Have all the U.S. government mavericks, grunts and tough operators been subsumed in a "careerist" trap--where interest in insulating a comfy, post-service sinecure outweighs the importance of making--and/or defending--decisions that are good for America?
Who in the U.S. military--or U.S. government--is ready, today, to sacrifice themselves for the good of the country? Charging a machine-gun nest for America is one thing...but the more insidious--and tougher--sacrifice of your economic position, your family and your status/influence is something else.
Or are America's government employees--including the U.S. military--getting dangerously susceptible to claims of authority? Totalitarianism? Has American society produced a generation of U.S. military and government leaders too weak-willed for the job of securing American democracy?
Below the fold, you'll see that Napoleon got it right in his "Military Maxims and Thoughts":
"A (military) commander-in-chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his sovereign or his minister, when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall."
Essentially, Napoleon endorses professional sacrifice in the face of bad decisionmaking. It's not as glorous as a brave death in the field, but..it's tougher, and, ultimately, a much more heroic path.
So what is it? Careerism? The learned "authority kowtow"? Or is American society just creating stupid citizens, unequipped to leverage the lessons of history? Or to leverage the civic-minded lessons of America's experiment with Democracy?
I find it odd that the U.S. Officer Corps (a good source of community-changing mavericks and tough operators) have, apparently, failed to appreciate the lessons stemming from the British occupation of Boston. Take this plea from General Gage, the leader of Boston's contingent of Redcoats, as he begs his superiors for backup... The parallels are eerie:
"If you think ten thousand men sufficient, send twenty; if one million is thought enough, give two; you save both blood and treasure in the end."
And look at how the runup to the Revolutionary war was managed--the occupiers worked "to disarm New England by a series of small surgical operations--meticulously planned, secretly mounted, and carried forward with careful economy of force." This "shock and awe" strategy--echoed today in Rumsfeld's "Revolution in Military Affairs" handbook--worked pretty good. Once. The Redcoats got all the powder out of a nearby Powederhouse. But subsequent attempts to do the same thing in Salem, north of Boston, failed. And the British, displaying a Rumsfeldian-like unwillingness to change strategy, eventually set off for Concord, with too few troops, too little ammo, and cruddy intel.
The rest was, ah, history.
So what's going on with America's civil servants? Why are they so wimpy? Why do they have no starch in their britches? Careerism? Propensity to kowtow to authority? Or just a lack of historical training?