Is retention. In December’s Washington Monthly, Andrew Tilghman tries to find out why:
Over the Christmas holiday, I visited my old stomping grounds — the Virginia Military Institute — for a wedding. Both bride and groom were Army intelligence officers, so attendance was overwhelmingly military. In discussion at the reception, I encountered precisely the same complaints as illustrated by Tilghman: peacetime Army careerists are driving away a whole generation of flexible, agile thinkers that are desperately needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another comrade, an Army infantry officer with two tours in Iraq under his belt, described the exact same nit picky nonsense as Tilghman: “We’d come back from a 26 hour patrol only to be met by some a$$hole battalion commander who was dressing down my guys for not wearing eye protection. How am I supposed to respond to that?” My friend is a talented officer, smart, athletic, and the survivor of a harsh VMI system that weeds out roughly half of its original matriculates. But he’s become frustrated with a leadership that focuses on processes instead of results. He’ll be out the door the minute his service commitment expires. Like any big bureaucracy, the Army is slow to adapt. They’ve made some astounding progress over the past year, both institutionally and in Iraq. But retention is, and will continue to be, one of Big Army’s toughest battles. HT: Haft of the Spear
