One of the few irritations of Pprune is the constant mindless repetition of the crass sentiment of "2 rings good, 4 rings (or more) bad". Look at any group of people and you will find the same percentages of good blokes, idiots, self-serving baffoons and outstanding bods. Do you really, honestly believe that all those of air rank have got there by constant, blind unquestioning of higher authority? Have you ever met Dave Walker or Glenn Torpy, or worked for them?
"Ah, but if they were good blokes, they'd do A, B or C...", you cry "Therefore, they MUST be yes-men"
Bollocks.
Do you expect every SAC on a sqn to know why the Boss makes each and every one of his decisions? Every time he has a bust-up with OC Ops, or OC Eng, or the Stn Cdr, should he stand in front of the sqn and say "Well, I wanted to do A but the Staish is a w@nker and so I have to do B"...? No, he tells the sqn his main aims and intent, he also tells them when there are significant problems, but he DOES NOT share each and every one of the battles he fights. It's called leadership. Sqn bosses are also (sometimes!) mature enough to realise that even when they lose on a particular issue, they overall decision can be better for the stn as a whole, albeit it may hurt his sqn.
Trust works both ways, gentlemen, not just downwards. The truth is that 99% of contributers (including myself) to this forum have no idea of the detail of how the issues are being debated and fought within the upper echelons. Nor should we know - it is not feasible, sensible or often even possible for every issue to be brought out for debate as if we had some democratic mandate to determine the actions and decisions of each of our senior officers.
No, I'm not air rank - I'm nowhere near it. However, I have knocked around long enough to know how the system should operate. And it DOES operate quite successfully. With (on the whole, and particularly now) pretty good people at the top. None of this means that you have to like the decisions that do come down from above - but if you've served long enough to be able to pontificate as widely as many do on this forum, perhaps you should also have served long enough to gain a bit of maturity along the way. Perhaps some of these decisions are even the ones YOU would reach if you were sitting in the chair...
Rant off.