The longer a government operation is in operation... the seemingly less efficient it gets.
This is really true about any organization that grows large enough to have significant bureaucratic overhead, whether it is a car company, and aircraft company, a Department of Education or Defense. One of the major differences is there is a mechanism that will shrink the car company or aircraft company.
Unless they are owned by the Government, of course. The government doesn't have to convince people to buy stock, they just stick a metaphoric gun in your face (or if you disagree too vehemently, a real gun) and take some money from you, generally without saying thank you, and pass it on to some favored class, like, oh, union members. Well, union leadership, really.
Generally, the closer you are to where the actual work gets done, the fewer resources you get, as the inverted pyramid weighs down upon you.
Compare:
Still, building the big sprawling bases hasn't been the way of success in previous counter-insurgency and nation-building efforts.
Like Bill said when I asked him if this looked familiar:
This is why they should recall us gruff old retirees to run this stuff. Been there, done that, can't get promoted as a recalled retiree, therefore don't give a shit about the politics. Just get the fargin' job done so we can go home and go back to collecting a check for simply breathing. We have a better incentive than some young buck who still dreams of being a General. He should be in the field, anyway, not at a base camp.
This is really true about any organization that grows large enough to have significant bureaucratic overhead, whether it is a car company, and aircraft company, a Department of Education or Defense. One of the major differences is there is a mechanism that will shrink the car company or aircraft company.
Unless they are owned by the Government, of course. The government doesn't have to convince people to buy stock, they just stick a metaphoric gun in your face (or if you disagree too vehemently, a real gun) and take some money from you, generally without saying thank you, and pass it on to some favored class, like, oh, union members. Well, union leadership, really.
Generally, the closer you are to where the actual work gets done, the fewer resources you get, as the inverted pyramid weighs down upon you.
Compare:
...and contrast:Infantrymen Maintain Austere Base in Afghanistan
By Army Staff Sgt. Marcos Alices
Special to American Forces Press Service
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Aug. 6, 2009 - U.S. forces in Afghanistan are spread throughout the desert, countryside and mountainous terrain at small forward operating bases.
Soldiers with 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, lay concertina wire to improve security at Forward Operating Base Baylough in the Deh Chopan district of Afghanistan's Zabul province. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Elisebet Freeburg
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.
At Forward Operating Base Baylough, infantrymen from 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, are tasked with patrolling the Hindu Kush Mountains in the Deh Chopan district of Afghanistan's Zabul province. Along with that mission, they also maintain and operate Baylough.
"We are pretty self-sustaining, so we have to do everything ourselves," said Army Sgt. 1st Class Stephen Carney, a platoon sergeant from Norwood, Mass.
The regiment has maintained Baylough since 2006. The soldiers rotate daily duties and patrol missions among the squads using a three-day cycle. Daily duties can include anything from cleaning common areas and burning trash to filling generators with fuel. In Baylough, a soldier is more than an infantryman; he is a carpenter, mechanic and handyman.
"[Life is] simple," said Army Staff Sgt. Jason Gaulke, an indirect fire infantryman from Buffalo Lake, Minn. "You wake up and do your missions or chores."
And... witness, from someone who is *in* Afghanistan, and sent this note in reference to the second linked article:Barracks and Burger King: U.S. Builds a Supersized Base in Afghanistan
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan -- Anyone who thinks the Afghanistan troop "surge" is a temporary, one-time deal should watch the construction here of a vast new $17 million barracks building.
It's not temporary. It's three stories of concrete.
Eight years after American forces scattered the Taliban and effectively conquered Afghanistan, the United States is embarked on a frenzied $220 million building campaign at this sprawling and still expanding military air base. Just to meet the base's demand for fresh concrete, it has two of its own cement factories working full time.
There's plenty of guessing these days about whether Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, will recommend a large troop increase here, and if so, how many, and if he does, whether President Obama will agree. But perhaps the construction of the new troop barracks, and permanent new facilities such as water treatment plants, headquarters buildings, fuel farms and power generating plants says more about the size and duration of this war than any White House press conference or Pentagon power-point presentation.
When I first visited this war-battered former Soviet base in January 2002, the military was erecting canvas tents for incoming troops. Infantrymen of the 10th Mountain Division were hammering together plywood outhouses; hot showers were a cruel rumor, and the few buildings left intact from the Mujaheddin war with the Russians were getting a cursory remodeling (i.e., windows).
"Low profile" was the directive coming down from Washington, senior officers told me then. That meant no big construction. Wartime living conditions. Nothing could be built that couldn't be turned over to and used by the Afghans themselves in a year or two, they vowed. Mornings, we shaved outdoors.
Well, that was then.
Today, Bagram sports a Burger King and Pizza Hut, five mess halls, and living quarters for 20,000 people (so far), office spaces for the command, Joint Task Force-82, and for dozens of other headquarters and agencies. A well-stocked PX sells everything from potato chips to vacuum cleaners.
Bill, the Auld Soldier, and many of the Vietnam and Korea generations may be having some flashbacks right now. It's a 24-hour operation, to be sure, which means there are off-shift people doing off-shift things.I am currently at Bagram. I got here yesterday after flying up from Kabul and my team was put into a "transient" tent originally used as a place for those going to and from leave from TF Phoenix to stay for a day or two. There were never more than a few dozen at a time occupying space here. Typically about 20 - 25. There are at least a hundred in here now.
This tent is set up for approximately 120 now, and has denizens who have been stuck in here for weeks with no end in sight. There are only a couple of feet separating double bunks from each other. For three such tents there are four toilets for each gender and four showers for each.
That's not per tent. That's total.
Conditions here are miserable. Just across the street are two story tall conex condos while these people live not in Army tents, but tents the residents call "wedding tents," tents you might expect a carnival company to set up on the church lawn as a seating are to eat barbecue in the shade. Large evaporative coolers blow moderately cooled air into one end of the wedding tents, and when the wind blows hard the top gaps away from the side curtains to which it is not attached.
It does have a plywood floor. As you may know, Pakistani plywood is all ISO-9000 certified, ensuring absolutely uniform shittiness. The B-huts exhibit the same integrity as you walk about what has become quite the slum; Bagram.
The fact that you can find hundreds of people, wearing PT uniforms and often armed, walking unconcernedly along Bagram's Disney Drive during any daylight hour is a testimony to the utility of each of them.
"Don't you people have jobs?" I wonder to myself as I pass among them.
Bagram has always been the freak show of Afghanistan, but this is ridiculous. And, like any city, it now has it's forgotten, lost and screwed.
Only 7% of these people ever leave the wire.
But, given our awesome support system and the wonderful efficacy of aerial transportation in this country, it's clearly worth it.
Not.
Again, I can't figure out what many of these people do. I'd say we've created a hub for those who will fill ears with manufactured wartime experiences for at least a generation.
This is NOT Afghanistan.
Still, building the big sprawling bases hasn't been the way of success in previous counter-insurgency and nation-building efforts.
Like Bill said when I asked him if this looked familiar:
Oh, yes, indeedy.
It's Long Binh, except there are females...
This is why they should recall us gruff old retirees to run this stuff. Been there, done that, can't get promoted as a recalled retiree, therefore don't give a shit about the politics. Just get the fargin' job done so we can go home and go back to collecting a check for simply breathing. We have a better incentive than some young buck who still dreams of being a General. He should be in the field, anyway, not at a base camp.
Amen, brother! Preach it John! Preach it!
And please to let me know where and when to report.... :)