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Say what you mean
Not too long ago, I supervised a captain for a few months who was the best captain with whom I had ever worked. He was diligent, smart, competent, and well respected, and displayed a capacity for judgment that was well beyond his peers. This captain decided not to stay in the Marine Corps after his obligated service was complete. He decided to pursue other professional challenges and stabilize his small family near his extended family living in the western United States, a decision that I respected. Though I would have preferred to see this Marine as a career officer, his analysis and position on what was best for his life and his family was unassailable. When I transferred out of my billet as his reporting senior, I authored a performance evaluation of this officer that accurately reflected both his performance on my watch and his capacity for excellent future service in the Reserve Component.
Months later, I was on the phone with his new reporting senior, who confirmed for me that this officer had continued to perform at an extraordinary level. He agreed that this captain was one of the top-performing officers in his peer group, and we conspired to ensure that the officer was recognized with an appropriate end-of-service award. His new reporting senior revealed to me that during the process of authoring and submitting this captain's end-ofservice performance evaluation, which reflected markings and comments similar to those I had authored, he was advised by a field grade officer, "Why are you wasting a good fitness report on a quitter?" For over 4 years, this officer's service well exceeded the standard in virtually every measure, but once he decided to go a different way, at least one of my peers was willing to brand him a quitter.
A few months ago, one of my favorite national security bloggers, Dr. Andrew Exum (also known as Abu Muqawama), authored a blog about the American approach to Iraq and Afghanistan that resonated with me. Dr. Exum wrote the following:
The casual arrogance with which the U.S. military has approached the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has a direct relation to the difficulty with...