THEME THREAD: SELECTING AND TRAINING MILITARY LEADERS OF TOMORROW

A bit of a mixed bag really, but a topic of high interest no doubt, so let's hear your thoughts about it ! Just so the ideas and suggestions thrown into the discussion keep focused on the topic, here are a few pointers as to what should be considered:

1.  In a military that is more and more focused on technology (key words: "plasma warrior" and "playstation generation"), what place should there be for a 'back to basics' approach in the selection and training process ? I'm talking in particular about combatant branches of the military, which means don't build your case based only on JSOC/SOCOM/SOF type forces please.
2. Ideally, what mental qualities should be displayed, promoted and cultivated among future leaders (talking about COs but also senior NCOs) ? In your eyes - whether you have military experience or not -, has there been a shift in the psychological profile and outlook of military leaders of today, as compared to the past ?
3. How are NCOs and COs selected and trained in your country ? No need for specifics, just educational and military background required, length and nature of the training. Again emphasis on combatant branches of the armed forces.
4. To your knowledge, are there programmes or training courses in your country designed at selecting NCOs or even enlisted men and fast tracking them for CO training ? If not, do you think there should be ? Why ?

All opinions/contributions welcome, as long as you can give accurate information (I will check samples) and argue your case.

Just for clarity sake, the "female in the military" topic was addressed extensively in a recent thread by TTG about the "Ranger Tab". If you want to add anything about that issue, please do so in the comments section of TTG's piece.

Patrick Bahzad

 

Comments

[turcopolier]

imagine

"In the Iraq Turkey Shoot, a million inconvenient young men conscripted at gunpoint were slaughtered, while an entire country of untermensch was destroyed for the women and children." Perhaps you could explain what you are talking about? pl

[Imagine]

Thank you. In my world view, Iraq was a pre-planned war of choice that did not have to happen, and cost America well over a trillion dollars, with negative overall outcome. VP Cheney had previous plans to wipe out Iraq, e.g. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2008/07/did-cheney-and-the-oil-bigs-plan-the-iraq-war-before-911.html, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline , but was unable to put these into play until the Saudi terrorists attacked the U.S. on 9/11. Counting on the historical and geographical ignorance of the American people, who cannot tell Saudis from Iraqis, plus the blind swell for revenge on SOMEONE, Cheney and Rumsfeld ignored the evidence of the intelligence community that there were no WMD and marched the country to war.

Xenophobia is nothing new, but it deserves to be studied.

I allege it is easier for America to attack and wipe out brown-skinned "foreign" "native" people who have WMD than it is to attack white-skinned "civilized" people with WMD who speak English. The former are treated as Others, as devious, lying subhumans who cannot be trusted. (As opposed to devious, lying regular humans, who are just part of the club.) Therefore we disrespect and talk AT them, like dogs, or don't talk at them at all but squish them, like cockroaches. Therefore it is permissible to exterminate them, as killing subhumans "doesn't really count".

Therefore Americans count the human cost of the war as exactly 4,491 Americans killed, plus a whole bunch of random natives.

The lives of the natives are "inconvenient" because we have to expend energy to slaughter them. "Collateral damage". They are wrongly considered resources and statistics, not people.

Lt. Cash: "We later learned from our intelligence sources that the overwhelming majority of these men were forced at gunpoint to conscript into the Iraqi army in the first place." Sgt. Toby Brice: "They were local farmers forced to fight at gunpoint...The officers were actually shooting these guys, making them fight."
The situation then makes the other poor bastard die for HIS country. It sucks, all the way around.

Once our leaders decided to wipe out Iraq, it was the Armed Forces' job to destroy the country. This job was performed well. However, the destruction of water and electricity plants, with 120 degree heat, has collapsed the country in anarchy. As a result, even for the noncombatants, "Iraq has turned into one of the worst places for children in the Middle East and North Africa with around 3.5 million living in poverty, 1.5 million under the age of five undernourished and 100 infants dying every day." http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-children-of-iraq-was-the-price-worth-it/30760 This has continued even through this last decade, even though we are no longer at war with Iraq.

I now see I am off on my Iraq army casualty numbers by one or two orders of magnitude through cursory checking. Although Wikipedia reported "Various scientific surveys of Iraqi deaths resulting from the first four years of the Iraq War estimated that between 151,000 to over one million Iraqis died as a result of conflict during this time", better estimates put the number of Iraqi combatant casualties around 25,000, and resulting adult non-combatant casualties through violence around 100K-200K.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/
so I retract this.

America was gulled into the war, partially through faulty accounting; and poor accounting still continues to plague understanding of its enormity. One Nobel Prize-winner estimates true cost around $3T; another estimate: $6T.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Trillion_Dollar_War
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/charts-cost-iraq-war
The strategic policy has thus done HUGE damage, to us. I believe we continue to be unaware of this.

Although it is the job of our leaders to set policy, and the job of the Armed Forces to execute it, at some point that policy has to be questioned. I predict this critical-thinking capacity will become even more important in the future, for the health of our nation. I therefore submit that extra emphasis in officer training should be put on moral choice, especially in the condition of possessing overwhelming automated firepower, in order to well deal with the coming age.

The choice of Iraq as an example of a mistake to be learned from, may have been a poor one. I was not there, and did not experience it.

[turcopolier]

imagine

Angst is a great and sometimes personal satisfaction. IMO you exaggerate the human toll and underestimate the social and political cost to the region. "Greed?" No, not greed, stupidity. pl