Is the Army Effective?

I was a Truck Commander today. That’s a glorified way of saying that I sat in the passenger seat while my buddy drove the humvee from the dispatch lot to our working area.

We had been assigned a vehicle, but the only one available was a tactical humvee. With any tactical vehicle come too many rules and restrictions. You need a ground guide to move in and out of parking lots, Kevlar helmets must be worn by all vehicle occupants, and drivers need to place blocks and drip pans whenever shutting down. So even though we are only driving the truck on paved roads in a one-mile radius at no more than 18 miles per hour, we are burdened with all these inefficiencies.

I understand that the United States Army is not designed to run with ruthless drive for profits. But the mentality of thoroughness translates into other areas. It took several man-hours to get the vehicle signed over to us. Two Specialists, a Sergeant First Class, a Major, and a civilian contractor all had their hands in the transaction. What productive items of business could at least some of these soldiers been engaged in?
There is no such thing as “military efficiency.” The U.S. Army is not efficient. It is thorough. Thoroughness can serve us well, but should it be the highest priority?
How many bright, talented people are stifled in the military because they are forced to comply with endless regulations and redundancies? In the world of the Army, even these people, as smart as they may be, end up as mindless automatons, more worried about compliance and approval from their superiors than about getting a job done right.

Frustration is the call word, even among these people. Everyone in the Army loves to say express how screwed up it is. One high-ranking officer told me not too long ago, “You need to become an officer so you can fix this.”

“You’re an officer!,” I shouted in my mind! It seems everyone can see how fouled up the system is, but no one sees how screwed up it is in their own area of responsibility, and nobody wants to tell their superiors that the way we’ve been doing it sucks.

At Basic Training, when I thought twice about executing a command that sounded mistaken, my drill sergeant told me not to second guess myself. As I noted then, even when you’re right, you look like an ass if you’re the only one.

That truism holds in the everyday institutional army. It is much easier to hide behind caution smothered in ineffectiveness, then to tread into open ground of risk, where the potential of figuring out better ways to do things lurk.

The Army is effective at being a behemoth of an organization, and can run itself for the sake of running itself.

Hobnobbing with Hall of Famers

Today I met Tony Dungy. My battle buddy and went to shadow some videographers from the Indianapolis FOX affiliate. One story that we covered was the naming of Jim Caldwell as Head Coach of the Colts, and so I helped set up the camera and stood in the back to stay out of the way.

I watched the press conference with great interest, and I'll be damned of Tony Dungy didn't just walk right up and stand pretty much next to me. Kind of Cool.

How to Solve the BCS Problem

If fair-minded and honest sports fans required any more evidence that the Football Bowl Subdivision is in desperate need of fundamental change in the way it crowns its title, then Utah's defeat of Alabam in the Sugarbowl should be it.

The major conferences have been determined to keep their stranglehold on the authority to grant the title of football supremacy.

The vestiges of a tired era designed to protect the established powers at the expense of the weak continues to reign, only because the people haven’t realized their own power.

The current system, whereby a veritable aristocracy of football elites chooses representatives from among its own ranks, is fraught with inequity and controversy. The plebeians clamor for a more just arrangement, while the power brokers ignore them with impunity.

Ever since its inception in 1998, the Bowl Championship Series has not been able to soften the din of cries for its replacement with a true, tournament-style playoff system. Among the most passionate opponents of the tyrannical system are the fans of schools from the non-BCS conferences which have virtually no chance of vying for the title.

Schools from conferences like the Mountain West, Mid-American, Conference USA, and Western Athletic Conference have heretofore assumed the role of loyal opposition—playing by the rules in return for the slimmest of chances to spend but a fleeting moment in the spotlight in and reap in huge rewards. Meanwhile, year after year, the BCS conferences get richer and more entrenched in their power.It is high time these loyalists to the current regime band together and secede from the Union.

The larger, richer BCS conferences, of which there are six, can safely ignore the mid-majors under the status quo. The current power structure heavily favors the larger conferences, but rests purely on the “consent of the governed.” The latter should dissent, in a violent way.

