Stunning news on a non promotion

Small Wars Journal Blog:

Peter Principle: A colloquial principle of hierarchiology, stated as "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in his 1968 book The Peter Principle, the principle pertains to the level of competence of the human resources in a hierarchical organization. The principle explains the upward, downward, and lateral movement of personnel within a hierarchically organized system of ranks.

Matt Bennett writes in Third Way Dispatch (The Peter Pandemic Takes Its Toll: H.R. McMaster is Passed Over) of a type of reverse Peter Principle where genuinely gifted and brilliant public servants who are kept far below the level to which they should ascend.

... There are, no doubt, scores of such talents in the federal bureaucracy, held down from their rightful rise by political calculation, petulance or oversight. But one recent and egregious example is the Pentagon’s failure to promote (for a second time) Army Colonel H.R. McMaster.

Now you may be thinking, wasn’t it H.R. McMaster that led the pacification of Tal Afar, an operation so successful that Bush devoted an entire speech to it just last year? Didn’t I read about McMaster’s brilliant strategy in a long New Yorker piece about him? Wasn’t it McMaster who won a Silver Star in the Gulf War, leading troops so bravely and well that Tom Clancy wrote it up? And surely it was McMaster who’s PhD dissertation became a hugely influential book, Dereliction of Duty, that the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs made required reading for senior military types?

Well brace yourself – the answer to all of your questions is yes. McMaster is a brilliant tactician, a decorated hero, a soldier’s soldier, and a master of the very kind of war we’re fighting in Iraq – the counterinsurgency. In fact, he’s back in Iraq now, helping soon-to-be-fall-guy David Petraeus try to fend off further disaster. But somehow McMaster’s “superiors” – the suits at the Pentagon who helped bring us the Fiasco that McMaster is attempting to clean up – have decided that he isn’t flag officer material...

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This is just stunning. I think McMaster is one of the best officers in the Army and should be on track for four stars and he is being denied his first. We may never know what went into the decision to deny his promotion, but whatever it was, it is not on the public record where his record is one that would guarantee promotion. The failure is one of the things that make junior officers question whether they should make a career in such an institution.