We are now more than six years into a war that spans the globe. American forces are engaged on the land, from the sea and from the air, around the planet. More than 1.6 million service members have deployed into the Central Command area of responsibility, and perhaps 35 percent of them have been there more than once.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2008/06/3468975

As Col. Bateman implies, setting up a system where those who will have to face the consequences of "failure" get to define what constitutes "failure" only serves to ensure that no one ever "fails".

Thus that system rolls on from "success" to "success" until it, inevitably, crashes and burns.

Of course, it will produce some really neat PT gear and dress uniforms before it does that.

Or, more poignantly, no one of consequence fails. However, unlike Col. MacGregor a coupla years ago, Col. Bateman fails to make a case why anyone should be fired, other than to preclude statistical anomalies. (In fact, WRT Iraq conflict, Gens. Wallace & McKiernan came within hairs' breadths of being canned, & that was before U.S. forces ever entered Baghdad.)

Seems, tho, as if military & civilian observers are preparing for the inevitable future when simply blaming al-Qaida, insurgents, & freedom haters will no longer be adequate for explaining why a planned 6-wk incursion became a 5+-yr battle for those refractory hearts & minds.

Colonel Bateman’s thoughts are both timely and incisive. I would take issue, however with some of his conclusions.

Bateman presents the relationship between civil and military authority as a rough progression, in which growing military professionalization results in greater civilian deference. He also suggests that the prime determinant of authority is the public’s perception of relative competence – that a president with large amounts of political capital is more likely to assert control over a poorly regarded officer corps than in the reverse circumstance. Of course, neither of these tests, at present, makes it likely that civilian authorities will resume relieving general officers for cause in the near future. So Bateman suggests the establishment of a relatively unaccountable, non-partisan commission that would be empowered to relieve commanders.

I would submit that the examples he presents strongly militate in favor of a very different set of conclusions. Take, for example, Lincoln’s relief of McClellan. The general was perhaps the most highly qualified professional in the military. A consummate staff officer, McClellan had graduated high in his class, penned several field manuals adopted for use, and served as an observer abroad during the Crimean War. He was, in short, everything that Bateman suggests officers of the era were not – well respected, highly trained, and devoted to his own professional development. Moreover, at the time of his relief, he was highly popular among his troops – and perhaps more popular with the public at large than was Mr. Lincoln. And he ran for the presidency against Lincoln, retaining his commission until the day of the vote. In other words, Lincoln’s relief of McClellan was in almost every way politically more perilous than Truman’s relief of MacArthur. And yet he relieved him, anyway – one among a large number of general officers relieved of their commands. Why?

The two wars in which the greatest numbers of commanders were relieved were the Civil War and the Second World War. Those two conflicts shared three other features. They were the two wars in which the highest percentage of adult American males saw military service, including great numbers who were conscripted. They lasted for a number of extraordinarily bloody years. And they both required a radical and massive expansion of the military, and consequently, of the officer corps.

Those factors produced a striking set of inter-related conditions. The huge number of Americans serving in uniform lent most voters a deeply personal stake in the conduct of the war, and left them more likely to identify with private soldiers and their welfare than with general officers. The sanguinary nature of the conflicts raised the costs of incompetence, and therefore bolstered the political will for relief and replacement. But perhaps most importantly, the enormous expansion of the military necessitated the rapid advancement and promotion of serving officers.

This last factor cannot be underestimated. In both the Civil War and the Second World War, the army was forced to junk its long-term schemes for the development and expansion of the officer corps, and to improvise. (There were roughly 16,000 men in the army on the eve of the Civil War, and some 200,000 on the eve of World War II.) Throwing out the rulebook had some salutary effects. Suddenly, there was no normal career trajectory, no expected course of advancement. Multiplying the slots on the TO&E by a factor of ten gave the army tremendous flexibility. After Kasserine, relieving Lloyd Fredendall, for example, proved relatively painless because he could be transferred to DCG of the Second Army back home. Bruce Magruder, from the First Armored, was named commander of Camp Wolters. That was true of many regular army officers relieved of front-line commands, for whom less vital assignments (or slots that played to their strengths) could be found. In a relatively stagnant force, by contrast, the cost of relief rises. The general must either be retired, displace another general officer, or be awarded a slot that would otherwise be given to a more promising candidate. So the army becomes far more likely to allow the system to grind ahead in war as it does in times of peace; officers serve out their regular rotations, and are then considered for future assignment.

