Very interesting perspective into the shortcomings of our military system. The article is worth reading through, but in summary: The author suggests that our drawn-out, meandering wars are the result of a perverse incentive system among the higher ranks of the military. Leaders are not rewarded for successes or, perhaps more importantly, punished for their shortcomings and failures. Instead, they are given short, time-limited appointments in leadership roles, which changes the goal from military success to simply ensuring that nothing too bad happens on their watch. Likewise, these time-limited roles result in a diffusion of success, where everyone can claim that progress was at least partially due to some of their own actions.
Perhaps the most succinct explanation from the article:
But the Army continues to do too little to sort the average performers from the
outstanding ones. That has long-term consequences for the caliber of military
leaders. A recent survey by students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
found that good young officers have left the military in large part because of
frustration with military bureaucracy and the sense that the armed forces do
not have a performance-oriented system for managing personnel.
I've never been involved in the military, but I feel as though this perverse incentive structure is common among many businesses as well. Most big companies I've worked with have a few obviously incompetent employees in leadership positions, but harbor an unwillingness to demote or fire them because they've "earned" their position through hard work and loyalty to the company. Taken to the extreme, this is the famous "Peter Principle," which suggests that employees will continue to be promoted until they reach a position beyond their abilities, at which point they languish in mediocrity. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle )