[jatx]

Sir, articles like this one are profoundly discouraging.

My view may be naive or uninformed, but as I understand it the role of a senior officer is as much counselor as planner and leader. In my civilian career, I've worked in that role as a consultant for years and I've learned one thing: that a trust-based relationship involving advice and counsel can only work when an obligation to dissent exists. That means from the most junior of my team members to me, everyone is expected to speak up and make their case factually and forcefully if they don't agree with an idea or course of action. This is important when decision making is fast-paced and hypothesis-driven, or else you run the chance of operating with blinkers on and squashing your own ability to see problems objectively and to deal with them creatively. It also means that if I disagree strongly with my client CEO, I will tell him so with equal force and stake the entire relationship on the outcome. I will fire any individual on my team in a heartbeat who can't or won't operate like that, no matter how smart or talented they are. Yet the military, which is in the business of providing our civilian leadership counsel on issues of life and death, doesn't seem to have a corresponding ethic.