When I first went to Afghanistan in 2008, I was probably the most hated soldier by coalition troops in the whole country.
All I was tasked to do was sit in rooms and tents with a moleskin and my little Japanese ball pen workhorse, writing down stuff while coalition commanders were talking about plans, hyping each other up and bragging about who had more tactical success than their counterparts.
Nobody knew who I was or what I did in their strategic meetings. I just sat there, no eye contact, no yeah or mehs, no comments, no interruptions. Whenever they were done with the meeting, I got up, thanked them for their time, wished them a good day and went outside to sit down somewhere else, thinking some more, and then I went to work.
Back in the day, the coalition had a problem with having too many hammers but not a lot of scalpels. For a hammer, after a while, everything starts looking like a nail, and with air superiority, the hammering went fast and hit hard. So it was a quick way to make a name for themselves and collect medals and a pay raise.
Most of the time, those tactical decisions resulted in short and long-term strategic failure.
For example, it was easy to kill a Taliban commander with an airstrike, but the result was that the twenty or so commanders he had overseen and kept in check went on a spree of violence against locals and coalition troops alike in pursuit of the succession of their predecessor.
So someone very smart in the upper echelons of the coalition decided to implement the tenth man rule.
It basically said if nine men look at the same information and arrive at the exact same conclusion, it is the duty of the tenth man to disagree. No matter how improbable it may seem, the tenth man has to start digging with the assumption that the other nine are wrong.
8/10 times, I did find those short or long-term strategic errors in the planned tactical operations, and whenever I did, everyone who was with me in the room that day had to prove why I am wrong and their approach is right. 9/10 times they couldn’t.
You can imagine those people all have giant egos and do not like it if someone outsmarts them, so they got rid of me by the end of 2009.
Officially, I was pulled to sit in more boring rooms with boring people.
Inofficially, I was told by a General that commanders were about to revolt because I was undermining their morale and they would often question themselves and their planning, instead of acting quickly and decisively, which would slow down their "efficiency" and the efficiency of the campaign.
When you look at the timeline this article showcases and think about that the inner circle of the President got replaced by yes men and a Secretary that wants a more deadly and less "woke" force that simply does what the Commander-in-Chief tells them without thinking for themselves, I wonder if the current situation the US has maneuvered itself into is because of the complete absence of soldiers that do what I did 18 years ago.
Outsourcing the strategic thinking process to a technology that is wrong 35% of the time by design is maybe the biggest strategic long-term failure the US military ever did. I see why this is necessary because replacing competent minds with loyalists above else makes this a viable approach.
Dumbing down the US Military and every position that has access to the President that could intervene stupidity looks less and less like an unintended consequence of the Secretary’s "rebuilding" of the military and more like an intended goal.
In my humble opinion, this doesn’t serve the American people nor the good men and women that serve their country and whose life is relying on people taking the time and effort to dig in with the assumption that everyone in the room, including a President, is wrong.
I’m retired, so all I can do now is point my fingers at idiots and tell you guys, look at this idiot and what he is doing.
But I no longer have access to rooms where big decisions are made and rely on your ability to make good decisions who you give the power to annihilate whole continents and whom not just like the rest of the normal people out there.
We live in interesting times.
You have copied the World War Z script's tenth man description word-for-word:
(If nine of us) "look at the same information and arrive at the exact same conclusion, it’s the duty of the tenth man to disagree. No matter how improbable it may seem, the tenth man has to start digging on the assumption that the other nine are wrong." [1]
[1] https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/world-war-z-transcript/...
And they copied it from research about the Yom Kippur War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
You know that in movies where the military is depicted they have consultants to mix fact with fiction, right?
Does the concept of the tenth man sound like fiction or something that is actually useful in a military context, Sherlock?
I told some people after I first saw the movie that it could have been named "the tenth man", and shared the concept. So I remembered the quote and the concept, and I notice it wherever it may nearly crop up.
Presumably your defensiveness (edit: and your downvote) is because you feel attacked. Not my intention, nor was it to associate an organizational concept with its presentation to tarnish it somehow. I think HN readers are pretty observant that fact and fiction are mixed in modern media. I didn't mean "copy" as in "borrowed", I just noticed it was word-for-word.
If I were to "Sherlock" a bit, I would presume you've been attacked before, since you tend to share longer comments, and we all know the more you say online, the more harshly diverse the viewpoints of responses will be. I wish that were not the case. Your comments seem to be detailed and thoughtful, which sadly invites more criticism in the current state of online commenting.
One thing you can do is assume the best intentions of a comment, and respond to that. HN encourages that.
I value your time and response and sharing your thoughts with me.
You make a few wrong assumptions and come to the wrong conclusions in some points. Others are valid.
I am not defensive, I just didn’t see the value in your comment and asked you to think about it. I could have done that in a more civil way, I’d like to apologize for that. That was a mistake.
Also I have never downvoted a single person on here as far as I am aware, because I don’t believe in suppressing other people’s thoughts, no matter how controversial or contrary they are to what I might think or believe.
I address them and sometimes I am wrong or even learn something new that will change my viewpoint. So every reply is valid and important input for me.
If I wrote in "military speech" half the people here would need a dictionary so I at least try to break complex concepts down to something everyone can understand.
The concept was probably explained to whoever wrote the script like I was taught how to explain it to people outside the military. And I think we can both agree that it’s a pretty good breakdown to explain the core concept in the least amount of words.
> One thing you can do is assume the best intentions of a comment, and respond to that. HN encourages that.
You’re right, but I have some bad days as well and when you are grumpy and have PTSD you’re not always the nicest person. You can be sure I am trying to work on that for the past twenty years and my snarky Sherlock remark wasn’t ok, if I look at it from the point that you meant well and just wanted to point out that the concept found its way into public mainstream via cinema.
I hope you accept my apology and I’ll try to do better next time.
Thanks James. Odd comment on my part, for sure. I completely left out any frame of reference. The precise wording just struck me.
Did you ever write a book or weblog?
I have written a book. It’s called The Last German Ghost.
It will be published post mortem one day to be butchered by a Trumpflix adoption. I want to be played by Melania Trump cementing my legacy as the wokest soldier to ever exist. LGBTomahawk+.
JK. Half the shit I’ve seen I don’t remember any longer, and not talking about the other half keeps me alive. I am spending my days making fun of idiots on here and perfecting my BBQ skills.
I’m glad if you enjoy my comments tho. Have a good day sir, or lady, or whatever you feel like today. o7