Quote:
Originally Posted by Shek
Personally, I'd like to see the US Army more closely align company command with the timeline seen in the British Army. COIN and small wars, something that we will continue to do, requires folks that are thinkers just as much as fighting, and age provides experience and maturity that results more often than not in more thinking, which in this environment, means less fighting.
I'd like to see senior Captains commanding in the US Army. Invest in the human capital of our junior Captains by sending them to language schools, grad schools, internships with NGOs, IGOs, USGOs, etc., or other alternative assignments that will broaden their horizons and give them new perspectives to use when they are leading their companies. Who better to get a small village up and running that spent a year in language school and learning another culture, and then spent two years with a NGO in Africa figuring out how to kick start a local microeconomy? Even if that officer then needs to spend three months in a crash course on Arabic before going to Iraq (or Pashto/Urdu/Farsi before going to Afghanistan), he/she will be cognizant that they will be living in another culture, and thus will be sensitized to that and the benefits they can reap by overtly and honestly adapting to the local culture.
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difficult to think of someone more suited to winning - rather than just blowing **** up on tv for the folks back home - the long-term COIN engagements than someone with that kind of experience.
perhaps its even more neccesary given the west point experience (assuming i've got the right end of the stick), being exposed at such a young age to four years huddled together where everyone talks the same, dresses the same, thinks the same and does the same doesn't seem particularly conducive to the kind of soldiering you are describing - especially if there's lots of "fcuk! America, yeah!" going on.
not sure if you can get hold of it, but Mjr Gen Tony Jeapes wrote a book about the 22SAS campaign in Oman from the early seventies, its called 'SAS Operation Oman' (obviously someone spents lots of time on the catchy title...) ISBN 978-0898390544, it goes into detail about the aid/security mix and describes a product not a million miles from that which you think could be most effective in future coin ops.
of course the intelligence and political spin off of having lots of US personnel and financial investment in various dirt poor countries making a serious impact on the lives of those most at risk of falling under the spell of AQ-esque ideologies shouldn't be discounted either...
win win.