Dirty Laundry

Some people might have thought I was being too severe or judgmental when I posted a discussion of what I feel to be the worst things about the military's personnel “system”, in response to the Hasan case. (See http://zarathustrasoldman.blogspot.com/2009/11/uniformed-disservice.html, Nov. 20.) But not long after, all of the dirty laundry came out into the blinding sunlight, and it turned out that I had been, if anything, understating the case. One article was entitled “Documents: Army knew Hasan unfit” and subtitled “Fort Hood defendant lauded as intern despite deficiencies, concerns of potential psychosis.” the other was entitled “Officers faulted in killings on base”. What these two articles said was pretty much the same thing thing I had said – that Job One when it comes to military personnel is to look the other way, hide problems under the rug, blame the messenger, and basically keep your fingers crossed and hope it all goes away. And as I pointed out before, things didn't get this way because of the people involved – the people got this way because of the system. They respond – as any healthy organism interested in its own survival should – to the rewards and punishments that are set before them.

A few quotes by way of illustration:

“Supervisors... sanitized (Hasan's) performance appraisals for years...”

“Officers in charge of Hasan piled praise into his record...”

“(Hasan) might have been developing a psychosis – yet no mental health evaluation was done...”

“Several... officers failed to use 'appropriate judgment and standards of officership' when reviewing Hasan's performance...”

“... the same supervisor who meticulously catalogued Hasan's problems suddenly swept them under the rug when graduation arrived.”

“... officers... kept Hasan's academic career moving on a glide path... despite all his known deficiencies.”

“... a sharp disconnect between close-up performance reports... and a higher level of reports that make up the... permanent career record.”

“... military supervisors are often slow to intervene when personnel under their command exhibit suspicious behavior.” “... supervisors frequently fail to note such behavior in formal reviews.”

“Instead of being drummed out of the Army [after having given a suspicious lecture]... Hasan was promoted and sent to Fort Hood.”

Hasan received “a glowing review” covering a period in which he had been criticized for “a continuous trend of poor performance” and for conflicts between his job duties and his religious beliefs.

Hasan received at least one “Outstanding Performance” rating. (Note that, in the military, the only way you can fail to receive an Outstanding rating is if you rape your own grandmother on YouTube.)

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And of course, as one might expect, a wall of silence rose up about all of these issues and incidents, and none of the people involved are talking – whether still active or retired. That's because they know that they have everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by admitting to all of the fatal flaws in the system – flaws that everyone knows exist, but is apparently helpless to do anything about.

But the main point about all of this is that not only is it nothing unusual – it's standard procedure. And the reason it “works” is that the vast majority of people who are floated along through the system this way don't eventually pick up a gun and start shooting at everything in sight. Instead, they continue to drag down the system, waste everyone's time, and exert a negative influence on readiness – not to mention morale. I saw more than one of these characters during my time with the military, and can assure you that even the ones who never cause grievous harm are a tremendous drain on resources. For one thing, the sheer burden of paperwork and “counseling”, and meetings with “the personnel people” to figure out what to “do” about one of these clowns adds up to a staggering amount – probably months of manpower and associated costs. I can look through the personnel files of any agency and pick out, in a heartbeat, the “problem employee” files – they are fat, and bulging, and full of the give-and-take of harried supervisors and officious “personnelists” -- and ultimately lacking in resolution, until such time as the person retires, dies, or changes jobs. Compared to this, the situation in the private sector is like a breath of cool, bracing, Arctic air – someone screws up, they're out of there. Not in a year, or a month, or a week, but that very day. The sheer power a supervisor wields in the private sector makes government and military supervisors green with envy... because they, in fact, have very little, if any power – and so, in lieu of that, a mountain (or landfill) of neurotic, compensatory behaviors is built up and perpetuated, generation after generation. And please note, appeals to “readiness” and “warfighting capability” and all of those other noble buzzwords fall on deaf ears, when you're dealing with the personnel system – whether military or civilian, unionized or not. The goal of the military personnel system on the civilian side is to make it as difficult as possible to hire competent people... and to make it virtually impossible to fire the incompetent. On the military side, there is at least some lip service given to competence, but that doesn't always have much to do with promotion... and sheer incompetence has very little to do with disciplinary actions or “early retirement”. There is, in fact, a definite air of masochism and despair about the whole thing – and I have yet to figure out why things had to become quite that bad. All I can imagine is that, once again, the futility and absurdity of our foreign policy and military operations eventually trickles down to the rank and file, and thus begins the erosion of morale and shirking of responsibility which leads to things like the Hasan case. It is possible to have healthy people performing an ill-starred mission based on pathological policies – for a while at least. But sooner or later the chronic degradation has to have an impact... and I think we've seen it in all its ultimate squalor in the Hasan case.