An open letter to Paul Shelton, in response to "Vietnam—We Must Have Been Absent That Day"

Time magazine Sept 26 article "Chasing the Ghosts" (cover is "Is it too late to win the war?")

I just read this, having been preoccupied by the hurricane stories earlier in the week.

Of course many will dismiss it as one-sided naysaying by malcontents and "America haters". Damn, how I despise that particular bit of demagoguery - if you criticize or question anything the zealots do or say, you are anti-American. You hate democracy. Exactly when were Rush Limbaugh and Ralph Reed granted monopoly rights to the definition of an American?

Anyway, back to the article. Juxtaposed with the debacle w/New Orleans and your VN article, it dramatizes so chillingly the fact that we have turned decision-making and planning over to complete incompetents that I am, once again, apoplectic. And frankly, apoplexy is getting tiring. Of course it's easy to discount criticism as 20/20 hindsight, to explain away specific missteps. No question about it, Katrina devastated NO, and no amount of planning and rapid-response mentality could have undone that. And they can all point fingers and say "someone else was supposed to get the busses" or "someone else was supposed to...". Pinning blame on anyone is nigh impossible and unproductive anyway.

In my career I have had pretty intimate contact with a lot of companies and agencies, large and small (mostly large). I made an observation back in the late 60's that has been validated repeatedly to me time and again.

Organizations have a personality, and it flows from the top.

Despite all our pride in our individuality, self-determination, freedom of choice, etc, when it come to the workplace, human organizations are like ant colonies. One queen and a bunch of workers and drones.

In the ant world, some species are tradesmen (carpenter ants), some are warriors (army ants), some are farmers (leaf-cutter ants), and so on. The colony has the persona of the queen. In ants, it is genetic; the entire colony are offspring of the single queen, so the analogy is not exact. But the phenomenon is palpable. Corporations, government agencies, military units, charitable organizations, football teams - they all take on the personality of the leader. And it does not take long.

When I started working for Southern Railway System, the "old school" president D. W. Brosnan was in power. Brosnan ruled through fear. He was a bully. He was famous for firing people who crossed him. I heard one story that a train crew coupled up to his office car while he was shaving, and did a rough job of it, evidently jolting him. He stepped out on the platform and fired everyone in sight (omitting the engineer and train crew themselves, who were not in sight, and union employees anyway). This atmosphere pervaded SRS. A general atmosphere of 'you'd better watch your back - it doesn't matter whether you are right, or doing a good job - what matters is LOOKING like you're right, so someone else will get the axe'. Make no mistake about it - Mr. B's leadership had a profound positive effect on SRS' very survival, and the rail industry as a whole. A lot of good progress was made in the Brosnan era - SRS was a leader in many innovative ways, both technical and business, some downright revolutionary. But few people were happy working for SRS. Loyal, yes; committed, yes; happy? Not likely. You visited a freight agency to get some information about a defective car you needed to examine, you got the info, but were treated like some sort of spy - given only the exact info you asked for, and rarely a hello or handshake in greeting. And that is what I am talking about here - the organizational "personality". SRS people were innovators, but were surly. There was no frivolity; friendly non-business conversation was limited to people who knew each other well while "off the premises". Maybe not exclusively, but that was certainly the trend.

Mr. B. was finally relieved of power by a special meeting of the Board of Directors just before Christmas in 1967. I was a co-op student working at corporate headquarters in Washington, DC. Word came out late in the afternoon one day - someone came into the drafting room and said Mr. B. had been relieved, and W. Graham Claytor was the new president. Claytor was a relative unknown to the rank and file; he was Vice-President, Law, a role most of us in the operations and mechanical departments didn't come in contact with, and he'd only worked for SRS for less than four years. To a lot of us it was "who???" So the news about Mr. B. was received with some trepidation - "ok, now what are we in for?"

When I got to work the next morning, the two-story lobby of the HQ building was largely filled by a beautifully decorated Christmas tree that nearly reached the ceiling. There were decorations on the railings of the loft-style second floor. The elevator operators all had Christmas corsages. And they were SMILING!

The entire company was abuzz all day. I was asked several times during the day (company private phone network - no email back then) by people in remote locations "is it true? What does it look like? Was there any announcement?" It is hard to fathom such a gesture being so significant to an entire organization. But from that day forward, the demeanor on SRS was different. It was palpable. The very same individuals who had been running scared, afraid to stick their necks out, afraid to show a human side, became different people. Sure, there were plenty of old-school folks still around, and things didn't become rosy. But the atmosphere changed. People became human. Of course it wasn't just the tree - that was only a symbol of a new era - Claytor's leadership style was what went on to solidify the change over the next several years.  

