Robert in his comments on the use of SF in the future meaning the building of informal face to face relationship building is and will be the way forward in the coming years vs say the state to state types of meetings/training/exchanges.

By the way the face to face can actually change US policy if the SF UW team on the ground is good at what they do during the relationship building phase.

The following is an example of a early 70s SF UW team;

The entire team had been either just coming from or recently returned VN, Thailand vets from the CIDG or MACV-SOG programs. Many had been wounded a number of times and it was one of the highest decorated SF teams in Germany. The ten man team had the ability to cover five European languages fluently.

Educational backgrounds and military years of service extremely varied-most eventually retired out of SF and the others went back to college ---one was a MOH recipient.

Now comes the interesting part---most of the bloggers here would be advised to go back into history and read in detail the development of Greece from 1954 until the coup of 1967 and especially a Greek army unit called the Hellenic Raiding Force.

Now the shift to what Robert is inferring to--the team receives the mission to train selected Greek officers and senior NCOs of the HRF first in Germany and then in Greece---on the surface a typical FID but there were other players involved that set another set of mission requirements.

When the team received the second set of instructions it did not sit well with the team which actually after a long intensive internal debate refused the mission set as it did not match what they had fought for in a long number of years but which were the national level interests at that particular time in space. The team refused the mission via their chain to conduct the mission and since the mission was tailored to them the chain listened---there was no heated debates just a solid exchange of reasons the team felt the national level was not aware of the impact on the population and Greek military side especially in 1970 inside Greece. By the way this was not the first encounter by the team with the HRF.

And especially an island called Cyprus in 1970 where the HRF had been/was active and that was unknown to the national level tasker but it was known to the SF UW team from previous encounters with them.

The provider of the second set of requirements was then forced to redo their requirements to match the teams beliefs of what should occur based on the SF values of what they had been trained in on the UW side and off the team went---everyone was happy except those that provided the second mission set requirements.

Six month mission was successfully completed based on the UW teams requirements---now check history and see what Greek unit made the initial move to remove the COLs and returned to the population their country which was the same unit that triggered the shift to the COLs in 1967.

It is really all about perceptions and the values established by a SF team at the informal face to face phase of a relationship. There are sometimes minor victories at the informal level that trigger historical events down the road especially when it is based on personal one on one encounters that are previously established. It is amazing what occurs during these personal encounters that can effect history and the cost is literally nothing to the national level.

This is I think where SF wants to head but it requires a SF leadership that sets that tone in UW training and it takes SF teams that are willing to voice their SF values when a mission set comes down that goes counter to their training and values.

It also requires a national level decision maker to understand that every move they make whiplashes the intended population in ways sometimes no one thinks about---so all decisions at this level must have a COA phase that discusses this. Check the current European populations view of the US/NSA since the release of their activities here in Europe---the lowest view of the US is held currently at a level that is scary-- even Russia is being viewed as more trustworthy.

This is where we have gone so wrong with Islamic fundamentalism and AQ.

We have based on our national polices actually driven one and created the other.

BUT who is going to carry that message to a divided US public and political body at large that would declare the messenger to be a traitor.