with mutual respect. The civilian world owns the military,
and the military exists to serve the civilian world. [p21]
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An introduction ... Dr Fleming's studies and work:
- B.A. Philosophy, Haverford College, May 1974
- M.A. Comparative Literature, University of Chicago, June 1978
- Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Vanderbilt University, May 1982
- Fulbright Fellow, Free University Berlin, 1982-83
- Lecturer, English Seminar, University of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1983-85
- Fulbright Professor of Anglo-American Literature, National University of Rwanda, 1985-87
- Professor of English, U.S. Naval Academy (Assistant, Associate), 1987-present
His Web site is here, and his resume, books, and essays
are here.
It was interesting to learn: "the departments of English and history,
which, save for a few mainly junior faculty members in military
uniform, are largely a civilian enclave".
Throughout the article, I was struck by all the problems and
pathologies Dr Fleming indentified as peculiar to the military. I
believe all the excerpts captured below are not the distinctive domain
of a dystopian military — they are the all-too-common
proclivities of the human experience. These failings are chronicled in
the Dilbert cartoon on a daily basis.
I believe Dr Fleming's complaints and prescriptions originate from
his very focused and homogeneous work experience, and from his plight
in the following roles/circumstances.
- a whistle-blower
- a progressive in a traditionalist culture
- an intellectual elitist in a testosterone elitist culture
("most in the intellectual elite are unwilling to be voluntarily involved
with the military", "[if the military fixes itself] the result might be that elite college
graduates would be willing to join the military")
- a reflective, "off-line" personality in a real-time environment ... why vs NOW!
(An engineer takes a problem and fixes it. A humanist takes a problem
and celebrates its complexity. [Robert Weisbuch])
"If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a
nail." If you "grew up" in humanist academia, and then spent
23 years chafing in a world you consider antipathetic, then
you might map all your frustrations to your perceptions of that
other-worldly world.
The military makes opaque decisions and hides behind the mantle
of leadership ... The civilian world employs public reasoning to identify
the best possible course of action among many alternatives. [p10]
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There is no better example of opaque decision making than the 111th
United States Congress. The impenetrable 1,428-page cap-and-trade
bill, 1,566-page financial reform bill, and 2,409-page health care
bill. The Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the Labor
Loophole, the Gator aid, the Bismarck bank job.
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Dilbert: May I take this one?
Wally: Go for it.
Alice: Make us proud. |
Dilbert: Question - if making a decision is just a process, why can't
a computer do it? |
PHB: Because sometimes I have to rely on my gut. |
Dilbert: Which part of your gut is the smart part? Is it the stomach
lining, or maybe the colon? |
PHB: I'm talking about instinct. It's an indefinable leadership quality. |
Dilbert: Is the indefinable thing like a superstition?
Wally: Or cooties? |
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The idea of "honor" has disappeared from practically every institution
but the military. That of a "gentleman" is a quaintly old-fashioned,
albeit attractive concept that is usually preceded by the word last,
when it is not linked with officer. "Character" is something the
(paramilitary) Boy Scouts talk a lot about without knowing what
it is. Of all these pre-Industrial Revolution concepts (all vaguely
related to the idea of a "gentleman," someone who does not work),
that of "leadership" seems to have lodged most comfortably in
the officer corps of the military. The world outside, meanwhile,
has largely replaced this concept with such things as skills and
capabilities.
Still, it is clear why the military retains this outmoded vocabulary,
and the pretense that we can teach "leadership" at places
like Annapolis. Given that it is the enlisted people who have the
skills in the military - they are the ones who actually work the
machines - what is left for the officers? [p9]
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The "paramilitary" Boy Scouts?? After that wanton assertion, I can't
take anything in the rest of the paragraph seriously. Are we
saying any business or community group with a common shirt, some
values statements, some wearable awards, and some distinctive
practices are budding brown shirts?
What is left for the officers?? Oh, pa-lease! Every bureaucracy,
every corporation, every school district has layers and layers of
"management". None of them "actually work the machines." In point
of fact, most officers do very much than manage, and many of them do
actually work the machines.
