The Real Reason For The Poor State Of Military Morale
The Real Reason For The Poor State Of Military Morale by Carl Forsling, Task & Purpose
… For the most part, the recent downward turn in morale can’t be laid on deployment schedules, either. Some units still have intensive deployment schedules. On an individual basis, some service members also have very high operational tempos, but on the whole, the pace of deployments has declined since the days of the Iraq surge. Only a few years ago, leaders were worried that the pace of deployment would break the morale of the force. Now that deployments have decreased, the worry is that morale is suffering for want of a mission. Service members complain about deployments, but they also complain when they don’t deploy. Deployments are a factor in poor morale, but they aren’t the driving force behind today’s military anomie.
The key factor is senior leadership that has not kept faith with its troops. The rest of the force that doesn’t live within the Washington, D.C., beltway feels that it is being ridden hard and put back wet so that the generals and admirals can claim success before civilian leaders in Congress and the White House. They have come to believe that they are expendable…
