Lying To Ourselves: Who’s Being Dishonest Here?

 

PUB1250Two long-time U.S. Army officers, now retired, have written a paper for the Strategic Studies Institute at the Army War College titled Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession.

In it, Professors Leonard Wong and Stephen J. Gerras lament that the Officer Corps of the Army has become “ethically numb” and that there is “rampant duplicity” in a “deleterious culture.”

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? After all, we like to think of our military as being the most conservative of all large government institutions and therefore run to a higher standard. Each of the Service Academies stress ethics at their core: “Duty. Honor. Country.”, “Courage. Honor. Commitment.”, ” Integrity. Service. Excellence.”

Still, there are other traditions that are not so noteworthy. In letters to Congress their earliest leader, George Washington, complained of his fellow officer’s “unaccountable kind of stupidity.” And these are institutions that have also given the world such acronyms as FUBAR and SNAFU, the commonality of which is the letter “F.”

If one delves beyond the report’s summary page and the media articles, one finds that the deceit and dishonesty is found, not in John Kerry-esque tales of made-up valor or selling supplies on the black market, but in the paperwork.

The civilian leadership has placed huge, non-performance related demands on the military and the officer corps has chosen to fudge it. And they do it because there aren’t enough hours in a day to comply with the demands of the political class and still prepare and fight real battles.

Since Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (D–Mo.) imagine that our soldiers spend more time raping each other than fighting terrorism, the Department of Defense has initiated SHARP, the mandatory Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program.* All DOD uniformed personnel must receive this training, not just once a year, but every three months!

Said one officer, “We needed to get SHARP training done and reported to higher headquarters, so we called the platoons and told them to gather the boys around the radio and we said, ‘Don’t touch girls.’ That was our quarterly SHARP training.”

The horrors.

Some of the greatest wounds are also self-inflicted. If the wonder of the modern age is the computer then the bane of it is PowerPoint. Every contact with the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan required “a storyboard.” Not just a simple after-action report, but a full series of slides with pictures.

Complained one captain, “Now I’m doing this storyboard because there’s an IED, because a donkey fell off the mountain, because some dude’s dog came in and I had to shoot it on the COP (Combat Outpost) and now this dude is mad. It became an absolute burden… But when I only had 4 hours between this mission and the next, what’s better – spending 15 minutes to make this beautiful storyboard or planning my next operation?”

Most of the time officers chose not to report anything at all. The biggest complaint therefore is that war is not being adequately quantified. Every argument these days must be predicated on some statistical analysis. Most government figures are nonsense and we’re reduced to worrying whether or not the figures are an incomplete or complete nonsense.

The authors of the report conclude that the widespread acceptance of these practices, of “checking the box” and giving the DOD “what it wants” is evidence of “ethical fading.” In a profession where the primary goals are supposed to be to kill the enemy, break his things and get as many of your guys home to their families as possible this is, in reality, not a poor reflection of the men and women in uniform, but of the civilian population they serve.

*The DOD can’t even seem to do acronyms correctly these days. Who gets SHARP out of SAPRP?

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  1. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Good Lord, EJ…sounds like the saying: “Goodbye, good men (and women).” applies here, too…Sad and scarifying.

    • #1
  2. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    Stupid rules, breeds contempt, which breeds negative behavior.

    • #2
  3. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Anyone who has either managed, or has been managed by others, knows this secret: there is no secret formula or magic system or foolproof checklist that will do the managing in the absence of personal knowledge. Management is almost always a personal relationship, not a bureaucratic function.

    If you don’t know what your employee did today, asking him to fill out a form to self-describe his activities will always be a waste of time. Because if he did what he was supposed to do, he will fill the sheet with legitimate work items. If he didn’t do what he was supposed to do, he’ll fill out the sheet with bogus work items. Either way, all you get at the end of the day is a sheet filled with items … items which, by themselves, can’t reveal whether they’re legitimate or bogus.

    Imposing arbitrary numeric targets or checklists is almost always, ironically, a signal that the manager doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of what the employees are doing. For the manager to, in turn, complain that the employee isn’t taking his management auto-piloting seriously, becomes ridiculous.

