IMO - they should have promoted him to General and found a way to keep him in.
I'm positive that had LT COL Nagl stayed, he was well on his way to a star, eventually. Leaving was his PERSONAL choice, as it is for the vast majority of officers. Something that adds to each personal scale of "cost/benefits" over the past decade has been "how MUCH time does the Army want me to be away from my family in some gosh-forsaken piece of trash on Earth? Is THAT worth it to me?" To many (including me), the answer was "No". Not because we didn't love serving our country or or particular service, but because we loved our families more, and realized that when we died (hopefully years from now), it wouldn't be the service mourning at our graves, it would be our families (if we still had one).
Quote:
Gates said he’s terrified what will happen when Army captains charged with “reconciling warring tribes” and directing millions of dollar in reconstruction projects in Iraq and Afghanistan return to garrison life where “they may find themselves in a cube all day re-formatting PowerPoint slides, preparing quarterly training briefs, or assigned an ever expanding array of clerical duties.”
Will they miss the responsibility, the rush, the sense of power? Certainly.
Then again, after a full day formatting Powerpoint slides and writing performance reports, they will go home, watch the kids soccer game, eat a meal cooked by a loving wife, read the kids to bed, then fall asleep in their own bed next to the one they love. And a HUUUUUGE part of them will say "it's worth it".
And when the Army (or Marines, or Navy, or AF, or Coast Guard) asks them to leave that all behind agan for ANOTHER year (possibly for the 3rd or 4th time), they will seriously question which they would rather do: stay and work on Powerpoint, or go back to those cr@ppy places AGAIN, and ask their families to understand why daddy (or mommy) wasn't there AGAIN.