UBUNTU

I Am Because We Are

John Koelsch

• Publisher: Brooklyn Writers Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780989603720
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

UBUNTU: I Am Because We Are sets forth a peaceful approach to working together as a notion to address the issues of corruption in our government, and to get the United States back on the path to governing by the consent of the governed. Our economy has been built on the scaffolding of debt. We're facing crumbling infrastructure. We're plagued by censorship, chronic underemployment, and unemployment; unsustainable military expansion; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation and the capture of power by a tiny corrupt clique. We're seeing an epidemic of suicides. Random nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters and on and on. These issues are viewed as caused by individuals who may be replaced and problem solved. Not so! Americans, especially those leading our country need to remain committed to all that we hold sacred, namely our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. UBUNTU: I Am Because We Are presents a case for doing all we can to responsibly and peacefully inhabit the world we live in while making it safer and more prosperous for all.

PART 1
Leadership, Rewards & Challenges

The Journey Toward Leadership

“Leadership is not about being in charge and giving orders, or yelling and raving about desired results. A leader is simply someone who sees a situation, recognizes what needs to be done to achieve a desirable outcome and does what is required to achieve that result.”

— TAC Officer

I was the second son born into a Roman Catholic family and the third child born from my mother’s fourth pregnancy. Unlike my siblings, I was allowed and encouraged to explore the world and got by with little to no discipline. This allowed me the freedom to experiment and screw things up, and to examine things for what I saw them to be, and not for how I was told they were.

The Path of Religion

At the age of thirteen I left home to attend Divine Word Seminary and began my studies to become a Roman Catholic missionary priest. That year, I started to consider how I wanted my life to unfold and how I wanted to live it, which is not the same question as what I wanted to do. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to live as a leader and guide people to achieve better results in order to lead more productive lives. By the time I was enrolled at Divine Word College I had come to two realizations. First, priests were not concerned with leadership, only control. Second, they had no clue how to help anyone live a better life; they only taught others how to comply with their views or face eternal punishment. It became obvious to me that the church was interested in the prosperity and advancement of the church far more than the salvation of a single soul. This would be my first encounter with the power of belief being utilized for the power to rule without any relevance to factual reality.

The Path of War

For a time, after leaving, I was rudderless, but I realized the predicament I was in. I was eighteen-years-old, not enrolled in an academic program, and subject to being drafted into a war I knew nothing about. I was fairly certain I did not want to be shot, so I enlisted for a non-combat assignment. And yet, through a series of small, seemingly inconsequential and unrelated decisions, I gave up my guaranteed non-combat assignment (in writing) and enrolled in Infantry Officer Candidate School. There I received my first real training on leadership.

To my good fortune, although I did not think so at the time, I was assigned to a platoon led by a TAC Officer who ignored us. All the other TAC Officers threatened and abused their candidates to discipline them into STRAC troops. They looked good. We did not. Horrible would be a kind word. Our TAC came around each week to give us enough demerits to eliminate any possibility of attaining weekend passes. We were a mess and we knew it. After six weeks, we demanded, pleaded redress. Our TAC, with deliberate meanness and pettiness, informed us we were stupid, ignorant and likely to expire badly in Southeast Asia. I still remember his words.

“Leadership is not about being in charge and giving orders, or yelling and raving about desired results. A leader is simply someone who sees a situation, recognizes what needs to be done to achieve a desirable outcome and does what is required to achieve that result. You are too stupid to understand this. Therefore, you will never be honor platoon because that ends in week-sixteen. However, at that point, you’ll collectively wake up, and you’ll be the best platoon in the company. Everyone will recognize that but you’ll never be honor platoon. Now give me 500 push-ups and get out of my sight.”

It would take ten weeks before the dawn would light up our brains. He was right. So precisely correct that it enabled me to receive my commission as a Second Lieutenant, Infantry. I was assigned a Basic Training Officer across the street from where I had trained. And I spent the next year learning about and struggling with the military’s process for creating warriors. The military is both incredibly effective at producing a military machine and unrelentingly destructive to the individuals who experience it. The process works by demolishing individuality in unkind and occasionally wicked ways while creating a nearly overpowering commitment, or belief to being part of a greater cause. It works extremely well.

