What bothers him most about today’s military, he goes on to say, is careerism. It has eroded the other services, he warns, and is creeping into the C… - Thomas E. Ricks

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What bothers him most about today’s military, he goes on to say, is careerism. It has eroded the other services, he warns, and is creeping into the Corps. The only thing you should worry about, he tells the assembled second lieutenants, is taking care of your people. In fact, he recommends adding one new little box to the officer evaluation reports: It would say, Does this officer care more about his career than about his troops? A “yes”mark would terminate that officer’s career.

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About Thomas E. Ricks

Thomas Edwin "Tom" Ricks (born September 25, 1955) and is a member of the Center for a New American Security, a defense policy think tank. Ricks lectures widely to the military and is a member of Harvard University's Senior Advisory Council on the Project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. Ricks is the author of several nonfiction books including Making the Corps (1997); the bestselling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (2006) and its follow-up, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008 (2009); the bestselling First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (2020); and Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 (2022).

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Also Known As

Alternative Names: Thomas Ricks Thomas Edwin Ricks

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