The way forward for the non-BCS conferences is to stage an open rebellion, whereby they format their own playoff system. They could call it the “Football Playoff Series” (FPS) and, starting from scratch, would be free to design the optimum scheme. It should have in mind three goals: to provide a more exciting postseason for college football fans, to earn its participants’ more money than they currently get, and to force the BCS to reform.

According to the rules of the new FPS, all participating schools would agree to boycott BCS games, even if invited. They would then stage their own 16-team playoff, to be scheduled against BCS game time slots. Let the viewing public decide which they’d prefer to see.

Under fair rules, even the lowliest conference would send a representative to the tournament, providing possibilities of Cinderella stories and thrilling moments. Much like the NCAA basketball tournament, the ultimate winner would usually be one of the grittiest, toughest, most battle-tested teams, even if an underdog. Thus, the FPS would crown its own, dare I say, more legitimate? champion—casting doubt on the superiority of the BCS winner.

With 15 games to be played (beginning before Christmas and ending sometime in mid-January,) the FPS would clearly increase revenue over the paltry sums they get now. With a hiatus in college football, viewers would abound during the first weeks, especially given the opportunities to see exciting teams and upset possibilities.

By the time the field was narrowed to four teams, television audiences would rival at least non-BCS bowls. And if these conference commissioners don’t think a true championship game would attract as big an audience as a non-championship Sugar Bowl or Fiesta Bowl—which is as far as mid-majors would ever get anyway—then they aren’t worth whatever salaries they’re getting.
A real football playoff would certainly bring NFL scouts to the stands, which in turn would attract more blue chip recruits to the FPS schools, and the balance of power would slowly correct itself.

Though it may take a couple of years, it would eventually become evident that there is more money and fan support in the FPS, at which point the scenarios all play in the FPS’ favor.

One possibility is that the BCS ignores the upstart which would only leave the FPS conferences in a better state than before. Either way, the FPS is making more money, attracting better athletes, and rewarding a more loyal fan base.

Or, the BCS sees the new champion as a threat to its own legitimacy and proposes an ultimate bowl game featuring the BCS champ and the FPS champ, similar to the way the NFL and AFL agreed on a championship in 1967. You want to talk about ratings? The first Superbowl had nothing on this. Most likely, the BCS would amend their own system to be more equitable and some sort of merger would result. To quote a unionist, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Imagine if Utah, TCU, Tulsa, and Boise State vied for number one in a playoff. Might we now be talking about a ratings war against games like the Fiesta Bowl? And even if the polls and computers voted for the BCS champ this year, a Utah would have a trophy and a tournament to boast.

BCS Commissioners are not going to vote against their interests, it's time the non-BCS commissioners did the right thing in the name of a more perfect union.

The Importance of History

I have been reading a comprehensive history of the Balkans, mostly out of mere interest. Simplicity lured me, as it often does, to the title of a book several years ago. I bought the Balkans hoping for an engaging read into something I knew almost nothing about.

The simplicity of the title quickly gave way to the complexity of the subject matter, so it took a deployment to Kosovo to get me enthused again. Aside from the the load of facts about the pell-mell history of the region dumped into my head, I have learned a lot about why it is important to study history.

Very few modern wars are regarded as avoidable as the First World War. and it is almost trite to say that the Balkans was the powderkeg that ignited the global conflagration. The direct causes of the war are outlined in the most basic studies of World War I, but the deeper reasons can trace their origins much earlier than is usually reported.

For example, the Balkan nations waged a series of wars prior to 1914 to carve out the boundaries of their nascent states. They were able to violently scrap for elbow room because of the continuous weakening of the Ottoman Empire for the hundred years before.

Ottoman Turks failed to seize upon opportunities to reform their government, to the point that they and slowly but surely their influence on people eager for independence slipped away. They let modernization amble past them and were unable to cope with the nationalist movements that swept Europe in the nineteenth century.

Change is constant, but sometimes it is difficult to recognize which way the winds of change are blowing. In life, it is important to stay aware of the forces that effect change on our lives, and to maintain the preparedness necessary to take advantage of the opportunities that change brings. These opportunities are often in disguise. More often they seem to be so challenging that it is easier to stay on course.

Change is not bad. History, whether it be our personal life history, or that of our society, is an important part of who we are and where we are going. Make it count and learn to find the path that history has given us.