GSB Welcomes General Peter Pace, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Four-Star General Discusses Leadership with Students
Praveen Mellacheruvu
Issue date: 5/12/05 Section: GSB News
3) Leadership. General Pace mentioned that, as future leaders, we will encounter many situations in which people are looking up to us for direction, and thus we must do our best to take care of both peers and subordinates. By taking care of our subordinates, he said, they will willingly give more than one could have ever dreamed to get by demands alone. Furthermore, General Pace added that, from his perspective, his four stars are attributable not only to hard work, but also to other people's willingness to make him look better than he deserves to look, likely due to the fact that he had demonstrated a history of taking care of his people.
The bulk of General Pace's talk was spent answering questions from the audience.
Answering a question related to the budget of the US military, he spoke about the continued modernization. Though the defense budget is growing at an increasing rate, he mentioned that efforts were being made to look at cost efficiencies in different arms of the military.
General Pace also spoke about the future direction of the US military: specifically, the increasing impact of technology and the need and desire to be both faster and more precise with weaponry. He cited the example of the state of the Air Force ten years ago: ten planes with a lot of bombs were required to take out a target, while now one plane can take out eight targets.
General Pace discussed the torture of prisoners in Iraq, calling it categorically unacceptable. The soldiers who took part in such actions, he said, acted outside both the laws and guidance of the military. While some have argued that torture is a necessary evil to get information that could save American lives, Pace pointed out that the fact that such torture occurred has been a strategic disaster for the United States. This is for two reasons, he said. Not only is it clearly wrong, but also the number of lives that might have been saved as a result of information acquired due to torture is almost certainly less than the number of lives that will be taken as a result of the hatred towards the US that the torture has caused.
The bulk of General Pace's talk was spent answering questions from the audience.
Answering a question related to the budget of the US military, he spoke about the continued modernization. Though the defense budget is growing at an increasing rate, he mentioned that efforts were being made to look at cost efficiencies in different arms of the military.
General Pace also spoke about the future direction of the US military: specifically, the increasing impact of technology and the need and desire to be both faster and more precise with weaponry. He cited the example of the state of the Air Force ten years ago: ten planes with a lot of bombs were required to take out a target, while now one plane can take out eight targets.
General Pace discussed the torture of prisoners in Iraq, calling it categorically unacceptable. The soldiers who took part in such actions, he said, acted outside both the laws and guidance of the military. While some have argued that torture is a necessary evil to get information that could save American lives, Pace pointed out that the fact that such torture occurred has been a strategic disaster for the United States. This is for two reasons, he said. Not only is it clearly wrong, but also the number of lives that might have been saved as a result of information acquired due to torture is almost certainly less than the number of lives that will be taken as a result of the hatred towards the US that the torture has caused.