I read today’s New York Times piece about the difficulties the services are having with peeling off smart officers to focus on Afghanistan/Pakistan. Didn’t really know what to add to it. Starbuck does:

Let me start with a hypothetical situation. You are a battalion commander and you have roughly a dozen captains serving in your battalion. You are asked to give up one captain for a very important job on a high-level staff. You look across your formation and see your company commanders–four or five of them. Obviously, you need your company commanders, so you don’t yank them out of their commands into a division staff job–that would look eerily too much like relieving someone of command. Additionally, you have a few captains on your staff that might be free to go to this job, but you’ll probably want a few of them to take command of a company in your battalion in the near future as well. Then, you realize that you have a captain within your ranks who might have gotten a DUI or fraternized with an enlisted girl.

The perfect choice.

Now that is explanatory journalism. I’m going to be at a thing with Adm. Mullen tomorrow. Let’s see if I can ask him about this.