Of history, warfare, leadership, and alcohol
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”"
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"
Weird, just the other day it was July and I was thinking that my book review post wouldn't be colossally late again. Yet, here we are, unaccountably in September and I'm still writing about June. Time is a construct and I am against it. Still, we press on. Maybe, unlike the US strike on Iran …
Continue reading "A Badly Belated June Reading List"
The other day I went and stood in front of the new section of the World War I memorial in Washington, DC and looked at it. Memorials are meant to make you feel something. I felt nothing. I felt nothing when I looked at the figures. So I looked at the equipment. I looked at …
Continue reading "Thoughts While Visiting the U.S. National World War I Memorial"
Spaceballs (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Brooksfilms) Editor's note (with apology built in): Reader, if as you peruse the following, you wonder whether the author is sick in the head or does not understand FM 6-22 but at all, rest easy. This, but for the negligence and oversight of the editor, should have run on the 1st …
Continue reading "All I Really Need to Know about Leadership I Learned from Spaceballs"
I was in Hawaii for the first time earlier this year. Expecting a sunny beach vacation, it was actually more of a profound learning experience. I was not expecting to be provoked in thought as much as I was. For our purposes, the thing that stayed with me most was the state motto, formerly the …
Continue reading "What are the Obligations of Leadership?"
The United States was born of a desire to leave behind monarchial government and instead live under a republic. Although the structure of the United States was explicitly crafted to have both democratic and anti-democratic elements, the perils of democracy have been part of the American discussion from the beginning (“When a majority is included in a faction, …
Continue reading "Failure Mechanisms in Democratic Regimes – an Army’s Role"
The Angry Staff Officer 
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