LOYALTY AND DEBATE
I read an interesting short article on
Soliders for the Truth yesterday that quoted COL Macgregor (Ret). He's the individual who wrote Breaking the Phalanx and Transformation Under Fire. Both very good books on where the Army should be going on the subject of transformation. With the Army facing a future that could be pretty earth shaking, I find it interesting that we don't have a place where debate among professionals can take place. For this debate to happen their has to be some reasonable feeling that your opinion won't sink your career. COL Macgregor's first book made him a dead man walking, and the second strapped him to the gurney. Their have been some attempts like companycommander.com, but it has been taken over by the Department of the Army so I doubt it will serve the purpose. You can't even get into the site without a permission slip anymore because of "OPSEC". Besides DA isn't the proper manager of the type of venue I'm talking about. In fact they may be the worst choice. The Army often thinks that sycophancy and loyalty are synonyms. Unfortunately AUSA isn't a good choice because they rely on funding from some of the very people that the debate may harm, government contractors selling equipment and services to the Army. That creates a conflict of interest when you try to debate the merits of things like the Stryker. At the other end of the spectrum the debate has to be kept at a professional level so someone has to be the honest broker or you'll quickly be overwhelmed by flames and rants. Sorry, everyone can't really carry a Field Marshal's baton in his knapsack like Napoleon said. That leads to some bitterness which then leads to agendas that just won't fit. Regardless, we need the debate. How does the Army approach fourth generation warfare? Do we continue to do it with second and third generation equipment and doctrine? We need to figure this out.
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