The counter-argument that worked its way up through the Marines went something like this:
Sure, Special Forces operatives are valuable in the field, but they also work better if their CO is *one of them*: they get more respect from their subordinates and they have a better handle on what their people can do when dealing with their superiors' expectations. Why shouldn't biotics get the same treatment?
(Every marine a rifleman is still a thing, and as biotics are pretty universally marines, that marine camaraderie is mostly strong enough to counter the heaviest anti-biotic mindsets.)
The brass said all the right things and nodded in public, but they kept very high requirements for biotic MOS' promotions to slow them down and keep them out there as long as possible.
(MOS = Military Occupation Specialist Code; basically your actual job assignment. There is enough variety in the requirements for some highly specialized jobs that the fact that it was that much harder to get promoted as a biotic wasn't anything most non-biotics could pick up on.)
But then Shepard fucked up the status quo, as Shepard tends to do. Shepard is recognized by the general public. Whether that's positive for the "Hero of Elysium", negative for the "Butcher of Torfan", or the galaxy rubbernecking at a tragic accident for the "Sole Survivor", if the Alliance follows its usual molasses speed biotics promotion with a biotic Shepard, people like al-Jilani and Wong will notice and will make it a story.
The Alliance does not want that to be a story.
So someone makes sure that Shepard gets promoted; creative paperwork is a skill set anyone high up enough in a bureaucracy has figured out, after all. And then someone hides Shepard in N training in the hope that they won't do anything else to attract the public's attention.
(This fails dramatically, obviously, but it looked good on paper to certain subsets of politicians & brass.)
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