Battle Ready

was called a traitor and a turncoat by Pentagon officials. The personal attacks are painful, as I told those young midshipmen, but the photos of the casualties I see every day in the papers and on TV convince me not to shrink from the obligation to speak the truth.

Our obligation to tell the truth extends even to the media.

Over the past forty years, we have seen strange things happen with regard to the media. To be sure, there are few Ernie Pyles out there — great journalists who make combat come alive the way that the boots on the ground experience it — but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the media. It has the same percentages of good guys and bad guys as other fields.

Yet technology has changed things. The media are on the battlefield; the media are in your headquarters; the media are everywhere. And the media report everything — good and bad, warts and all. And everyone knows that the warts tend to make better stories. As a CINC, I was chewed out by seniors maybe five times; four of the five were about statements I’d made to the media. At that stage of my life, it didn’t really bother me — because where in hell did I go from there? But if you are a lieutenant or a captain and you see another officer get fried, you have a different reaction. The message is clear: “Avoid the media.” And the message hardens into a code: “They are the enemy. Don’t be straight with them.”

And that is bad. That is bad because we live in the Information Age. Battlefield reports are going to come back in real time, and they are going to be interpreted — with all sorts of subtle shadings and nuances — by the reporters and their news editors. But the relationship between the military and the media, which should be at its strongest right now, has bottomed out. It has begun to heal a little, but a lot more must be done. We need to rebuild a sense of mutual trust. My uncles in World War Two generally experienced a friendly press — with Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe cartoons and Ernie Pyle’s stories. The press then was part of the war effort. G.I. Joe was lionized and bad news was suppressed — if not by the military then by the media. The relationship generally remained positive through the Korean War, despite its ambiguities. But the relationship soured during and after Vietnam, for a number of reasons — not the least of which was mounting distrust of government by the media and the American people.

The military and the media need to regain the mutual trust that once existed. It will be hard, given the recent past and the speed and sophistication of today’s media technology, but it’s crucial to protecting one of our most cherished freedoms, while keeping vital operational information secure.

LEADERSHIP AND LIFE

You can’t lead unless you love those you lead. That’s principle number one. All other leadership principles flow out of it. Too much leadership training focuses on the leader and not enough on the led. Your charges are your family. In professions that are truly callings, you have to have that. In my profession, guys put everything on the line and can die for it. We have to care about these guys. They have to mean something to us. We must know what makes them tick; who they are; what they want and need; what motivates them.

I remember talking to Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia a few years ago. Before he became leader of his government, he was a fighting general in a twenty-year-long revolution. He knew his troops. They’d lived and fought together for two decades. One day during the fighting, his troops had to pass through a minefield, without any of the mechanical devices we use for our protection. He had no choice. He had to send troops ahead of everybody to find lanes. Many of them died, but his forces successfully made the passage.

When he told me the story, tears were in his eyes for the troops he’d lost. If you don’t or can’t feel that, then you shouldn’t lead.

The second principle is to know yourself. Few leaders are as good as they think they are. And commanders develop skills in finding measures of success that make them look good, such as body counts. What’s the real measure of success? You get it from truly understanding the conflict and by seeking feedback from the guys with boots on the ground. They’re there; they know. An ego can be bruised by feedback, but it’s critical truly to know how you stand as a leader. True leaders seek feedback regardless of the news. They learn from it.

All people come in three parts: body, mind, and spirit. No one is complete unless all three are developed and tended to. As a leader, you need to care for these in yourself and in those you lead.

Each leader needs a code to live by. That code can be formed by many factors. Our family, our schooling, our faith, our friends, and our calling in life can all be counted among those factors. My daughter once asked me what I would die for. I thought about that a lot before I answered her. I knew the answer would truly define me. I told her I would die for my faith, my family, my friends, my freedom, and my flag — the five “Fs,” a simplified expression of my code. But a code is worthless unless you live it. Words like integrity, ethics, honor, etc., need to be lived and not just uttered.

You never stop learning unless you decide to. I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. It is an obsession for me. My sources for learning are all around me. When I make a mistake or fail, I have to know why. I need to know what makes things and people tick. I am amazed at how much people miss by not observing the world around them with an open curiosity.

I have learned more from sergeants than I have from generals. The troops relate to a leader by testing him or her to see if they relate to them, to see if they’re open to them and listen to them. They want to know if they’re fundamentally honest with them. This is not a “buddy” thing. Leaders can’t be buddies with the led. But the troops want to be able to say: “I can talk to this captain. He listens.” If you don’t listen, they will be polite, but you can forget about their respect… or about getting the truth where the rubber meets the road. You want them to tell you: “Sir, this is not working.” Or: “It is working.” Or: “Yeah, it’s working okay, but it could be better.” When you know such truths, and can do something about them, that’s when you have real success.

I love to teach. It is a principal function of leadership.

My teaching philosophy is based on two principles. The first has to do with the mission of the teacher. His role is to provide the students with the facts and with a clear articulation of the varying views, opinions, and options on a given subject. His purpose, after he has provided this framework, is to then teach the students how to think and not what to think about the subject. You want to teach the student how to ask the questions that really count and not how to give answers that satisfy conventional wisdom and long-fossilized received opinions. If you know how to ask the right questions, the best answers usually follow… though it may take time.

The second principle deals with the foundation of thinking. It must have a set of values at its base. This requires teachers to emphasize the importance of a values-based thinking process without imposing personal interpretations of those values. The values will be more powerful in a student’s life and in his way of thinking, his decision making, and in how he defines his ethical code if he has discovered and defined them on his own.

The greatest enjoyment for a teacher is to see that moment of discovery or that moment of doubt that wasn’t there before, but now presents the student with a spur to reason.

Learning is guided discovery. The guide is the teacher. His scholarship provides the factual basis for the student’s journey of discovery; and his leadership, personal example, and mentoring skills provide the moral basis. A teacher’s competence, therefore, comes in two inseparable parts. He must be expert in his subject and he must be qualified in his leadership ability. Technical competence alone is not sufficient. Leading and teaching are synonymous. You cannot assume to do one without the other.

As a teacher, I strive to meet the obligations articulated in this philosophy. It requires me to develop in myself the mental, physical, and spiritual qualities I desire to impart and instill in my students.

As a young captain, I began writing down everything I believed about my profession. I expressed my beliefs, asked others to challenge them, and sought more insight into each of them. I continuously changed or altered them as a result.

Over time these dynamic beliefs settled into three categories: those that I was absolutely sure were right; those that I was pretty sure were right; and those that were up for grabs. It was an even split, with new ideas coming and some old ones going; they were in a constant state of morphing over time. I called these my “Combat Concepts.” To me they were a mechanism for continuous learning.