Of history, warfare, leadership, and alcohol
The recently announced Joint Warfighting Evaluation (JWE) will fail to produce the next Marshall and Eisenhower for two primary reasons: Firstly, the JWE will integrate a digital wargame that ostensibly assesses the decision-making ability of Colonels. However, wargames haven’t and won’t be fully embraced by Army Senior leaders because doing so will highlight their poor …
Continue reading "Stop looking for the next Marshall and Eisenhower"
“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” Most anyone who has served in combat arms as a tactical level leader in the Army is familiar with this expression. It is a pithy way of communicating that even in combat, rushing can lead to failure. Succumbing to the impulse to rush is a product of …
Continue reading "What Became of The Army Strategy?"
You know the old adage, the Army is always preparing to fight the last war? I'd offer a twist on that: the Army is always preparing to fight the war it really wants. And the war it wants is World War II. Specifically, the European Theater in World War II. Hyper-specifically, 1944 WWII Europe. Minus …
Continue reading "The U.S. Army’s Dangerous Obsession with WWII Europe"
Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a big fan of using fiction as a lens through which to view the world - some might say, to my detriment. But we do not listen to those naysayers (since they spark no joy) and we move on. I recently picked up a copy of …
Continue reading "What a 98-Year Old Children’s Book Teaches Us About AI"
Army leadership is based on principled discipline. Officers and NCOs each contribute to the maintenance and to the efficacy of the organization in different ways (NCOs own the discipline part, officers the principle). The contribution of each is made according to well-understood and internalized principles. For the most part, these principles do not need to …
Continue reading "Service does not Require Silence"
In a recent prepared statement by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in which he cut the War Department’s ties and affiliation with his alma mater, Harvard University, he made several references that should make all American citizens—especially those in uniform—cringe with concern. His assertion that for decades the U.S. military sent its “best and …
Continue reading "Citizen-Soldiers – not “Warriors”"
Civil discourse requires a shared allegiance to civil society “If every time you play chess, your opponent punches you in the face, getting better at chess is not the solution.” – Andrew Thomas An important life lesson came out of my early career as a civil litigator. I practiced law in Canada for eleven years; …
Continue reading "Don’t bother improving your chess"
Take heart, all you who grow unsettled at the time of year where the narrative of friendly Pilgrims and American Indians is spread around to make us feel good about a brief moment in American history before everyone started killing each other. Thanksgiving as a national holiday is actually about another time when everyone was …
Much has been written elsewhere regarding the unforgivable sin of failing to plan for known contingencies. Whatever one thinks of the current changes undergoing our Army here in the United States, the least controversial thing to be said about them is that they certainly represent a change from what has come before. And regardless of one what thinks, or refuses to …
Continue reading "“After me, the flood:” recovering the Army’s accountability"
Perhaps no period characterized chaos about the future of the Republic than the years 1866-1868. And perhaps no one individual did so much to save it in those years as the man who had labored so hard to preserve it from 1861-1865: Ulysses S. Grant. Pres. Andrew Johnson (LoC) One would think that having put …
Continue reading "The General Who Defied a President"
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