    • #3
  4. Dave Carter Podcaster
    Dave Carter
    @DaveCarter

    “In a profession where the primary goals are supposed to be to kill the enemy, break his things and get as many of your guys home to their families as possible this is, in reality, not a poor reflection of the men and women in uniform, but of the civilian population they serve.”

    Unfortunately, in my experience, the primary goal appears to be one of getting the boss promoted, to which end said boss will jump through every superfluous, insidious hoop that higher headquarters puts in front of him and insist that his troops join in with great enthusiasm and appreciation for the opportunity to spend precious time doing cosmically stupid things.  Those who resist are viewed as less than team players and treated accordingly.  The bureaucratic imperative is a cancer to which the DOD is, unhappily, not immune.

    • #4
  5. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    My son turned 20 today and his on his way to China today for 4 months.  The Army likes their officers to know that language.   I am not sure how he will measure up by paperwork standards but he will be a leader of men and I expect a very good killer, enemy stuff breaker, and comrade safe keeper.  11 Bravo hooahh!

    • #5
  6. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    My Marine is now home and reported to his reserve unit. His MOS school was on an Army base on the East Coast and was his first long term exposure to a military culture other than the USMC. While I understand no Marine ever lacked confidence in his branch of the service being the best of the best, his exposure to non-coms and the rank and file of the Army was more dispiriting than even he was anticipating.

    Still, it was obvious in reading this report this morning that these two authors, both with 20+ years in, were walking a tightrope, pleasing the political while parading their stupidity. Anyone who read the media reports would come out of it believing the Army to be full of incompetence and crooks. Which is just the headlines the political left wants.

    • #6
  7. user_157053 Member
    user_157053
    @DavidKnights

    Lawyers and MBAs are the bane of the modern armed forces.  While paperwork is required in the areas of supplies and logistics, and after action reports do lead to valuable knowledge dissemination , but the rest of it needs to go.  I do think that Dave is correct and a lot of it is simply grist for the promotion mill.

    • #7
  8. user_357321 Inactive
    user_357321
    @Jordan

    From my own personal experience in the Beast (The United States Navy).  The cycle goes in this way:

    Someone does something stupid.

    Someone higher up decides to make a procedure designed to make stupid impossible.

    Procedure has unintended consequences which generates more stupid, or service members elect to ignore procedures because they are practically impossible.

    The former repeats the degenerative cycle, the latter engenders a culture of not following the rules.

    Not following the stupid rules works in the short term, but later generations of servicemen will see some rules ignored, and then take this as permission to ignore other, important rules.  The situation spirals out of control since there is a culture of dishonesty engendered by middle-upper-management NCOs and officers.

    The only reason the senior folks don’t ever engage is because they simply have seen the cycle already.  Once detected we find ourselves in the degenerative loop because someone much higher will contrive a much more painful procedure designed to prevent stupid.

    • #8
  9. user_82762 Inactive
    user_82762
    @JamesGawron

    EJ,

    [Spruance is visiting Halsey in the hospitalRAdm. Raymond A. Spruance: I just want to thank you for recommending me to take your task force to sea. Now I have a question for you- Did that *itch* go to your *head*? Vice Adm. William F. ‘Bull’ Halsey Jr.: [amused] Stop underestimating yourself, Ray. Any Skipper who could keep his cruisers and destroyers alongside of my carriers, from one end of the Pacific to the other, is *definitely* the man for the job. RAdm. Raymond A. Spruance: You and I are uh- aw, Bill, we’re kind of different! Do you think *I* can pull it off the same way *you* could have? Vice Adm. William F. ‘Bull’ Halsey Jr.: [calmly] I can only tell you this Ray- You play it the way you *feel* it, not the way you think *I’d* play it. You go to sea, you find Yamamoto, and *chew his ass*! Now, that’s all there is to it. 

    I’ve always liked Admiral Halsey’s battle plan.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #9
  10. Roberto Inactive
    Roberto
    @Roberto

    EJHill:The civilian leadership has placed huge, non-performance related demands on the military…

    Yes but it’s deeper problem than just poor civilian leadership. There are plenty in uniform who are ready and willing to enforce such nonsense or other inanity, soldiers who are all about box checking not the mission.

