Written Today, Discussed Tomorrow

Discourse 35 Years Later...

Professional discourse isn’t simply sharing ideas and starting conversations with our colleagues across the joint force to help advance contemporary challenges.

Sometimes, the audience isn’t even born yet.

Since every branch journal article gets automatically preserved in the library of congress, our articles become time capsules for future generations to revisit. This may occur years in the future—giving our future force the opportunity to reconsider old issues under new lenses.

That’s exactly what a 35-year-old article did for the 10^th Mountain Division staff currently deployed as the core of a Joint Task Force across the U.S. Southern Border. A 1990 article called “Command vs Control” became a poignant reading assignment for the JTF and Division staff as they wrestled with masses of data inputs across a joint operating area that spans 1,954 miles. In one sense, the article seemed comically antiquated. It referenced advancements in modern communications like facsimile machines. The article was written roughly the same time that most of the leaders on the JTF staff were born.

But the old article, written by an Army Major named Dan Bolger, also revealed a slew of timeless challenges. The article was bold, colorful, and candid. Even a tad spicy by the safe and bland writing styles that “graduate level writing” that no one actually likes to read. But the best writers learn how to be respectfully provocative. Because great writing is often uncomfortably honest. As a community of professionals, we need to avoid burying our thoughts in fluffy language and jargon, like buzzword bingo. Instead, we need to think about what we’re trying to say – and just write that. Whether that’s for articles, position papers, or operations orders. Being clear and candid is exactly what makes for great writing – and great discourse.

Photo courtesy of the author.

The “Command vs Control” article from 35 years ago was just that. It served as a critique of an operations process that had grown too large and clunky, one that risked burying the command in self-imposed work. It talked about how “our Army has become infatuated with the promise of absolute control” with the rise of computing power and data. It was especially provocative to re-read those darts in the summer of 2025 from a Joint Operations Center surrounded by Maven screens projecting every imaginable datapoint covering almost 2,000 miles of our Joint Operating Area. And it was easy to see some of what the article was cautioning about.

“Communications,” the article stated, “is nothing more than a glorified pipe to connect the leader and the led” where he notes that the challenge becomes sifting through ‘bottomless pits’ of data to separate ‘champagne from sewage.’ And these words – from 1990 – were cutting deep. Because we struggle with that right now. The computing power is greater, the software is superior, but the fundamental challenge remains.

So, I shared the article with the field grades on my staff. I wanted them to reflect on these inherent tensions that our operations process creates. How to sift through mountains of data to help enable decisions. How to avoid staff coordination that devolves into “endless rounds of indoor sport for many able officers.”

Staff sections exist to help commanders by informing the right decisions at the right times and extending the commander’s influence through our respective staff channels.

Major Bolger was writing for an audience who just invaded Panama and was about to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, but he was speaking to us. In sharing it with my field grades, I mentioned a key end to the story – that Bolger went on to become a Lieutenant General himself and commanded the 1^st Cavalry Division and commanded at the three-star level in Afghanistan. It was an interesting thought experiment to imagine how his position or perspective evolved as he ascended from impassioned field grade to senior commander – the decision maker receiving all of our staff work and churn.

And this passing reflection stuck with me. I thought, I bet Bolger is still out there. Wouldn’t it be neat to ask him about this old article, how his thoughts might have evolved over time, what still remains the same? It was the perfect confluence of relevancy and happenstance outcome that the very author of this article then went on to command at the very echelons that he was critiquing as a young officer.

And sure enough, LTG(R) Dan Bolger, a professor now at North Carolina State, was more than willing to share his thoughts. He was gracious enough to join a Leader Professional Development session with the JTF staff. We were able to pick up the professional discourse that he started some 35 years before.

Fittingly, it was a virtual session over MS Teams, connecting leaders in Southern Arizona, Northern New York, and North Carolina for a modern discussion on an enduring dilemma. The dialogue across generations was refreshing, validating, thought-provoking, and timeless.

In his final thoughts, we asked what he felt the old article got wrong or might be missing. Without a beat, he responded that the greatest oversight in the article is the lack of discussion on the power of peer collaboration and impact fellow staff officers create among each other.

In essence, he was describing the power of discourse.