I think he may have hit on some things that are legitimate – and certainly some things that are conventional wisdom (to the extent conventional wisdom is relevant to a very specialized topic) – but offered zero insight, a lot of baseless conjecture, and spurious accounts on how they got that way.
Two examples stuck out to me in the first section – because I see them repeated other places – as indicative of his lack of knowledge.
1. Organization X runs/hates/loves organization B – JSOC runs SOCOM, big Army hates SF, etc.
This is indicative of the kind of faulty logic people who don’t know shit love to apply to others – but never themselves. Institutions rarely have human opinions or emotions. You can certainly have organizational culture – but even then there’s a great deal of nuance and individual shifts. All HQs have tensions that are natural in the prosecution of missions and the competition for resources. But the idea that an entire organization is dominated by emotions – and anyone serving in it must toe the line – is ridiculous and insulting. That’s especially true when most officers and a large number of NCOs move between organizations multiple times in their careers. Must be dizzying to adopt a whole new set of prejudices and biases every time you PCS.
2. The bureaucrats and bureaucracy run and ruin everything.
There are definite drawbacks to ‘bureaucracy’ in general – most notably as organizations become more complex the span of understanding and span of control for the people who lead them becomes more and more difficult – one of the reasons just being a PT stud, good at shooting people in the face, and good at coming up with memes doesn’t necessarily mean you’re qualified to run a complex organization. But, the main reason HQs grow is because it is fucking complicated to run all the shit they have going on. This dipshit undoubtedly gets paid, has his records in reasonable order, gets equipment, gets assigned missions, has the resources necessary to conduct that mission show up when needed, can communicate, has access to intelligence (or at least classified information), and the host of other things that help making shooting people in the face happen. By and large for SOF it happens without CDRs having to expend a lot of energy – one of the reasons you can keep SOF formations light, they don’t get overwhelmed with staffs to do that kind of work. Well, that shit doesn’t just happen magically. Also, no matter how smart, fit, and savant-like in face-shooting a special operator is the intricacies of the pay process, procurement, logistics train, and all that shit doesn’t just magically appear in their brain. All that stuff requires expertise and coordination – you know, all those fucking bureaucrats.
I’m all about some insights on organizational dynamics – how they build dysfunction and how to correct them. I’m in a BDE that’s directly subordinate to an ASCC – but still gets ADCON direction from an MSC DRU and is in a GCC that doesn’t like to work with it’s component commands. But, those are driven by organizational and structural requirements. Not because as soon as somebody got promoted they decided which HQs they hated.
Similarly I think the way organizations are structured, the training and requirements placed on leaders at each level, and the relative interoperability of processes are huge factors in getting to effective operation. But just waiving your arm and saying something is useless takes you out of the argument because anyone who has any idea how shit works dismisses you as someone running your mouth about shit you don’t understand.
This dude definitely falls into that category in my book.
