BUSH AND KIPLING [John Derbyshire]
Rich:
This caught my eye in the President's speech:
"There's also an increased focus on leadership training, with professional development courses for Iraqi squad leaders and platoon sergeants and warrant officers and sergeants-major."
It reminded me of a passage in that James Fallows Atlantic Monthly piece we had an exchange about yesterday:
"The legacy of Saddam Hussein ... had encouraged a military culture in which officers were privileged parasites, enlisted soldiers were cannon fodder, and noncommissioned officers -- the sergeants who make the US military function -- were barely known. 'We are trying to create a professional NCO corps,' Army Major Bob Bateman told me. 'Such a thing has never existed anywhere in the region. Not in regular units, not in police forces, not in the military.'"
Anyone who's had even the briefest acquaintance with military life (or even just seen good military movies, like Zulu) knows how vital a good NCO culture is. I'm glad to hear the administration knows it, too.
Of course, Kipling said it first:
"The 'eathen in 'is blindness must end where 'e began, But the backbone of the Army is the Non-commissioned Man!"
Let's hope, however, that in taking the second line of that couplet to heart, the administration is not neglecting the first.... |
