A sharper spear (good) pointed nowhere (bad).
Our Army’s Headed for Collapse
Here’s how to fix it.
By DOUGLAS MACGREGOR
Politico, June 02, 2014
Today, the Army of 550,000 has 11 active-duty four stars, each of which comes with massive amounts of overhead. This makes no sense. If the Army were a rowboat with nine passengers, four would steer, three would call cadence and two would man the oars.
Phi Beta Iota: As with Veterans Affairs (VA), the Army cannot heal itself in isolation from the pathologies of the Pentagon, the Executive, and the Congress — as well as an inattentive dumbed-down drugged up public. “Overhead” and “waste” are there because political powers want them there. They are synonymous with pork and corruption. As General Robert Scales, USA (Ret) has so famously pointed out, the infantry, the heart of the Army, is 4% of the force, takes 80% of the casualties, and receives 1% of the budget. On the other end, Informaion Operations (IO) or cyber, is 100% of the Army's strategic, policy, acquisition, and operations “fuel,” and it too receives 1% of the budget. Packed in between is all the waste. Until Army gets a grip on how to do intelligence with integrity, demanding transparency, truth, and trust as the non-negotiable foundations for PPBS/E, Army will continue to be — as are the other Services — cosmetic cannon fodder for a political system that is out of control. The fastest way to heal the Army is to educate the public and reinstate the draft and the larger vision shared by Eisenhower and Reagan, of the Army as the soul of the nation, of the Army as the chassis of the nation, uniting all citizens with a sound mind in a sound body.
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