>>150850236
Eugene Sledge in his World War II memoir wrote, "War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste. Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it. The only redeeming factors are my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other."
In combat, there are thousands of variables, as I learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as so many of you did in so many more places. Leaders can only control about three of them. You control how well you're trained, mostly how well you're equipped, and the last variable is how well you lead. After that, you're on your own.
Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders. That is who we need you all to be. Even then, in combat, even if you do everything right, you may still lose people because the enemy always gets a vote. We have a sacred duty to ensure that our warriors are led by the most capable and qualified combat leaders. This is one thing you and I can control, and we owe it to the force to deliver.
For too long, we have simply not done that. The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things. In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden, or as the chairman has put it, we are clearing out the debris, removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we're ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.
For too long, we've promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts. We've pretended that combat arms and non-combat arms are the same thing. We've weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double blind psychology assessments, promoting risk averse go along to get along conformists instead. You name it, the department did it.
