Gary Anderson
It was 2012 when I first realized that our current group of four star military leaders are largely inept at best and incompetent at worst. I was serving as a Department of State advisor in Afghanistan, and it became obvious that the four star American who commanded all NATO forces (ISAF) was either ignorant or willfully ignoring the fact that the Afghan Army would never be able to take over the war effort. Despite this, he was enthusiastically carrying out the Obama administration's "Afghanization" program which was transferring military responsibility for whole districts and provinces to Afghan Army control despite the actual situation on the ground. That's when I became convinced that we were losing the war. Nearly everyone realized this except the generals who were running it. While home on leave, I accepted an invitation from an old friend who was a high ranking Defense Department official to visit him at the Pentagon and give my impression of the war. When I expressed my pessimism, he was shocked. He had been receiving optimistic reports from the field.
As the decade progressed, this trend continued downhill. It became increasingly obvious that the senior officers of the Navy had lost control of their shipbuilding and ship repair programs and had no idea how to fix the problem. The dysfunction persists today. The recent ignominious return to home port of the USS Boxer just a few days after it had sailed and the problems aboard the aircraft carrier George Washington are emblematic of the dire situation.
The idiotic 2019 decision by the then Commandant of the Marine Corps to shift the focus of the Corps from that of a world-wide force in readiness to a China-centric anti ship organization was met with disbelief by the entire retired community. Dissent in the active duty ranks recently forced his successor to issue a gag order to the students at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College from criticizing the new doctrine.
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