Learning From the Past, Leading in the Present | The American Spectator

Eventually, the  American public is going to realize that, in too many cases, its armed forces are being led by senior officers who are either moral cripples or uniformed incompetents. Worse, very few have been held accountable for their deficiencies. That is not true in all cases, but many of our four-star leaders have proved unequal to the tasks assigned them. This is a damning assessment, but I am not alone in that judgment.

Writing in RealClearDefense, an active duty officer writing under the pseudonym of An Army Officer gave a scathing assessment of current U.S. Army leaders:

They stand at polished lecterns and deliver “assessments” that have been scrubbed of blood and doubt. They testify under oath and under lights, and while they speak of “hard truths,” every sentence has been rehearsed, weighed against headlines and future book deals. They cultivate a public persona: the warrior‑scholar, the reformer, the straight‑shooter who “tells it like it is” while always stopping one inch short of saying the thing that would actually shatter their career.

Although An Army Officer doesn’t go into specific details, this could be describing the current senior leaders of any branch. I will give some concrete examples.

For two full decades, the revolving door of flag officers who commanded in Afghanistan continued to try to build an Afghan army in the U.S. image. The fact that they were failing miserably got papered over time and again. They declared entire provinces to be fit to turn over to the Afghan security forces when they knew full well that the Afghans as currently configured were not — and never would be — ready. If they had reservations, they hid them under “cover your butt” memos or private conversations with their civilian masters.

Why, until the end, did not one of them suggest a retooling of the Afghan security forces to fit the nation’s tribal culture? Why did they not realize that only soldiers recruited from a local region would fight for hearth and home? Why did they not realize that the Afghan air force would never be able to sustain American-like tech-heavy units in regions unreachable by road? Why, despite reports from advisors in the field, did they not realize that Afghan local and regional commanders were cutting deals with the Taliban?

The rot goes beyond Afghanistan. Why was a Marine Corps commandant allowed to eviscerate a perfectly good worldwide military organization to create a China-centric regional capability that the theater commander did not ask for and that is logistically infeasible? Why did the theater commander — another four star — not tell the commandant to stay in his lane as a provider of forces, not a strategist? And where was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in all of this?

On the naval front, how did we get to a point where retired four-stars are heading up shipbuilding and repair companies that so grossly overcharge the Navy that our fleet is literally falling apart? The list goes on.

Back to the Army. How did we get a theater commander — Tommy Franks — who was writing his memoirs and plotting his lucrative retirement even as Iraq was falling apart under his nose?

It would be easy to blame all of this on incompetent congressmen and senators who have no understanding of military matters and political hacks from both parties who achieve office in the Pentagon as sinecures. However, the military needs to learn or be retaught that the fault is not in the stars, but in itself. The civilians need better advice than they have been getting from the senior uniformed clowns that have infected the military for at least two decades.

I personally think that much of the rot comes in our method of educating and selecting our senior leaders. Our war and command and staff colleges have become academic ivory towers where Socratic dialogue and political correctness have replaced the serious study of war, strategy, and operational art. Worse, it doesn’t make hard judgments on the ability of students to make sound decisions under intense time-constrained political and morally challenging pressure.

I have a couple of suggestions about how to fix things. First, we should get rid of the civilian professors at senior military schools who are not experts on military history and theory. We don’t need doctors of organizational theory or gender studies infecting our future high military leaders. Much of the genius in military history comes from studying military history itself. From Alexander the Great to General Patton, successful commanders have relied on recognitional decision-making — the ability to draw on prior experience or historical examples when planning their own actions. They operate on the principle: “I have encountered, read about, or heard of a similar situation; I will either replicate its success or avoid repeating its failures.” If the Russo-Ukraine conflict has taught us anything, it is that technology has not fundamentally altered the nature of war.

Students at the schools should be given rigorous exams with tough problems and forced to justify their answers with examples — good and bad — from historical situations with the results noted in their military records. This would say volumes about an aspiring officer’s military competence and ability to analyze the advantages and potential unintended consequences of complex situations. These would be good exams for command and staff level students (majors and lieutenant commanders).

Examples of these kinds of  complex challenges are the decisions of the Spartan and Texan commanders to make last stands at Thermopylae and the Alamo respectively. Both engagements were operationally irrelevant and tactical defeats, but their moral effect in inspiring the Greeks and Texans to get revenge and achieve strategic victory were inestimable. The value in giving a student similar decision-making situations is not in what answer a student would present, but it would be a window into the soul of the individual.

The school solution in either case would be to conduct a tactical retreat and live to fight another day, but there were greater moral and psychological issues involved. We remember those battles and still revere them. The decision regarding the cut and run from Afghanistan will likely be forgotten quickly because the uniformed perpetrators will work hard to bury them. That is unfortunate because there are lessons to be learned in such debacles. Sometimes, it is better to be a bad example than no example at all.

In my two decades as a graduate-level professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School, I made a habit of asking students to give an answer addressing a problem from  current events. Being in a small graduate class situation, I was able to learn quite a bit about each student in justifying his or her solution. Some told me what I thought they wanted to hear; others would give provocative answers and would push back when challenged on those positions. A few of these I hired while I was still consulting for the government. Most of these problems weren’t military in nature, but all were complex situations involving political, economic, and moral considerations for which there were historical precedents. But, in military situations, there are good and bad historical analogies to draw on.

The war colleges are a good place to give separator exams. Virtually all of the students are those who will one day be considered for flag rank. Subjecting them to war games where very difficult political military situations are played out would cull out the sheep and help identify the lions who would make the best flag-level commanders. Admittedly, we still need flag-level officers who are uniformed bureaucrats in fields such as logistics, intelligence, finance, and procurement. Such war game exams would not be designed to eliminate such experts but to identify them and slot them where they are most needed. However, such exams would help identify those who can make hard decisions under time constraints rather than automatically promoting careerist sycophants who spend their careers by going along to get along.

This raises the question of who should grade such exercises. We still have retired officers and senior Pentagon officials who have shown the moral courage, judgment, and ability to make decisions regarding character and moral fitness of students. Retired flag officers such as General Tony Zinni, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, Vice Admiral Phil Wisecup, and Eric Shinseki come to mind. Robert Gates, James Webb, Richard Danzig, and Jim Miller on the senior civilian side are the kind of people who could separate the “yes men” and self-promoters from the real leaders. Informed military journalists such as Tom Ricks, Greg Jaffe, and Michael Gordon would also make good evaluators. They have seen the best and worst of our military leaders.

If Secretary Hegseth thinks he will fix what’s wrong with our senior flag officers by making inspiring speeches and firing a few DEI hires, he is wrong. Without real reform, the rot will continue. The careerists will wait him out and business as usual will continue long after he is gone.

No system will be perfect, but what I am suggesting here is to provide a screening system that will weed out the Mark Milleys, Lloyd Austins, and Tommy Franks before they can further damage the integrity, reputation, and professionalism of the U.S. military. I am writing this in the hope that some member of Congress or a staffer will read it and realize that the military is incapable of reforming itself, and badly needs an intervention.

READ MORE from Gary Anderson:

Rules of Engagement and Command Decisions

Celebrating Marines While Questioning Their Future

The Marine Corps Could Not Fight Fallujah Today

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corp Colonel. He was Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and served as a civilian special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense