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We are limited by our infrastructure; we tend to react to incidents more than generate advantages. Our evolution to hyper-economic military strategic principles has reduced our tactical efficiency, to, at best, a misdirected belief in the power of economics through industrial creativity.

An unprecedented reality is unfolding within our military social infrastructure: malignancy of intent and a necessity for the material, leading to dependency and a diseased tactical coping strategy.

As a military, we are unwittingly submitting to a psycho-cultural platform that seduces and acculturates desired excess and industrial dependency, creating emotional and structural dissonance, leaving a fractured soldier who is increasingly impotent to intrinsic growth and extrinsic interpretation. In short, we need to spend a lot more time cultivating a command structure that allows for and emulates the values consistent within its diverse population.

It’s forged within this population that the mightiest tactical fluidity is found, and it is within this formation that asymmetrical deliverance will be realized. If we agree that diversity is the fundamental necessity for living systems, then we should agree that our institution stands to have the greatest opportunity for success.

We have this potential, but we have not fully realized this potential. Our inability to engage our enemy or host nation’s cultural dispositions admits such structural inefficiency. Such offense needs to be directed from depth and within those who have the ability to engage asymmetrically, diversely.

A reliance on economy and industry to meet our challenges is no longer an option; it is going to take depth within the character of our leaders to deliver us; social leadership that acknowledges the reality of our strategic situation: that our own inequities, not the strength of our enemies, are preventing us from fully engaging our tactical environment.

Cpl. Andrew PruittForward Operating Base Kalsu, Iraq

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