James Joyner writes:

Pentagon Fort Hood Massacre Review Finds Nothing New

Most obviously, the DoD will have to figure out how to get commanders, who have been socialized over the last two decades or more to avoid drawing attention to racial, ethnic, religious differences to have the courage to report suspicious behavior up the ranks — and to do so without creating a command climate that feels hostile to devout Muslims who are loyal soldiers.

A major challenge, though, is that there is a strong element of “social promotion” nowadays. Whereas promotion to O-4 (Major) used to be in the 80% range, now over 95% of eligible O-3s get the bump. It was 97% in 2008. I don’t have 2009 numbers in front of me. Given that he was in psychiatry, there was basically almost no oversight of a guy like him.

Without a real forcing function, like a real decision about getting a command or getting a competitive promotion, you simply can’t expect any organization to develop powerful oversight and vetting procedures.

This is, btw, an unintended consequence of Iraq/Afghanistan. We’re so desperate to keep people in that we’ve weakened weeding out mechanisms throughout the process. We recruit people we wouldn’t have in the past. We don’t wash out as many from basic. We social promote up to O-4. We’re now in a situation where an officer can get to O-5 just by sticking around.

And I don’t mean to belittle the accomplishments and sacrifices of the vast majority of our officers, but the reality is that we’re not culling much at all until very late in the game, and if you’re not making choices, there is very little incentive to closely track individuals.  And if you’re not tracking, you won’t notice suspicious behavior, much less report it.