Pentagon authorizes Bureaucratic Combat Inaction Award
By Bull Winkle
WASHINGTON—The Department of Defense plans to encourage bureaucratic inaction with the creation of a medal to reward the program’s lowest achievers, sources say.
The new award comes on the heels of a trend of rising military efficiency in recent years. While that may seem to be a positive direction to anyone who actually understands efficiency, it in fact violates time-honored defense norms.
“Bureaucratic inaction is one of the hallmarks of the US military,” said DOD spokesperson Colonel Andrew Spearminton. “Change is bad when it comes to defense. That’s why in the age of cyber warfare, the Army still has a manual for how to load pack mules.”
Historian Virginia Pliny confirmed that bureaucracy is a tradition dating from the American Revolution. “Soldiers at Valley Forge didn’t need to starve,” Pliny said. “But General Washington’s quartermaster filed ration requests in a box marked ‘for deep contemplation on the morrow,’ then forgot about them. Horses also ate a lot of the requests. On the plus side, that’s when the Marine tradition of eating anything and everything started.”
The new ribbon will be an incentive for inaction that is truly above and beyond the call of duty. Officials who merely fail to respond to routine suggestions or requests from the field will normally not be eligible. “That’s just staff types doing their jobs,” Spearminton said. Both civilians and slick sleeves will be eligible for the award.
Innovation in bureaucratic inaction leading to a significant lack of impact will be keys in evaluating who is pathetic enough to not earn the ribbon. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that awards boards will prefer nominees who overly analyzed a solution that could have brought real modernization, moved important ideas to working groups, or slowed final decisions to a crawl by endless coordination.
“Somebody who watered-down or delayed a game-changing idea by making it a ‘joint solution’ is a sure winner,” he said.
Announcement of the ribbon is already reaping benefits with the DOD community. “I’m naturally bureaucratic,” said one Pentagon GS-15, “I once established a committee for making a donut run. To get this award, I’ll slow down staff actions so much that glaciers won’t have shit on me.”
To design the ribbon, the US Army Heraldry Institute borrowed imagery from Dante’s epic poem “The Inferno,” with its first ring of Hell—known as Limbo—where the souls of people who never did much of anything spin their wheels in ethereal circles for eternity.
At press time the Pentagon committee reviewing the first nominee packets had tabled all decisions for a future date, referring future decisions to a to-be-established interagency task force and a blue-ribbon commission.
Bull Winkle will not be concerned about the US losing global hegemony until he can figure out how to properly pronounce “hegemony.”