Overly generous military pay and benefits

Mike Hicks The Israeli Defence Force skims off the top percentile of draftees and sends them directly to OCS. The next top percentile goes to SNCO school. The next third percentile goes to NCO school. Everyone else spends the time as a private. I do agree with Patrick Howard on 1 point though and that is you do need SOME degree of institutional memory and experience.

Mark Christoph Mike Hicks: Unfortunately much of that institutional memory is just remembering how to game the system. Re: John's articles on falsifying reports.

John T. Reed In one of Howard’s comments, he used the phrase “it hurt retention…‚ That word jumped out at me.
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I have said that the job of management is to recruit, train and retain god people and to evaluate, counsel, and fire bad people. But note that it’s not just retention, but only retention of good people. Same thing in pro sports. They do not see retention as a goal, only retention of good people. indeed, if an owner started pushing retention, period, his good coaches and players would quit and he would have trouble recruiting new good players.
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Military lifers would probably claim they, too, only want the good retained. Bull! I was there. They want everyone retained, although perhaps wish some would be in another unit.
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Some might say they showed they only want good people to stay by firing me. Nope. I gave 7 years notice that I would quit as soon as my 5-year commitment was up. They had no hope of retaining me. They just fired me early to try to discourage other officers from also refusing to sign false documents and attend “command performance” parties, etc. As a West Point grad, airborne ranger Vietnam vet I was well into the top half of all officers my rank with regard to the objectively-graded six Army schools I graduated from and volunteering for Vietnam. The notion that any West Point grad was not in the top half or 3/4 of the Army officer corps during Vietnam when there were 2 million men in the army alone is absurd on its face.
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Some might point to the occasional RIF (reduction in force) that accompanies the ends of wars or the election of Democrats. In fact, the Army officer corps hates the RIFs. Sure, they might tell you RIFs get rid of the “dead wood,” but that’s a relative term in that organization. A rather strong argument can be made that the dead wood is who stays in the army after their initial enlistment or initial officer commitment. Whenever a RIF is announced, almost the entire Army officer corps lives in dread they will be designated dead wood and forced out.
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A number of my West Point classmates were RIFfed, which was illegal when we graduated, but later changed. Were the guys who got RIFfed West Point dead wood? Not that I know of. I can’t name them and never saw a complete list but some very top guys were RIFfed. I assume it is because they were resistant to BS or simply not the office-politics type. I know one who got RIFfed followed my example of not wearing any awards or decorations (ranger tab, ariborne wings, medals, Vietnam service unit patch). That probably pissed them off and helped get him RIFfed. So did his sending a letter to the Pentagon volunteering to be RIFfed. He wanted the $15,000 severance, which he got.
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Like locust plagues, the Army officer corps is beset by “too many captains getting out of the Army” periodically. This is one of their “retention” problems. They wring their hands and make speeches and write articles about it and appoint a commission to study it and make recommendations. The commissions always find from anonymous surveys that the young officers getting out don’t like signing false documents and “command performance” parties and being separated from their wives, etc. A couple of superficial changes are made and by the time they go through all this, they probably have another recession and the “retention” problem goes way on its own—by retaining guys who lack the self-confidence to get out of the Army during a recession.
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“Retention” is not the mission of the Army. Winning wars is. They have not won a war in 69 years. Not only do I not care about “retention,” I want it outlawed. As I said, everyone in the military other than unique military skill holders like fighter pilots should be drafted in then forced out after a couple of years. The draft would bring in people age 18 to about 45 and NCO and officer positions would be assigned based on the resume of the draftee. They sort of did this in World War II and prior wars.
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“Retention” implies allowing people to make a career out of the military, which is an extremely bad idea. Military service—killing enemy soldiers—is a dirty job and someone has to do it. But wanting to spend your whole life killing people is creepy. In fact, the typical lifer never killed anyone. Rather, they see the Army as a sinecure which mainly consists of living in peaceful military Mayberries in the U.S., Germany, and Korea and attending hale and farewells and and attending “gentlemen’s courses” and grad school and making friends and not having to worry about getting fired or medical or retirement. To be sure, it is a sinecure that is punctuated by occasional deployments and discomfort and danger during those deployments. But when the % of time being deployed goes up, “retention” goes down. Contrast that with WW II where military personnel were deployed their entire time in the service after initial training and the “retention” after VJ Day was awful—something like 80% immediately got out.
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Once again, we WON WW II. Howard calls my approach the “John T. Reed Method.” I call it the WW II method. Citizen soldiers who are drafted to fight for the duration of the war then go back to being citizens. “Retention” also implies use of the U.S. military’s “only promote from within” policy. Our best, most productive citizens are not in the military. They are delivering packages or designing computers or flying airliners or doing your dry cleaning. They wage daily “war” against competitors, suppliers, and customers to make a profit. They are results oriented and know how to get things done. Put those guys in charge of our wars and make them stay until they win and they will win, as they did in our past wars that ended in victory. Lifers in the military are sort of playacting—pretending to be competent, get-the-job-done managers like Steve Jobs of Apple or Fred Smith of FedEx. But the fact is they shunned that world by staying in the military. They fear that world, which they only know from afar. And they fear a U.S. commander in chief who would demand victories.
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I sort of saw this when I coached high school football. The teachers at high schools have theories about how to teach. And the coaches have theories about how to coach. But there is one huge difference between the two groups. The coaches’ theories are tested weekly when they play a game against an opponent. When they lose, they go back to the drawing board and try new theories. The competent ones get better. The incompetent ones get fired. Not so the teachers. They adopt a wrong theory at age 22 and teach according to it for 35 years, then retire self-satisfied about what a great teacher they were. They never play a game to test their theories. The military lifers are like the teachers. The civilian, for-profit businessmen are like the coaches whose approaches are tested brutally on a daily or weekly basis.
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Results, not retention.

