Why can’t the regular U.S. military organizations do anything?

The Navy is creating lots of new staffs and other things that are not needed like "centers of excellence" (read job opportunities for reservists and contractors). The Navy already has more flag officers than it has warships.

And that is just a crime.

The perfect example of this is the little organization called Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. When created under then LTG Petraeus it was a tight little organization with about 4 total general officers and upwards of 1400 personnel over 55 locations. As of last fall it now has...you aren't going to believe this...13 general officers and two SES civilians (GO equivalents) over far less locations and the same personnel or less. How does an organization with actually less mission than it had (the MiTT's and PTT's all went over to MNC-I in 2006) grow the number of senior positions? All of these new organizations mean other staffs are drained of personnel to fill the all important combat mission. I can't tell you how many e-mails I get from O6's of one of these organizations reminding me to drop what I am doing for their latest emergency because "they are at the tip of the spear". Everybody is at the tip these days.

I had a sense of deja vu while reading this, as it is a phenomenon that appears to affect the rest of the government as well.

I hesitate to suggest that it started in the military and spread from there, mainly because ad hocracy in the civilian side of the government got shoved into high gear when Barack Obama became President. All of a sudden, we have czars, coordinators and special envoys all over the place -- for climate change, for TARP, for regions of the globe (and overlapping ones at that). You could make a Russia of all the czars in the Obama administration.

Why? Part of it is clearly related to ego management. Carol Browner had already been head of EPA, and Richard Holbrooke had been an Assistant Secretary of State. Neither wanted their old titles or the routine duties that come with them, so ad hoc positions -- power bases, really -- were created for them. It is also true that czars and special envoys generally get to bypass the annoying ritual of Senate confirmation. The Senate doesn't seem to mind that much, perhaps because less time spent on confirming Executive Branch appointees means more time to meet campaign contributors, but confirmation is supposed to be where Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch begins.

However, perhaps a bigger factor than either of these has been Obama's discomfort with the Executive Branch, which is most of the "Washington" he ran against. He doesn't trust the line departments and agencies, probably not to make policy and definitely not to explain it to the public; he wants his own stamp on every matter of public concern now in the news or likely to get there, and so wants "his" people in charge. His people are people who not only report to him but are seen by the public to do so.

In any event, as a matter of organization the result will be the same as the one Col. Maxwell describes in the military. If we have new offices created to address specific issues, what do the old offices do? When do the new offices get de-created? Or do they? What happens when new and old offices find themselves with overlapping areas of responsibility, and when two czars or special envoys find themselves trying to exercise jurisdiction over the same subject? At some point, any organization with an excess of chiefs as opposed to Indians -- of people trying to make policy as opposed to people charged with implementing policy -- will suffer for it. If the military were ever the only part of the government with that problem, it isn't any more.

It's my observation that most new organizations get created as hot-houses for new ideas. The premise is that when freed from the strictures and fixed boundaries of established organizations, information and ideas flow more readily and good ideas can be implemented quickly. These new organizations work very well for a while, but rapidly fall victim to the human proclivity to organize and reorganize and to establish standard procedures. Within a few years (2 -3 at most) they ossify and output - both in quality and quantity - diminishes. The key milestone in this ossification is usually the establishment of a protocol office within the headquarters.