Wasn’t this whole school set up in order to find and train the best possible commanders? The Earthside testing did pretty well — there were no real dolts among the students. But the system had overlooked one crucial factor: How were the teachers chosen?

Far better to treat each battle as a completely separate problem, and to feel free to engage in battles as if they were play rather than work.

The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the really good ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for errors they had advised against until they eventually got ou

Just one more example of why a commander who ruled by fear and made all the decisions himself would always be beaten, sooner or later.