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Let me give you my perspective on what the military needs to do. This is based on 3 college degrees and 3 plus decades in and around the DoD. The military has two basic jobs: deterrence and fighting. Deterrence means looking so capable, so willing, so abel to impose your will that no-one wants to try it. Fighting is what happens when the other side is desperate or no longer believes the deterrence factor. Everything else is second level BS. Nation building, setting examples for domestic policy, police actions... All fluff and unimportant to the primary mission: kill the enemy. You must show such focus, such determination, such resolve that you win, with or without actually fighting. All time, money, energy, or other resources spent on anything else in the military are wasted. The military is the rabid, barely controlled dog you let off the leash only in the most dire of circumstances. But when you do slip the chain, you let it do what it does best. You don’t micromanage, you don’t second guess. You give it objectives and constraints and stand the f back. It is going to be bloody. It is going to be ugly. You want it bloody and ugly and repulsive because you never want to have to to it. You want everyone on all sides afraid of you, afraid of what happens when that line is crossed.

I was privileged to serve in an Air Defense Artillery battalion in Germany from 77-81. During my last two years, my battalion commander took us from a C-3 to a C-1 (Combat Ready).

How did he do it? He demanded imagination and independence from his officers, and he held us accountable. When I made one of my many mistakes of commission, (hey, I was a 1st LT, lol), the Old Man would chew me out, and that was that. He never held a grudge, it was over the minute I walked out his door.

He also made a concerted effort to weed out the malcontents and poor soldiers. In his first year of command, he discharged over 60 soldiers, or about ten per cent of the battalion. It took hundreds of hours and a ton of paperwork, but it was worth the effort.

The message got through, and it improved morale immensely.

I can only imagine what higher HQ would do to him today, and it ain't good. One thing's for sure, there wouldn't be anymore anatomically correct birthday cakes at Battalion HQ, ordered from a local bakery by the Old Man's Secretary. I'll leave it to your imagination, but the cherry was strategically placed.

We both returned to Fort Bliss about the same time. Providence put us in the same apartment complex in El Paso, where we reconnected. After the Captain's Course, I worked for him again at the agency tasked with testing weapons systems under development.