[The military uses its willingness to die as moral leverage and
as a means of silencing even constructive criticism from without.] [p3]
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[The military disciplines people that publicly criticize
organizational policies without first seeking internal redress.] [p3]
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The military is unwilling to portray itself accurately ... Instead
they make things worse by adopting a defensive stance ... they close
ranks against the slightest criticism ... they blame their detractors
or enemies. [p6]
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The military is a monopoly ... it exhibits aspects of feudalism,
dictatorship, and the propped-up industrialism of the
now-imploded East Bloc ... it can be 99% inefficient and still
function ... it has no impetus to change [p8]
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The military is rife with cults of personality in which individuals
and their whims trump the rule of law. Personnel are supposed to
do anything to make "the old man" (the CO) happy. [p8]
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Military bosses do not like to hear things that go contrary to their
views. They equate criticism of the way things are with criticism of
themselves. [p10]
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Military underlings with views that the brass do not want to hear are
almost always squelched and branded malcontents. The result is that
problems multiply and fester until they erupt, rather than being
addressed at an early stage. [p10]
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In the military, if the battle is won, nobody cares about the waste,
inefficiency, heartache of the process, or lowered morale that
results from a bad leader [p11]
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If an engagement ends in victory, nobody says the price tag in lives
or goods was ten times what it had to have been; everyone is simply
grateful for the victory. [p11]
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The chances are wildly against the military of being even remotely
efficient. This does not mean that the armed services are going out
of their way to be inefficient and wasteful; rather any unregulated
system or one without outside alternatives will by its nature simply
do what it does because it does it, not because it has a
justification for doing so. [p13]
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The civilian world thinks through alternatives and chooses the
most justifiable; the military brass could do this too. Instead, they
insist that the military has "leadership," and that it is like Mary
Poppins: practically perfect in every way. Any decision that comes
from leadership is the best one. [p13]
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People in the military do things for other people, not for ideals
like democracy or country ... their greatest loyalty is typically to
one another ... Of course the reason the military is so relentlessly
personal is that this is the only way that truly filthy, but
sometimes necessary, actions - like killing other human beings in
battle - can be performed. [p13]
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The military is about control, and control is established by
intimidating enemies. Such intimidation is partly achieved by
insisting loudly and repeatedly that the military is big, bad, and
invincible. Telling the truth is not the goal here, intimidating the
enemy is. [p14]
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If something in the military is discovered to be less than perfect,
the service immediately closes ranks, denies wrongdoing as long as
possible, and then, abruptly and tersely admitting that there was a
problem, announces that it has everything in hand and is taking
care of things. Almost always, it overreaches in the imposition of
internal controls, just as it had overreached earlier in denying the
problem. The military is constantly careening from side to side,
when a looser but more constant hand on the tiller could keep it on
an even keel. [p14]
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The military typically claims that problems it can no longer
deny are individual, not structural. It will invariably characterize
each problem as "one bad apple" rather than even consider
the possibility that the organization creates such bad apples by the
nature of its system. The result is that the military is reduced to
crisis management: rather than having control over predictable
problems, people in the military almost always see the identification
of problems as itself a problem. To a large degree, messes in
the military come from this fact, and the brass make them worse
by failing to understand this. [p15]
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The military views problems that are publicly revealed as a loss of face.
It therefore will seek to vilify those who want the problems aired. [p16]
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The military is notoriously, bitterly resistant both to change and
to outside influence. Because power is so personal, the individuals
with power tend to identify the things they do individually with
things that are best for the institution. Few people inside the
system, trained to be "loyal" to specific individuals above them,
will try to make fundamental changes within it; if they do, they
are almost certain to be slapped down. [p16]
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Because of the hierarchical nature of the chain of command, the
senior people are dealing with people one and maybe two levels below
them. People at the top do not really ever interact with those at
the bottom. Those close to the commanders make them happy by saying
"Yes, sir" or "Yes, ma'am." Thus the higher up a person is, the more
out of touch that person is with what those below him or her are
really thinking. Opinions are filtered and sweetened as they go up
the chain - if they go up the chain. Usually input from below is not
solicited, and when it is, everybody knows what to say to keep the
brass happy. [p16]
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The relationship up the chain of command ... amounts
to a sort of feudal submission: a military person's
relationship, though ostensibly abstract, to a system, is in fact
based on a relationship with his or her immediate superior, whom
the subordinate is trying devotedly to please. If the superior is a
good person and a good officer, the relationship can be wonderful.