There is a corollary to this problem, that is, if anything, more disturbing. Just as an expanding force lowers the costs of relief, it also raises the price of promotion. That has made it more difficult today than perhaps ever before for deserving officers to receive rapid elevation to commands commensurate with their abilities. At the beginning of 1940, Bradley, Truscott and Clark were light birds, and Eisenhower, Devers, Ridgway, and Patton were Colonels. The latest generals list notwithstanding, virtually all of the most promising colonels on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, including those who have repeatedly proven themselves in the subsequent years of conflict, retain that rank today. After all, taking a non-promotable lieutenant colonel who has performed superbly in command of a battalion and putting him in command of a brigade may be rational – what better qualification can there be than proven success in tactical command? – but it also destroys the carefully considered personnel system, and effectively ends the careers of any number of his seniors. That’s not true in an expanding military. Eisenhower went from oak leaves to four stars in less than two years, even as his seniors were, for the most part, also being promoted.

So I would submit that the lack of relief and the lack of promotion stem from a common cause – a system of officer assignment and advancement carefully calibrated to ensure stability and the orderly progression of military careers. That’s particularly striking at the general officer level, but true throughout the officer corps. The problem is that the characteristics that qualify officers to hold commands in peace are very different from those which are rewarded in times of conflict, and that those characteristics even vary widely from war to war. Creating a committee to relieve officers will do relatively little good; it will open a few avenues of advancement, but it’s not at all clear that more qualified officers will replace those who are relieved. Moreover, it will destabilize the command structure; those issuing orders (from POTUS and SECDEF on down) will no longer be in charge of punishing officers for failing to carry them out. That’s a potentially fatal division of responsibility and accountability.

No, what the army needs is a wartime personnel system, adapted for its present stagnant force levels. Area Commanders and major unit commanders need to be empowered and encouraged to shake up their command structures as necessary. They need to be authorized to promote officers in the field, irrespective of whether candidates have the right time in grade, have attended the right courses, or sat through any particular ten-week seminar. And, to lower the costs to those who are relieved (and thus the powerful disincentives to execute such relief) the army needs to find jobs for these folks back home. Sure, there’s an added expense, and it will probably entail going to Congress to expand the authorized number of officers in each grade. But it’s cheap at the price. I’d support paying twice as many general officers their salaries benefits and pensions if it meant having competent general officers in command of troops in the field.

Lt Col Bates would have done well to mention the much examined but nonetheless instructive case of BG Terryl Schwaleir's firing and forced retirement after the attack on the Khobar Towers complex. Despite the fact that he had taken unprecidented steps to provide for the defense of the complex, his career was sacrificed and he was denied promotion to Maj Gen so that SecDef and CINCCENT could survive the political fallout.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/April200...tschwalier.asp

What you are talking about is what is known as "careerism" - something totally different from "professionalism".
True, in peace time an "under-preforming" officer is very likely to have a significant impact on the "career enhancing opportunities" of their replacement when they get promoted. If their replacement acknowledges the mess that the "under-performing" officer left for them to clean up, the replacing officer's "career path" is very likely to get rather bumpy.
It will, however, provide an honourable place to shuffle all the dolts off to. Mind you, that would mean that you would have dolts deciding on who would, and who would not, get promoted/retained.
Correction - "... no longer be SOLELY in charge ..."
It could also serve to prevent an "under-performer" from protecting other "under-performers"
So far, so good.
Oh Hell, they don't have to "find jobs" they can simply create them.
Is it? Always?
What you are more likely to end up with is paying three times as many General Officers and STILL not having "competent General Officers in command of troops in the field". Remember - "Over time crap tends to drive out quality 9 times out of 10." (mainly due to the high inertia factor of "crap").