I'm not worried about squad leaders on the Potomic. Command and control we will deal with, I think, as long as we are careful. I'm wondering about how we deal with the fact that war is horrible and wretched. No matter what the history books say.
Seven years are a long time, I suppose. I can worry now:
Micromanagement, first seen during the Vietnam War when advances in communications allowed someone in the Washington to communicate directly with commanders in combat, has reached new heights, and is causing major headaches for another generation of battlefield commanders. It began eight years ago when the U.S. Department of Defense decided to provide the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) with a real time combat command capability. This meant that the JCS, led by its chairman, now has a combat command center in the Pentagon where they use satellite communications to directly observe, and sometimes control, combat forces anywhere on the planet. Now all these senior officers learned, early on in their military training, the importance of giving subordinates their mission and leaving it to these lower ranking officers to figure out a way to do it. But now, with a generation of senior commanders with no experience of being micromanaged platoon leaders in Vietnam, the insidious and crippling micromanagement disease is creeping back into the White House and Pentagon.
Great. Community organizing comes to the battlefield.
