ARTICLE: A failure in generalship, By Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, Armed Forces Journal

The actual Yingling article online is well worth reading.

Naturally, I find all the arguments about not adapting in the post-Cold war 1990s to the "lesser includeds" to be very much on-target. Yingling's anger makes me feel glad I stuck to such an aggressive tone in PNM and BFA. I knew the military would catch up in terms of its mid-level officers. The frustration simply had to build and the political moment arrive.

No news to me. I get an earful of this from 04s and 05s after every talk, and I do over a hundred each year.

Difference with this argument is--of course--Yingling's status and career and logical dissatisfaction with all the current gray beards parading their wisdom on cable news nets when they themselves are most responsible for the lack of adaptation across the 1990s. This is a very sore spot for the Bob Scales of this world. They legitimately believe they saved the military after Vietnam (true) and that their solution still holds after Cold War's end (not true).

To say otherwise is to attack their sense of career accomplishment--their very definition of who they are.

And when you do that on-stage, you get guys in their late 50s and early 60s standing up and yelling at you (something that happens to me more and more as the overall mood gets closer and closer to Yingling's level of angry outburst).

Wonder if Scales will call Yingling "crazy" like he routinely refers to me.

I say, God bless him for writing this piece and the journal for publishing it.

And watch Scales more closely the next time he defends Future Combat System as an absolute must.

And then switch him off and listen to Andy Krepenevich instead.

It begins to hurt when the sons turn on the fathers. The civilian pukes can be laughed off for their inherent "cowardice" (i.e., lack of mil service), but how do you dismiss the Yinglings when they finally step up and make the very same arguments?

Thanks to Mike Bowen for sending this.