There’s never a post by The Spoils of War that doesn’t do the best regression testing. It might as well have been a Strachey-piece on Scooter Libby's annals of love. At least there’s still Ray out there for comfort. That’s a bug they can’t ever fix.
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.
There’s never a post by The Spoils of War that doesn’t do the best regression testing. It might as well have been a Strachey-piece on Scooter Libby's annals of love. At least there’s still Ray out there for comfort. That’s a bug they can’t ever fix.
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.
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