Marine captain responds to JOs getting out

By Capt. Lindsay L. Rodman, USMC

Best Defense office of company-grade issues

I have been thinking a
lot lately about whether to leave the Marine Corps at the five-year mark. In response to "We're Getting Out of
the Marines"
-- I hope I can contextualize what many company grade officers (or "junior
officers") are facing. 

The problem with
anecdotal observation is that we all only have our own
experiences to draw from. If the lieutenant who wrote "We're Getting
Out of the Marines" is coming face-to-face with incompetence, in a short
four or five year career, how does he get a sense of whether that problem is
systemic?  Or how thoroughly it pervades?  One's experience is 100 percent
of their exposure, regardless of whether it represents the bottom
X percent.

I am career designated
and my commitment is up. I am taking note of every bad leader and every good
leader I come across. Everyone is an input into the final decision. I know that other top company grades/JOs are doing the same thing (if they have
not already decided to get out).

Anecdotally again, and
I understand that this is flawed analysis, it really feels like my most
qualified and competent peers are getting out. I look at the lists of who
is still in (at five years), and the glaring holes are the most intelligent and
self-possessed of my cohort. That is not true for everyone, but the
percentage of those who are still in is dwarfed by the number of those that
have left -- and that number continues to rise.

I don't know what I'm
going to do. I don't really want to be anything other than a Marine, so
for the time being, unless something crazy happens, I'll stay. But I also
fear what the future brings, when our current ranks feel like they are being
gutted.

I was recently
forwarded the following link by Phil Carter: http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg94185.html. It is an
eerily-similar string of discussion regarding essentially the same cast of
characters, including the disillusioned company grade and his decision to get
out. Phil's and other sentiments I have read from ten years ago are
humbling and have really made an impression on me. We all think our own
experiences are novel, and that no one could possibly understand what we
currently face. Obviously, not true for me and my peers. I have no
doubt that the current company grade/JO perspective is similar, if not directly
analogous, to what company grades/JOs have faced for decades. In some
ways, though, that is more cause for concern - why have we been complacent for
decades? And why are we resigned to that complacency now, when we may
have a window of opportunity (more societal interest in preserving competency
in the military than in the ‘90s, fewer distractions than in the ‘00s) for change? We have known forever that this bureaucracy needs better meritocratic policies,
and better quality management at the field grade level (and I read a good book
lately on similar concerns with respect to generalship).

I hope these concerns
don't fall on deaf ears because they resonate -- that seems
problematic. Rather, I'd hope that they would provoke a desire for
change. There is a lot of misfiring when it comes to incentive programs,
graduate school, bonuses, promotion systems, etc., that could be used in a
targeted fashion to improve retention rates at the top.

Capt. Rodman is a judge
advocate currently stationed at Headquarters, Marine Corps.  She has been
in the Marine Corps for nearly five years, serving in Okinawa, Afghanistan, and
the Pentagon.  She is a graduate of Duke University (AB '03), Harvard Law
School (JD '07) and the Kennedy School of Government (MPP '07). The views presented here are her
own and do not represent those of the Marine Corps or the Department of
Defense.