Friday, April 12, 2013

Chopper Pilot as Bureaucrat

Tom Ricks' The Best Defense has a post entitled "A Military Genre: a List of the Hard-Won Wisdom of Combat Helicopter Pilots.

You might say there's no way a pilot and a bureaucrat have anything in common, and you'd be almost right.  But don't you think these bits apply?

"6. Decisions made by someone above you in the chain-of-command will seldom be in your best interest.

10. If everything is as clear as a bell, and everything is going exactly as planned, you're about to be surprised. 

14. If the rear echelon troops are really happy, the front line troops probably do not have what they need.

34. Nobody cares what you did yesterday or what you are going to do tomorrow. What is important is what you are doing -- NOW -- to solve our problem.  "

Some of the other items are specific applications of Murphy's Law.

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