I had an assignment to the Pentagon cancelled in 2002. Oh the places I could have gone if I'd been a suck up to power at the Pentagonal puzzle palace. Instead, I was assigned as a mostly chair-bound paper-pusher at the Presidio of Monterey in California. Not many opportunities to suck up to power there, though I did meet Leon Panetta at his institute there. (He seemed like a decent guy.)
In my experience, there's truth in the saying that some of the best officers are those who make O-6 (bird colonel on captain for the USN) but who don't make stars. Those who make stars, especially in political posts, seem to end up like Al Haig and Stav. They are hollow company men, mediocrities in the service of power and their own vanity, convinced of their own rectitude and therefore dangerous to boot.
Bill, I was in the Pentagon then, maybe we would have stood in the same line for coffee!
I was in SecNav’s office from ‘02-04. Stavridis’s name was well known then, he was exactly as Andrew describes and he was angling for that SMA position to SecDef. He was disliked, especially by the other admirals who wanted the same things Stavridis wanted.
I recall Stavridis having some type of joint forces command down at Norfolk at that point that was a command without any operational responsibilities. It served as some type of future doctrine think tank and was the supposed vanguard of Rumsfeld’s infamous Transformation. It was the same type of intellectual grift that Petraeus and his ilk would use with counterinsurgency. Stavridis and Petraeus, and their sycophants, being cut from the same cloth.
I was supposed to go to the Air Force historical office, but my assignment was cancelled when my future bosses got into a pissing contest over whether I was the right guy for the job. After which an AF O-5 got into trouble at DLI in Monterey and they needed another AF O-5 to replace him. That was me! Any O-5 will do in a crunch :-)
I did a lot of hiking in Big Sur and saw a part of America I may never have seen without that assignment, so all in all I was glad not to have gone to the Pentagon, where I truly would have been a pawn, or perhaps a speck of dust.
What a fab career!
I had an assignment to the Pentagon cancelled in 2002. Oh the places I could have gone if I'd been a suck up to power at the Pentagonal puzzle palace. Instead, I was assigned as a mostly chair-bound paper-pusher at the Presidio of Monterey in California. Not many opportunities to suck up to power there, though I did meet Leon Panetta at his institute there. (He seemed like a decent guy.)
In my experience, there's truth in the saying that some of the best officers are those who make O-6 (bird colonel on captain for the USN) but who don't make stars. Those who make stars, especially in political posts, seem to end up like Al Haig and Stav. They are hollow company men, mediocrities in the service of power and their own vanity, convinced of their own rectitude and therefore dangerous to boot.
Or so it seems to this retired O-5.
H.R. McMaster is another example, as I wrote about here in 2013:
https://bracingviews.com/2013/07/26/the-u-s-militarys-limited-critique-of-itself-ensures-future-disasters/
Bill, I was in the Pentagon then, maybe we would have stood in the same line for coffee!
I was in SecNav’s office from ‘02-04. Stavridis’s name was well known then, he was exactly as Andrew describes and he was angling for that SMA position to SecDef. He was disliked, especially by the other admirals who wanted the same things Stavridis wanted.
I recall Stavridis having some type of joint forces command down at Norfolk at that point that was a command without any operational responsibilities. It served as some type of future doctrine think tank and was the supposed vanguard of Rumsfeld’s infamous Transformation. It was the same type of intellectual grift that Petraeus and his ilk would use with counterinsurgency. Stavridis and Petraeus, and their sycophants, being cut from the same cloth.
I was supposed to go to the Air Force historical office, but my assignment was cancelled when my future bosses got into a pissing contest over whether I was the right guy for the job. After which an AF O-5 got into trouble at DLI in Monterey and they needed another AF O-5 to replace him. That was me! Any O-5 will do in a crunch :-)
I did a lot of hiking in Big Sur and saw a part of America I may never have seen without that assignment, so all in all I was glad not to have gone to the Pentagon, where I truly would have been a pawn, or perhaps a speck of dust.
I cannot tell you how happy I am that you went to Monterey rather than the Pentagon. I can’t imagine two places as different as those two.
I wish I had gone to Monterey
Of course Stavridis and others are amply rewarded for calling for Moar War.
What do you propose to do about it?
It's worse than I imagined, and I thought it was really bad.
Stavridas blocked me on X when I mentioned that Ansarallah had more courage in their little finger, than he did in his short little body.
They’re called Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ Andrew. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/search/label/Nat-Sec%20Nutsacks%E2%84%A2
You MIGHT get one star by being an exceptional officer. Possibly even two, though unlikely.
You will NEVER get 3 or more stars by being anything but a politician in uniform.
Stav