Since then, I have worked directly for several large companies, and a couple of small ones. In a consulting role I have had the opportunity to see many more companies "on the inside" by working onsite, alongside the "regulars". It has been proven to me time and again. An organization is what the leaders make it. It is hard to believe something as large as the US Government could flip a switch from bad to good to bad by a mere change of administrations. But the way our system works, when we elect one party to the Presidency, that party then fills the top spots in all parts of the government. DOD takes on Rumsfeld's persona; State takes on Powell's, then Rice's. The careerists do what they are told, just like the ants.

Astonishingly, people can switch from being carpenter ants to being army ants with the flip of a switch. People are interested in self-preservation, first and foremost. They may feel that the launch should be scrubbed due to the cold weather, or that maybe we ought to be staging relief supplies and personnel for the coming hurricane, but generally speaking, if they are not specifically assigned to make a decision, they keep their heads down and follow the leader.  You don't want Mr. B. to come out on the platform and fire you, so you keep your head down and make sure it will be somebody else.

It is unclear how truly influential GWB is on his own and how much is a pass-through from the people who got him elected in the first place. What is clear is that the sanctity of (human) life and profits for oil companies drive almost every policy decision in every facet of this government. Science is thrown out the window. Logic is thrown out the window. Preserving a couple of cells frozen somewhere that will absolutely NEVER be permitted to mature into a human being takes precedence over something like preserving the ecology of the Brazilian rainforest, which in turn controls the world's largest river, which flows into the Atlantic and influences the oceanic currents, which include the Gulf Stream, which controls Northern Europe's climate. The rationale? Using those cells for research that might lead to cures for horrible diseases would set a precedent that would lead to cloning of human beings, euthanasia of human beings, etc. So one doomsday scenario is ignored in favor of another. Which is right? It doesn't matter. The ones in power get to choose.  

Drilling for oil  in the Alaskan Wildlife preserve is essential  to "improving our energy independence". Huh?  It will take ten years at least for any oil from there to enter the supply. It will last a finite period of time. Then we'll be back where we started, with an unknown amount of damage to that particular ecosystem. But gee, there are lots of companies in Texas with no new places to drill, and if there were a handy place to do that, then money would flow from the big oil companies to the exploration companies, and why should just the few big companies be reaping all the windfall profits from the escalation in crude prices? Particularly since more and more of them are foreign owned nowadays. Why not create a convenient vehicle to pass it around? Back to Texas. Some government funding might be needed too; after all they are going to need roads, airports, etc. And the sharing of the wealth will occur DURING those ten years. What a happy scenario!"

This government is like an ant colony with a genetically defective queen. It does stupid things, justifies them, does more stupid things. A large portion of the population is programmed to believe they must be doing the right thing, deny evidence to the contrary, and call anyone who offers it un-American.

The Time article could easily be called one-sided. It paints an incredibly bleak picture. It doesn't say much about the dedication of the troops in harm's way, nor their families. It would be very easy to say it demeans their efforts, discounts their sacrifices. One of the painful lessons of Viet Nam is that the tendency to oversimplify and "choose sides" gets in the way of reasonable discourse (hey, you're a carpenter ant and I'm an army ant, I am going to kill you). The article will be read by many who will believe its underlying thesis (that the Iraq war has been conducted incompetently), and by many who will not. It will receive either an "A" or an "F", depending on what type of ant you are.

The same thing was true during Viet Nam. The polarization was obscene. That ANYONE got the idea that persecuting the returning troops was in any way appropriate was an obscenity. Our society's general lack of awareness of what our troops are facing daily is another obscenity. Hiding the coffins is an obscenity. The difference between the incompetence of Viet Nam and the incompetence today is that the rulers today are smarter at PR. "Spinning" the news is a science developed as a result of Viet Nam. And somehow our news media have been co-opted to give them a pass. How is it that we can spend millions for years to probe a President's admittedly seamy private behavior, but just gloss over the fact that a President's top advisor, not even an elected official, intentionally "outs" a CIA operative as retribution for her husband (accurately) disagreeing with the "spin" being used to support starting a war? In fact, we accept that same individual being appointed to oversee reconstruction after the hurricane. Just how much of the radical right's agenda will be insinuated into THAT big, unregulated government program, with its no-bid contracts?

Sadly, what we have is a complete polarization: one colony of army ants marching through Iraq, the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, rights to privacy, and whatever else is in the way of their narrow world view, driven by a small set of "issues" they have determined are all that matters to the future of life as we know it , and another colony of ants whose nest has just been unearthed, running around in all directions with no particular purpose or agenda. So it doesn't matter whether the army ants are right; they just use Orwellian logic to redefine the truth, and march on. And we keep sending kids to Iraq, and we still won't fund reconstruction of coastal wetlands.

Is there any limit to our gullibility?

To the close of your article: "We didn't learn one damned thing."

May I add: "But they did!"

dbciii
9/25/05