Jesus. Yeah, the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians were just chilled to the bone by our neat uniforms and equipment.

For some reason, that reminds me of a comment I was told a battalion commander said. He wanted a company to have a company change of command ceremony, and the outgoing commander said, “Just hand the new guy the guideon, we don’t need a ceremony.” The BC replied, “No, we have to have the ceremony. These ceremonies are very important to the troops.”

Gotta wonder where people get these ideas.

Bosnia in ’95 was the first place I encountered it. We were going in to overawe a bunch of experienced killers, and we were going to do it because they would respect the uniformity of our equipment.

We have met the enemy – and it is us.

Thanks Doc. I’ve known a good number of leaders willing to disregard regs and just do the right thing as well, but they do seem to get crushed by all the others. We in the military are always living that schizophrenic life, trying to do everything according to a manual on one hand while embracing initiative and “just f**k it” risk taking on the other. I suppose we need both of those mindsets, but it certainly seems to me that the manual-followers run the show even when the risk-takers should be in command.

This conflict can have ridiculous results-the Army exists to fight wars (so the leadership wants us to be “hard”, like carrying your weapon at the ready even though you have no chance of encountering the enemy) but bureaucracy requires strict adherence to rules and regulations (saluting and the PT belt even in the combat zone).

A commander worth his salt can make all the difference, by encouraging independence in thought and practices by his troops, but far too many have had the character necessary to allow their troops to do such things slowly destroyed by the bureaucracy. I’ve known a few officers like this, but far too many who aren’t willing to allow their soldiers the necessary leeway to accomplish the mission in some way that doesn’t conform to the exact letter of FM W-XYZ.

Good essay Chris, you went straight to the heart of a lot of what is wrong with our military.

Greg,

I’m all for it. Unfortunately, no senior leader would ever allow such a policy to be implemented. I’ve written about another possible solution and I hope BBC publishes it. It’s a “solution” guaranteed to piss off any senior leader who reads it.