The Pentagon should remember the value of professional dissent

Professional dissent can drive innovation and offer differing points of view for the leadership of the institutions in which we serve and work. It is especially important for military institutions tasked with fighting wars and expending the nation’s blood and treasure through conflict.

Today, there is reportedly a fear that exists within the U.S. Department of Defense. Highly qualified officers are being pulled off of promotion lists for vague and unclear reasons. Army senior leaders have been fired for reportedly not aligning themselves with the ideological aims and culture wars of current Defense Department leadership.

The ripple effect is that this fear can inhibit dissent within the American military, especially because it needed today during the U.S conflict against Iran.

For a time in my career, I was a prominent critic of the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency doctrine and of U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. From 2007 to 2013, I wrote commentaries and gave public speeches and lectures to military and civilian audiences directed at the U.S. Army and Department of Defense.

As a serving Army officer, I was careful to stay within my lane. I did not question policy decisions made by American presidents in both wars, such as President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and then stay and occupy the country for eight years or President Obama’s decision to “surge” additional troops into Afghanistan in 2012.   

Still, it was clear that my efforts during those years ruffled a lot of........

© The Hill