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Inaccurate Supervision
December of 2004
-- Is the greatest crime a commander could commit. The commander's primary job is to
babysit the troops. No inspection equals anarchy. It's bad enough when
it's inadequate, but sometimes there are reasons for that. But the kind
I'm talking about here is a whole range of supervisory lapses from thinking
one's personnel are all totally beyond reproach and refusing to see the obvious,
to turning one's back on the problems and looking the other way, as it were.
When the cat's away, the mice will play. And believe me this early 21st century supervision problem in the military is a miced row.
Without enforceable supervision the result, especially with youthful personnel,
can border on the anarchistic. This has been a problem throughout history
and was perhaps one main reason for the fall of the Persian army to
Alexander. It was a central attack through the ranks to rout the
king. After the king was gone, the Persians began to loose the will to
fight.
One of the biggest most astounding problems in any military is what has been termed big-time operators. At any time in world history an Army could get peppered with hustlers that could really take things for a ride. In the late 20th century, we called them
B.T.O.'s, and believe me folks, they can really be big-time. Especially when they land in choice areas of operations such as the Pentagon.
It just seems like this is just the scenario that is taking place right now. I mean, you can smell it a mile away. The blame rests solely and squarely on the shoulders of the commanders. Because this stuff is happening in their watch. They are supposed to
baby-sit these guys, and I mean it, and make sure these cards never get off the ground.
See, all you need is a lapse, where the commanders are sitting around having coffee breaks and tea parties. And they let the hustlers start to get away with things. And they trust their enlisted men to just go ahead and do all the dirty work. Well, it's their fault,
from the junior commanders to the senior leadership and it should be their court-martial. It should be their job, and it should cost them their retirement.
And I think it will after all, because when the B. T. O.'s takeover, there is no rest until the whole situation collapses.
It reminds me of the bunch of corporals at the Pentagon, who didn't like their master sergeant back at Fort Myers south base
during the Vietnam Era in the sixties. They just fiddled around with the computers and the next thing anyone knew the master sergeant was shipped off to Vietnam for the second or third time. It only took a couple of weeks.
Well, they say democracy is the weakest form of government. I mean, it's not like some
centurion could just draw his sword on the spot and lop the offender's head off.
But the next time you imagine your little angels are going off to the the
theatre of combat to get the bad guys, do us all a favor, general: never
believe your own side's propaganda. Do your surveillance and watch those
behavior profiles. Your worse enemy can be right there in your ranks.
Most of them may be exemplary, but it only takes a few bad ones -- plus a
feel-good plastic-flag climate of inaccurate supervision.
Copyright (c)
2005 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.
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Click here to see an
article of my own first-hand experience in a barracks full of b.t.o.'s:
"The Silver Roof", in the humor section. |