John T. Reed Howard also says a lot of “politics is the arm of the possible” stuff, like we can only discuss solutions that are likely to be allowed by the monstrous forces in Congress and in the military. My Unelected President has a button he pushes at news conferences. It plays his voice saying “I am not a politician” because he keeps getting questions along the lines of Howard’s let’s-only-talk-about-what’s-possible stuff. He doesn’t give a damn about what’s possible. He says what ought to be and vetoes what ain’t it. That the Constitution requires majorities in both houses and a presidential signature or 2/3 in both houses is not a bad rule that allows obstruction. It is a good rule that says don’t be passing a lot of laws in this new country called the United States. Also, there is something to be said for discussing solutions in ways that move the split-the-difference middle in the right direction. It’s called changing the terms of the debate.

John T. Reed Howard said, “It would be nifty if we were to inject some of the same realism into the military discussions.” He is referring to my approach to hyperinflation where I briefly discuss the correct policies regarding deficit spending then switch to, “They are not going to adopt the correct policies so here is how to save your own life savings.”
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No problemo, Mr. Howard:
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“Don’t join the U.S. military. If you already did, get out.”
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http://www.johntreed.com/hyperinflationdepression.html
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Unfortunately, we do have to defend the country and if I do not say many of the things I say no one will. Whether anyone adopts any of my policies is for others to decide. I have a duty to advocate them.
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At West Point, we had to have two dress hats—one on display and one on our head. By senior year, the one we wore was disreputable (falling apart). So I threw it away and starting wearing the other one leaving none in my room. I got demerits for not having one on display. I wrote a letter explaining why the policy was causing seniors to look bad when they were outdoors, the opposite of the intended effect, and said they should change the rule to say seniors only needed to have one dress hat. I suggested they confirm what I said by looking at the hats on the hooks outside the senior classrooms in the academic building. They denied my appeal of the demerits, then instantly put a regulation change in the daily bulletin saying henceforth seniors only needed to have one dress hat and none on display when they were out.
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When I pointed out on the Internet that intercollegiate athletes at West Point never march in parades, not even in the off-season, West Point promptly instituted a policy which said there would be a parade every Monday after lunch in good weather and ALL cadets would march in it.
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My book Football Clock Management has changed the way football is played in this country on TV. My in-progress novel could possibly have an effect. Others like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Silent Spring have. I note that the words “U.S. Army Command and General Staff College” appear next to Mr. Howard’s name in his comments. Perhaps he has been in the belly of the beast so long that his ideas of the art of the possible are too limited. It is hard to make things change, but possible. I think Mr. Howard might try to be a Republican leader in Congress. His art of the possible approach would fit right in.