I took part and I struggled against this. It was an experience that could never affect change but did provide further insights into the mechanisms of leadership.

Then came Vietnam. I joined my platoon on April 22, 1968. My guiding ethos was “accomplish the mission and protect my men.”

On May 5th, we were positioned just outside Saigon to intercept the Viet Cong and the North Vietnam Army. The second offensive, also known as Mini-Tet, had begun. It is considered to have been more aggressive and brutal than the January Tet Offensive for those fighting around Saigon.

For nine-days, I lead my men as we patrolled all day in what were called “Search and Destroy” missions, emphasis on destroy and ambushed all night.

May 1968, was the worst month of the entire war for American casualties, and I operated in one of the most intense areas. I lead my platoon, we killed the enemy, and many of our men were wounded. I lost three men wounded and was almost killed several times. We were gods of war and fought without mercy, and we won.

I continued to lead into the Third Offensive in August. Killing and death was the main sustenance. This included losing more men and getting wounded twice. It also included killing eight heavily armed enemy soldiers during an ambush one night and discovering in the morning that the oldest was maybe twelve, the youngest perhaps eight. This was “collateral damage.” And it got worse, at my direction we began shooting, demolishing, and decimating the passengers on a yellow school bus because they drove into the trees at the Michelin plantation, at the wrong moment, and I made a mistake.

To protect my men, I also on three occasions, had my fully loaded M-16 set on automatic, pointed close distance at the belly of two men in my platoon and my Captain and my Colonel. I protected my men and didn’t have to fire, but I was fully prepared to do so. I departed my assignment as Platoon Leader in Vietnam following my second Purple Heart. I can tell you all combat veterans of Vietnam brought the war home with them and have been paying for it ever since. It was not our fault, only our responsibility.

From that experience I formed a deep understanding for how teams work and a tremendous appreciation for the unintended consequences of leaders making decisions. This is especially true for arbitrary and capricious decisions, as well as, fully considered but ill-informed ones. And for small, seemingly inconsequential decisions and those decisions that impact the world.

I came home and went to college, intending to apply what I had learned about leadership to help people in the manner best suited to my skills and personality. I earned a B.A. in Political Science in three-years and a Master’s of Public Administration in one-year through a Fellowship in the Southern Regional Training Program in Public Administration. Although I was driven and in a hurry to get to leadership, I still had so much to learn.

Real World Lessons

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more,

do more and become more, you are a leader.”

— John Quincy Adams

Over the next thirty-six years, I worked in the public sector at the state and local level with a great deal of interaction at the federal level. This period of my life helped me develop critical concepts around implementing effective decision-making, and supporting leadership growth through structural changes to teams. What I learned led to my having success with moving organizations toward better decision-making and leadership nearly everywhere I was employed. But I rarely stayed anywhere longer than four-years. This was in part due to my personal struggle with PTSD, as well as, the fact that I implemented what I had learned to the structure of these organizations. It seemed, time-and-again, my approach was always eagerly accepted at first and vehemently opposed shortly thereafter.

I share the following true stories from my experiences for two reasons. The first is so you understand that as difficult as it was back then, it was a breeze compared to accomplishing what I am proposing in this book. The second is so you can think about all of the difficulties this nation has experienced because the job did not get done forty-five years ago and ask yourself, “How bad will it be if we don’t get it done now?”

In 2004, I retired on disability earned by my service in Vietnam. Throughout my forty-four years of professional experience I learned a great deal about leadership, the impact of organizational structure, and the inherent strengths and weaknesses that impact a team’s ability to accomplish their intended goals.

I’ve come to the conclusion that people really want change. They want things to be different, but they are unwilling to deal with change and are utterly opposed to it if they perceive it to be limiting to them personally.

The Kentucky Legislative Research Commission Internship

In 1972, while working as an intern for the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission through the Frankfort Administrative Intern Program, I had the privilege of being a quiet observer of the legislature’s consideration in a Special Session of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. My position allowed me to be present as a non-participant in every official meeting on the topic. As long as I sat quietly, I remained vir...