Last week, an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel did an amazing thing: he publicly castigated an entire group of serving officers for their collective leadership failures. "As matters stand now," wrote Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in the Armed Forces Journal, "a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." 

In and of themselves, Yingling's remarks were not unique.  They mirror the sentiment of thousands of military personnel who have served in Iraq.  Yingling later commented that his remarks received "almost universal approval" among enlisted men, company-grade officers, and his own peers.

But in professional military circles, the article — which begins with a quote about officers amusing themselves with "God knows what buffooneries" — could be the equivalent of a suicide bomb.  Yingling's willingness to take his critique public was a bold move that some say could cross the line of insubordination. 

"He might get sent to Adak, Alaska for the rest of his career," commented one military officer in an online discussion forum for national security professionals.  Adak is a remote outpost that is not seen in the Army as a career-enhancing duty station.

Although professional critiques are common in service-specific publications like the Armed Forces Journal, Naval Institute Proceedings, or the Marine Corps Gazette, Yingling's broadside was noteworthy.  Effectively, Yingling said that Generals Tommy Franks, Richard Myers, and Peter Pace — and others like them—were the moral equivalent of failed leaders like Civil War-era general George McClellan, whom Lincoln fired after his battlefield missteps.

Yingling, who is a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war, said on National Public Radio that a Purple Heart ceremony he attended inspired the article.  "It occurred to me that these soldiers have performed heroically, but that military officers had not done their part," he said.  "My critique is not of individual performances, but of the entire system that produces our senior leaders."

A deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Lt. Col. Yingling is a close colleague of Col. H.R. McMaster, whose success as a commander in counterinsurgency in Tal Afar, Iraq, was trumpeted by President Bush as one of the main success stories in 2005. 

Col. McMaster also wrote Dereliction of Duty, a book about the failure of the general officer corps to challenge civilian leadership during the Vietnam era.  Yingling’s article is already being favorably compared by junior military personnel as this generation’s version of McMaster’s book.

In his interview with NPR, Yingling could only name one general officer whom he felt had lived up to the responsibility of telling the American people what resources would be necessary to win the war in Iraq: Gen. Eric Shinseki.  In 2002, Shinseki told Congress that it would take "several hundred thousand soldiers" to stabilize postwar Iraq.  Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said that estimate was "wildly off the mark."

For his candor and honesty, the Defense Department rewarded Gen. Eric Shinseki by sending him into early retirement.  We can only hope that Lt. Col. Paul Yingling will not suffer the same fate.  The Army needs more officers like him.

Read Lt. Col. Yingling's essay here.