erislover:
Well, diversity of opinion is welcome and wanted in the military. The chain of command works both ways. It’s the foolish Captain or lieutenant indeed who does not seek input and advice from his sargents. The Sargents lseek input from their squad leaders, who in turn seek advice and input from their ASLs (assistant squad leaders.) It’s true that it’s assumed the rest of the squad is too stupid to communicate anything meaningful, but ideally the ASL will pick it up if a nugget of value surfaces. Majors listen to their Captain’s. Colonel’s listen to Majors and Generals listen to Colonels.
The idea is that there is supposed to be a flow of information and advice that goes both ways.
The rub is that the command structure is well-defined. That is, if your sargent tells you to dig a hole, you really can’t refuse. In fact, the situations in which you can refuse an order from a superior are few.
But, most of the time, there’s not a lot of micromanagement.
It’s a lot like a corporation. Initiative and judgement within rigid parameters.
Certainly you don’t think a Corporation seeks to stifle diversity.
Within a military task force, there is purposefully a lot of diversity, among skillsets and specialties with some having more initiative and control than others.
For example, on my father’s firts tour of Vietnam as a recon Marine he was a Forward Observer. He would be taked with taking out certain targets. How he did it, was his judgement. He would choose his own location for a reconaissance point to view the target based on the situation. He would then perform calculations and direct fire from ships as much as 100 miles away. After each salvo he would correct until he hit the target. In such a circumstance, though my father was only a PFC at the time, he essentially commanded the actions of an entire battleship, which fired according to his direction.
The whole point of the command structure is to put the decision making ability in the hands of the person who needs to make the decisions, and to hold that person accountable for them.
Now sure, he had orders he had to follow, but the broad strokes of the tasks he had to perform were his to decide. My father was essentially his own man.
A fire team is completely different. Such an entity will consist of a group of individuals who strive to attack together in total harmony, like a football team. Their jobs and actions are highly regimented, but like a football player, he is expected to be flexible and react on his own initiative to a changing situation in concert with his fellows.
During his second tour as a Sniper, my father essentially lived seperately from the rest of the Marines in his group, moved seperately and acted almost entirely on his own initiative. He was not accountable to the lieutenant or sargent of a platoon he was tasked to support. It was assumed that he knew the limits and parameters of his job better than they, though they were in constant communication.
A flyer is a very different breed from a grunt.
Religious and personal beleifs are respected within the military with a few exceptions.
I would honestly say that diversity is the rule in the military.
On the other hand, I think I know what you are trying to talk about, and let me see if I can define it better. In many areas of the military standardization is something that is striven for. It is expected that a well-trained specialist will perform his task in identical fashion to another well-trained specialist.
But, I don’t think it works as a negative towards diversity. Any well-trained specialist has his own style. For example, as a forward observer, my father chose not to carry a firearm under the belief that if he fired it while in hostile territory with people seeking him out, he might as well be shooting it at his own head. Other Forward Observers thought he was nuts.
My father also chose oddly in his observation locations. He tried to choose a location where he had a terrible view of the target, because the enemy would tend to search for him in locations that afforded a good view of the target. Instead he sought a post with an excellent view of a location at the same elevation and a defined distance from the target and a a poor secondary view of the target itself. He would direct the opening salvos at the location he had a good view of, and when he had that location boxed it was a simple calculation to redirect to the actual target.
Again, he did this on his own initiative and it was controversial, but it was his call. It was controversial because the theory was that by adding an extra variable it would take longer to take out the actual target increasing the danger of being discovered. My father disagreed and thought that the target of the opening salvos was moot, and that any delay would be justified by the better hiding spot which would enable him to be less likely to be discovered, thus increasing his chances of success.
That’s just an example.
However, any time standards are needed diversity is a poor thing, and I think that’s what you’re getting at. For example the diversity among our standards of measurement here in the US is a major detriment. We don’t need multiple standards and there is no advantage to having both a metric and an English system of measurement as anybody that owns a socket set will tell you. Nor does it help us to have both Farenheight and Celsius as measurement systems. Any time you are trying to judge something, diversity of methods is a negative. You want judgement to be standardized.
Is that what you going for?