    Whether in business or in warfare, processes are developed. Processes are what are performed by bureaucracies. Bureaucracies are created to serve people, but they exist to serve processes. Once a process is developed, it becomes the goal, the purpose. The people and their needs, which the processes were developed to service most efficiently, become the pain in the system…Pogadishu is the petri dish of fobbitry…Sergeants Major and bored officers lurk like trap door spiders to pounce on the unwary who sport any semblance of field wear or who do not wear their reflective belt. For most, the workday is similar to that performed back home, if under more crude circumstances. Only 7% of them will ever leave the wire…On a recent trip, one of our junior NCO’s was confronted by a Lieutenant Colonel who stopped in mid-jog to assail him for having turned the cuffs of his ACU jacket inward, a common alteration that allows more air to circulate around the arms, increasing the ability of the body to cool itself. However, this alteration, while I don’t believe it is specifically forbidden by the AR’s, is sometimes expressly forbidden by certain units, due to the fact that some Sergeant Major doesn’t feel that it’s a “good look” to be sporting.

    • #10
  11. Vance Richards Inactive
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    EJHill: the Officer Corps of the Army has become “ethically numb

    So can we expect the officers of today to be our politicians of tomorrow?

    • #11
  12. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    When I was in, my favorite was drip pans.

    Every humvee and trailer had to have a drip pan.  Drip pans get lost and crushed all the time.

    So basically signal battalions exist nearly entirely for the thievery (cough tactical redistribution cough) of drip pans.

    We went to great lengths to include chaining our drip pans to the vehicle to prevent the theft of our drip pans and would wait until the other company went to lunch and steal their drip pans.  Then next week when it was their line being inspected they would get out the bolt cutters, snap the chains on our drip pans and pass inspection.

    Ol’ sarge would bellow that in 2 hours there had better be a drip pan under each humvee, like somehow we were cleverly hiding them.  So we would just sneak over and snag the other companies drip pans.  Its what they deserve for not being in our company like every decent soldier, its not like we were stealing like those dirty scumbags, we were taking our stuff back.

    Eventually the captains would get together and order new drip pans, but it takes about a year of drip pan thievery for it to finally come to the point where officers have to be useful.

    Generally though the officer corp being nearly entirely vestigial, exists at this point to order toilet paper and incentivize organized crime.

    Besides if the officer corps toxic brew of ineptness and uselessness ever does cause a problem, they just blame it on the dyslexic kid.

    E4 MAFIA 4 Life

    • #12
  13. Roberto Inactive
    Roberto
    @Roberto

    Guruforhire:When I was in, my favorite was drip pans.

    If only it was just that, this crap goes all up and down the line. EJHill has marked the problem but he is missing the source, the Pentagon is filled with REMFs who are basically knob polishers and this trickles down from the top to the bottom.

    Even getting rid of them wouldn’t be enough though, we could take all the useless clowns in Flag Country and ship them off on a boat to nowhere but the problem is cultural now. Too many people filling out ludicrous and meaningless check boxes.

    Army_f035be_2459026

    BTW: Editors, you are required and desired to edit this post for CoC violations. From what I have seen you have been pathetically lazy in this regard. Do better.

    • #13
  14. user_428379 Coolidge
    user_428379
    @AlSparks

    Technology (computers) has made filling reports out easier.  But that doesn’t mean you spend less time filling out reports.  What it means is that they’ll make up more reports to fill out.

    You can read the Hornblower series (fictional British Royal Navy Officer during the Napoleonic era) where Hornblower complains about the paperwork (it’s been awhile, so I don’t remember which book).  I’ll assume that vignette was based on reality.  That was back before there were ball point pens, and probably fountain pens.

    And a mistake writing a report could mean writing it all over again, or at least that page.

    EJHill mentioned the acronyms FUBAR and SNAFU.  Those go back to World War II, which is arguably the beginning of the modern military.

    So the fudging of reports is nothing new.  It also is nothing new that the officer corps, and especially the non-commissioned officers figured out what rules were important to follow, and what rules were not.

