Stuart Scheller: Military Leadership Promotion Is Based on Pleasing Your Boss, Not Performance

Marine veteran Stuart Scheller, the lieutenant colonel who was fired and jailed after calling for accountability from military leaders for the Afghanistan withdrawal, said today’s military leaders are promoted based on pleasing their bosses, not performance.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Scheller discussed his new book Crisis of Command: How We Lost Trust and Confidence in America’s Generals and Politicians and what he learned about the military promotion system during his 17 years in the Marine Corps.

He said in the corporate world, where the bottom line is profit, failing leaders are replaced. But in the government, they have to be grown from inside the system and are promoted based on how much they please their bosses and not based on performance.

“What happens in all these government institutions is that you realize you have to impress your boss and if that boss has a focus that’s anything other than the foundational principles of the institution, then you learn through your career that you just have to please your boss. And what it does over time is it conditions people to not focus on the core values of the institution,” he said.

“And so my theory, in the military at least, if I’m an infantry officer, I should go against another infantry officer, and it should be a performance game. If I’m an F-15 pilot, same thing. Let’s go through an F-15 course and the best pilot is the one that gets preferential treatment for promotion, not the pilot who got the highest subjective evaluation from their boss,” he said.

He said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley were examples of leaders who are focused on pleasing their boss, President Joe Biden, versus focusing on core military values.

Obviously our leaders have the wrong focus. I mean, Lloyd Austin came into office while the Russians were staging on the border of Ukraine. We were trying to withdraw from one of the longest wars in American history. And after 100 days in office, he said he did problem-framing and decided COVID was the biggest threat to the DoD followed by extremism. Like obviously his priorities are skewed,” Scheller said.

“Fighting should be the focus at all times. And obviously you need a Secretary of Defense to manage that. And Mark Milley is the same thing, [he’s talking] not only ‘white rage,’ he’s talking about climate control. ‘Hey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, like your job is to advise on military policy winning wars like climate control is not in your wheelhouse,’ but the reason they do that is because they’re people-pleasing, for all the reasons I just described,” he said

“They get conditioned that they have to give their boss what they want. And they’re looking at their politicians and they’re seeing that, you know, equal opportunity or climate control or white rage are important topics, so they need to talk about it. And what they should be doing is protecting the values of the institution in which they lead,” he added.

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