Chapomatic

Two years ago there was a national-level dustup over an article written by LTC Paul Yingling. I gave my opinion in a long roundup and post; there were several posts following up on the discussion (here’s the search result).

Over at the Dawn Patrol they find a blog post from Wings Over Iraq that mentions some of the response to his article, and mentions there’s another article out there.

Lt. Col. Paul Yingling—then stationed at Fort Hood, Texas–made a name for himself when he published “A Failure in Generalship” in Armed Forces Journal in the spring of 2007. Shortly thereafter, a general brought in every single captain in the division and began to verbally berate Lt. Col. Yingling and his article. Yingling was then put in charge of a prison project in Iraq, but there was a bit of a twist: the assignment was to reform the detainee system in Iraq, and Yingling performed superbly, largely as a result of his unconventional thinking.

Today, he published an article in Small Wars Journal [pdf --c.] regarding the extreme micromanagement in the military, and the failure to develop innovation and initiative because of it. As someone who feels it strange that the Army wants to develop initiative, but makes Soldiers fill out a risk assessment form, pass request, “leader/soldier handshakes”, vehicle inspection forms, and a Google Map itinerary just to drive to the next state on the weekend, I have to agree.

Quite frankly, this excerpt reminds me of that other Tom Ricks reading list of the two I mentioned earlier this week, where Ricks comments on Catch-22:

“Without realizing how it had come about,” Heller writes, “the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them.”

Thus is it always.

I’ve skimmed the article, and it ain’t bad. Ain’t earth-shattering, but not bad either. I’d also note that I would bet big money that this article isn’t going to get anywhere near the exposure the other one did, because the subject doesn’t serve a political purpose.

You know, kind of like that national intelligence estimate I wrote about a while back. Since some interesting information related to that NIE popped up and all. Sometimes the loud information isn’t the most useful information.