If she or he is not, it is a nightmare. The civilian world rarely gets
this intense ... When the person in charge is merely filling a
place or is working out a grudge, has either too much confidence
or too little and so for whichever reason does not accept disagreement,
or is simply unwilling or unable to see others' points of view,
things are bad. [p17]
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The military, unfortunately, harbors many officers who think
that anyone who suggests changes or improvements to their view
of mission is inimical to the mission and must be annihilated ... it
makes sense to listen to as many views as possible: this,
military commanders are constitutionally resistant to doing. Most
commanders sense suggestions or disagreements as denial of their
authority and treat those making them accordingly, by breathing
fire. Their hostility makes it certain that once a bad path is embarked
upon, it will be relentlessly followed. [p17]
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A recent Dilbert has the CEO starting a meeting by announcing,
"My meetings go faster when I set the tone ... Opinions are
treason ... Any opinions?" Scott Adams was never in or around
the military. He simply reports on life in corporate America.
It would seem that annihilating opponents and breathing
fire is not peculiar to the military. In fact, if asked to
pick a single segment of society that reminds you of this
pathology, I would say, "Politics."
The natural resistance of the military to internal debate is a
structural weakness caused by the individual nature of command
within the system. A further weakness is found in the fact that this
first deficiency will not even be addressed unless the institution
addresses it. Individuals cannot be expected to encourage people
who defend points of view contrary to their own; thus, we cannot
expect the individual to look for a way to overcome this weakness.
Instead the structure, unsurprisingly, must address the structural
weakness; it is almost certain that the individual will not. So long
as the point of view that predominates in the military is the deeply
personal one based on "leadership" and "character," these weaknesses
will get worse. [p18]
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We cannot eliminate the structural weaknesses of the military's
monopoly situation, but if we are willing to acknowledge their
existence, we can set about minimizing them. The key is being
willing to acknowledge them, which is something the military, if
left to its own devices and allowed to make its own decisions based
on its own proclivities, will never do. Because the military is based
on individual command in a top-down situation, it reinforces its
own weaknesses, rather than addressing them. The solution is to
build as many checks into this system as possible short of dismantling
it. These will be based on rational choice, on sharing collectively
gathered data, and on giving reasons for decisions that are
based on more solid ground than "leadership." [p18]
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The military is rife with unjustified decisions based on "character"
rather than evidence. Those decisions remain in force because
people have no alternative but to put up with them: there are few
internal checks and balances, and the military repulses attempts
to ask for justification from without. Many of these decisions are
probably the wrong ones, but they continue to be upheld, and the
orders followed. Thus the military is condemned to the endemic
inefficiency of all monopolies. [p18]
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Civilian democracies contain many checks and balances that,
while not making wrong courses of action impossible, at least
render them more unlikely in the long run: the system is to a large
degree self-correcting. (Big exceptions, like the crash of 2008, are,
thankfully, fairly rare.) The military is not self-correcting, at least
not as it is currently run. In the civilian world there are the
internal checks and balances of the multiparty system, the division
of government into branches, an active press, and an informed
citizenry. [p19]
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The first course-corrector would be for the military to acknowledge
its weaknesses, and hence to "own" them. If the military
brass took ownership of the service's weaknesses, they would treat
its problems diffierently. Instead of denying them, trying to cover
them up, and then blaming those who uncovered them, service
personnel would acknowledge openly that problems are the price
of doing business. Military brass would therefore have no reason to
treat the identification of problems as a threat. This would eliminate
one big problem immediately: the fact that an attempt by the
military to cover up something always ends badly, in a scandal
composed almost equally of the event and the attempt at cover it
up, which costs the military man-hours and prestige. [p19]
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Another major course-corrector would be to insist that decisions
be made based on data and reasoning, not "leadership" ... Falling back on
authority rather than rational choice as the first line of defense is a
structural weakness of the military, alienating those within and
without. [p19]
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The military also needs to work on encouraging real, viable,
internal dissent ... Higher-ups should actively encourage input from
personnel who are lower than the next layer down from themselves.
They should surround themselves with people who, instead
of saying "Yes, sir," will tell them things they do not want to
hear. [p20]
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The military needs more of the civilian ability to consider possible
alternative paths objectively, and to talk about criticism
nondefensively. [p21]
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