    It’s also that way outside the military, especially in the civil service.

    • #14
  15. user_199279 Coolidge
    user_199279
    @ChrisCampion

    James Gawron:EJ,

    I’ve always liked Admiral Halsey’s battle plan.

    Regards,

    Jim

    You might not have liked it very much at Leyte Gulf if you were on an escort carrier named, oh, say, USS Gambier Bay or USS St. Lo.

    • #15
  16. user_252791 Inactive
    user_252791
    @ChuckEnfield

    Guruforhire:So basically signal battalions exist nearly entirely for the thievery (cough tactical redistribution cough) of drip pans.

    All I can say is it’s better if the officers leave the lying, cheating and stealing to the NCO’s.  We’re better at it, and and will make sure it’s limited to the stupid stuff.

    As the son of a USMC Master Gunnery Sergeant, and an Army Sergeant myself, (I know, Army?  It’s a long story, but it was actually dads idea.) I’m not sure what I was thinking when I signed up for Army ROTC.  I realized I was out of my element when during an ethics lecture the Captain teaching the class lamented how NCO’s were ruining the Army by committing or sanctioning this kind of theft.  I mounted a spirited effort to justify the behavior, citing every rationale that ever occurred to me when participating in (or, on occasion, ordering) such activity.  He wouldn’t budge.

    At first, I thought this guy didn’t live in the real world; didn’t know what is was like at the bottom of the ranks.  After thinking about it more, I realized he was right, and I needed evaluate my way of thinking.  I served under or near several mustangs in my career, and they were either great or awful – none was just average.  I realized that the ability to rise above the enlisted men’s concerns without forgetting them seemed to be the common denominator of the great ones.  I also concluded that at that stage of my life that probably wouldn’t be me, so I dropped out of ROTC.  I believe I was a very good NCO, but I don’t think I would have made the transition to officer very well.

    When I started writing this I thought it had a point, but I lost sight of it somewhere along the way.  Oh, yeah, it’s better if officers are honest.

    • #16
  17. Petty Boozswha Inactive
    Petty Boozswha
    @PettyBoozswha

    Our next president could make a substantial contribution by giving a press conference and saying in this time of budget problems he is going to use his authority to waive a lot of these ludicrous requirements just as Obama has done for health care, amnesty, etc. First to go is the EEOC/industrial complex in the armed forces, then the office of the bicycle helmet czar, the list could go on for a long time. I’ve read that an incredible percentage of female troops break their contracts by getting pregnant – why can’t the Commander in Chief require at least first term enlistees to use Norplant?

    • #17
  18. Aloha Johnny Member
    Aloha Johnny
    @AlohaJohnny

    In 1985 I was a new 2nd Lt. in the US Army, stationed in Germany and assigned to an artillery battalion in the 3rd Armored division.  I was made the Energy Conservation Officer of my Artillery Battalion on Germany (along with about 5 other extra duties – my favorites of which were Vector Control Officer and Nuclear Effects Officer).  I slapped some “Turn of the lights” stickers around the HQ and barracks and thought nothing of it for 6 months until one day my boss (a CPT) told me “division” will be here tomorrow for the annual Energy Conservation Inspection.   I quickly pulled out my regulation, reviewed it for thirty minutes and waited.  They next day during the inspection I was asked how much energy my program had saved that past year.  I had no frickin idea so the inspector and I made “estimates” and he put it in his report.

    At that moment I realized that all over the army, 2nd Lts were pulling numbers out of their collective asses and about 6 months later, they would get compiled in some room in the Pentagon, and the DOD Energy Conservation Officer would come up with some completely bogus report on how much energy the military had saved that past year.   I then realized that there were “real requirements” like marksmanship, first aid, physical fitness, etc.  and “paper requirements” such as energy conservation officer that you were expected to make go away with as little disruption to the overall operation of the unit.

    Later as a Battalion Commander in the Reserves, I was at our annual division meeting when the latest safety program was rolled out.  This one required 4 hours of meetings per quarter, which in the reserves was a significant bite out of available training time.  We had already calculated that there was no way to meet the requirements we currently had.  So I asked, what pray tell do they want us to stop doing?  They had no answer.  Basically we were expected to use our judgment and take care of the “paper requirements” so we could focus on the “real requirements”.  The Division Command could not tell us specifically to ignore or prioritize requirements since that would require saying to ignore the law or their higher hq, but we all knew what was expected.

