Can the next President please persuade Bob Gates to stay on as Secretary of Defense? This guy is a breath of fresh air. The Associated Press reports:
The entire military — not just the newly reoriented Air Force — must learn to accept criticism from outside its ranks, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
Speaking to about 500 airmen at this base just east of St. Louis, Gates said it is well known that the military services make good use of internal reviews of their performance in order to improve and to correct problems.
"However, I have noticed that none of the services easily accept honest criticism from outside their branch, or scrutiny that exposes institutional shortcomings," Gates said. "This is something that must change across the military."
My only real criticism of this is that often the leadership in the services do not listen enough to internal dissent -- and I'm not talking about internal reviews. Outside-the-box thinkers and people who are driven to blowing the whistle often are ignored and retaliated against while their ideas or criticisms are suppressed.
And this is happening more often: A Defense Department Inspector General report (pdf) detailing its staffing shortages noted that military reprisal cases are sharply up from 315 a year to 528 over the last ten years.
Who are these people? They are folks like Joe Darby, the Army reservist who discovered Charles Graner's Abu Ghraib torture photos, copied them and alerted the Army Criminal Investigation Command. Later, after the New Yorker and 60 Minutes revealed the torture, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a televised speech, "There are many who did their duty professionally and we should mention that as well. First, Specialist Joseph Darby, who alerted appropriate authorities that abuses were occurring." After he returned home from Iraq, the retaliation began -- he and his wife began receiving threats. 60 Minutes reported that an Army security assessment of his hometown concluded that "the overall threat of harassment or criminal activity to the Darbys is imminent. …a person could fire into his residence from the roadway."
Honest criticism from outside the services often comes because the services don't listen to their own people first. Though it is somewhat paradoxical, more strong statements from Gates at the top can help change the culture in the hierarchical Defense Department to one that better listens to and respects people from the bottom.
-- Nick Schwellenbach
Now if Gates would just extend this principle to nuclear weapons. He might start by reinstating the NNSA oversight committee.
A next step would be to redo the SWEIS at LANL, and include a few professional economists and actually have a real section on alternatives, rather than the old cliche "The president says we don't have to do it". Sneeking in a few plutonium pits after 20 years of no pit production, and then claiming THAT level becomes the "no build" option is rather disingenuous.
But then we are in the mess with nuclear weapons as alternative views were never respected from the beginning, including those of the scientists that developed the weapons.
"Honest criticism from outside the services often comes because the services don't listen to their own people first".
Posted by: erichwwk | Jun 13, 2008 at 10:18 AM