mission creep and locally rooted solutions.

How am I off base here….

I'm curious to know what happens when realizing mission objectives requires forms of local engagement that are functional to mission creep.

This is a long standing question. The proximate trigger is:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/201...ilitary-human/
where Anderson noted that
"Your best people are the ones who will get you into mission creep situations the fastest"

All of the rhetoric out there is about grafting onto local realities so that we can have deep rooted solutions that survive interveners' exit. These deep rooted solutions introduce all sorts of weird dynamics. First a couple of pretty obvious ones, then the one I'm interested in today

1. The institutions into whose rubbled foundations we try and scaffold hybrid structures were often part of the reason folks got into trouble in the first place.
2. Access to the memories and performative fragments of humpty-dumpty are always mediated by indecipherably partial interlocutors.
   and, the one I'm interested in here,
3. In forming the understandings required successfully to graft into local 'realities' personnel develop notions of adequacy that lead them to become most (cough) innovative in interpreting their commanders' intent.

The last one is particularly nasty when those innovations shape mission success. When things go badly, an audit will reveal that men on the front line didn't stay in bounds so they get blamed. When things go well, nobody gets audited policy gets credit…and damned if you don't get stuck with the same lousy policy the next time around.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ptamas

I'm curious to know what happens when realizing mission objectives requires forms of local engagement that are functional to mission creep.

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This holds true in my experience. The more we learned; the less we knew. For every problem we solved, two more popped up.

In retrospect, my views have changed. It's only mission creep if you accept the mission. We don't have to solve all the problems. We can do our best to understand them, report them, and advise local officials on ways to fix them, but at the end of the day, it's not our problem.

v/r

Mike

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeF

This holds true in my experience. The more we learned; the less we knew. For every problem we solved, two more popped up.

In retrospect, my views have changed. It's only mission creep if you accept the mission. We don't have to solve all the problems. We can do our best to understand them, report them, and advise local officials on ways to fix them, but at the end of the day, it's not our problem.

v/r

Mike

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Could you expand a bit please? I think I'm seeing a move to a totally different relationship between fielded soldiers and (pick one or many) locals, their mission and the chain of command.