    In my experience, the Army could get one or maybe two non-core things done per year.  Suicide prevention training, Sexual Harassment training, Safety, they had to pick one and focus on that.  Then the next year some other area would the focus and other things would slide back into total or partial “paper requirements.”

    But once you start you start down the path of pencil whipping reports, it can get addictive and easy.  Like everything In life, the middle is the hardest to hold .  Deciding what needs doing well, what needs doing ok and what needs just filling out the paperwork, is difficult especially since you can rarely get direct guidance from higher.

    What is the answer?  Well, suicide is a problem and sexual harassment is a problem and safety is a problem and the military does waste a lot of energy.  So going to congress and telling them to lift the reporting/training requirement is not going to work out.  “Joint Chiefs ask Congress to reduce sexual harassment training” does not play well in the press.

    So are the crises in the military related to faking it and then not knowing when to stop?  Maybe.  Replacing “Honor” with “Only fake reports when you have to and when doing so is in your opinion in the best of the your soldiers, the Army, and the United States of America” is a slippery slope.

    • #18
  19. Austin Blair Inactive
    Austin Blair
    @AustinBlair

    Yes but it’s deeper problem than just poor civilian leadership. There are plenty in uniform who are ready and willing to enforce such nonsense or other inanity, soldiers who are all about box checking not the mission.

    This is the biggest reason I left the Army in 1993.  I was an officer in a Field Artillery unit and my unit commander was more worried about making sure the boxes were checked than making sure his soldiers were properly trained to kill people, break things and come back alive, as it was so aptly put in a previous comment.

    This has been going on for a long time and all you need to know is General officers are approved by Congress and that by definition makes their selection political.

    • #19
  20. SPare Inactive
    SPare
    @SPare

    If you guys who got out as E4’s and O3’s think it’s bad, try it out as an O5, where it’s considered poor form to have these seditious thoughts (at least, not in front of the men).  If anything, it gets worse and the division between those who are soldiers and those who careerists becomes sharper.

    I once had to sit through a day long session on “strategic planning” for my corps, where the essence of the discussion was “so, what’s the corps going to do to ensure that I can become a general?”  As a reservist, I essentially have no career, so I could only watch this with disgusted bemusement.

    This may come as a surprise to you, but I read a study a couple of years ago indicating that Lt Cols had the lowest level of satisfaction of any rank.  I can believe it.

    • #20
  21. user_657161 Member
    user_657161
    @

    SPare:If you guys who got out as E4′s and O3′s think it’s bad, try it out as an O5, where it’s considered poor form to have these seditious thoughts (at least, not in front of the men). If anything, it gets worse and the division between those who are soldiers and those who careerists becomes sharper.

    I once had to sit through a day long session on “strategic planning” for my corps, where the essence of the discussion was “so, what’s the corps going to do to ensure that I can become a general?” As a reservist, I essentially have no career, so I could only watch this with disgusted bemusement.

    This may come as a surprise to you, but I read a study a couple of years ago indicating that Lt Cols had the lowest level of satisfaction of any rank. I can believe it.

    If you’re not a Mustang USMC infantry officer and rise above LtCol, then you’re a careerist.  He said somewhat seriously.

    You have to know which balls are made of glass and which ones are rubber.

    Whenever we got knew “warm-and-fuzzy” training requirements we used to ask ourselves, so which rock comes out of my pack to make room for this new one?

    I wonder, quite seriously, whether or not we need some sort of draft after all.  Their are too many careerist these days at all ranks and the general officers/flag officers (GO/FOs) are almost all compromised.  Obama has cashiered the few GO/FOs who had both brains and guts, Gen Mattis comes immediately to mind.  Maybe bringing back the draft could save ourselves from ourselves.  It does seem to me that pederasts and goat herders have “defeated” us in Afghanistan.

    Good news is it seems that Obama wants to import a couple 100,000 or so Syrians into fly over land.  So we got that going for us, which is nice.

    • #21
  22. user_252791 Inactive
    user_252791
    @ChuckEnfield

    Simon Templar:I wonder, quite seriously, whether or not we need some sort of draft after all. Their are too many careerist these days at all ranks and the general officers/flag officers (GO/FOs) are almost all compromised. Obama has cashiered the few GO/FOs who had both brains and guts, Gen Mattis comes immediately to mind. Maybe bringing back the draft could save ourselves from ourselves.

    Would you mind expanding on this thought?  I can’t see how the draft would help this, so I wonder what I’m missing.

    • #22
  23. user_357321 Inactive
    user_357321
    @Jordan

    Simon Templar:

    SPare:If you guys who got out as E4′s and O3′s think it’s bad, try it out as an O5, where it’s considered poor form to have these seditious thoughts (at least, not in front of the men). If anything, it gets worse and the division between those who are soldiers and those who careerists becomes sharper.

    I once had to sit through a day long session on “strategic planning” for my corps, where the essence of the discussion was “so, what’s the corps going to do to ensure that I can become a general?” As a reservist, I essentially have no career, so I could only watch this with disgusted bemusement.

    This may come as a surprise to you, but I read a study a couple of years ago indicating that Lt Cols had the lowest level of satisfaction of any rank. I can believe it.

    If you’re not a Mustang USMC infantry officer and rise above LtCol, then you’re a careerist. He said somewhat seriously.

    You have to know which balls are made of glass and which ones are rubber.

    Whenever we got knew “warm-and-fuzzy” training requirements we used to ask ourselves, so which rock comes out of my pack to make room for this new one?

    I wonder, quite seriously, whether or not we need some sort of draft after all. Their are too many careerist these days at all ranks and the general officers/flag officers (GO/FOs) are almost all compromised. Obama has cashiered the few GO/FOs who had both brains and guts, Gen Mattis comes immediately to mind. Maybe bringing back the draft could save ourselves from ourselves. It does seem to me that pederasts and goat herders have “defeated” us in Afghanistan.

    Good news is it seems that Obama wants to import a couple 100,000 or so Syrians into fly over land. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

    Perhaps we need a war.  Not that I’ve experienced it, but I strongly believe that it would take a war to shake out the problems in the careerist military machine.  And by war I mean, a war, not a “global war on terror.”  It is a war for those actually fighting it, but it is not a war for the civilian leadership of the military, nor for the people at large.  We need to have a warlike attitude with our military.

    I think the military deviated too much from this when it was rebranded into “Defense Department” instead of “War Department.”  It might as well be called the “Military Industrial Complex Department” today.  I don’t think Eisenhower was warning us about military spending alone when he gave his grim warnings, but about the institutional perversion that has taken place for about 3 generations.

    A military’s purpose it to wage war.  It seems today the military’s purpose is to simply exist as a slightly more militarized alphabet agency.

    • #23
  24. user_657161 Member
    user_657161
    @

    Chuck Enfield:

    Simon Templar:I wonder, quite seriously, whether or not we need some sort of draft after all. Their are too many careerist these days at all ranks and the general officers/flag officers (GO/FOs) are almost all compromised. Obama has cashiered the few GO/FOs who had both brains and guts, Gen Mattis comes immediately to mind. Maybe bringing back the draft could save ourselves from ourselves.

    Would you mind expanding on this thought? I can’t see how the draft would help this, so I wonder what I’m missing.

    I believe that I’ve already approached this topic on Ricochet on a thread or two, but I’ll dive into it again.

    First of all I’m more than just a bit conflicted about this because in general, and particularly during peace time (whatever that means these days), I believe that an all volunteer military is the way to go.  The problem with that however is human nature.  As a former leader of grunts things looked a lot different to me from a ground pounders perspective than they do today from 30,000 feet.  I really only began to appreciate how careerism is corrupting the military until near the end of my career when I had a chance to come up for air and see what the REMFs were really all about.

    So I’m thinking what is the best way to save the village without destroying it; and, the idea of inserting civilian-soldiers during war time/footing comes to mind.

    • #24
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