It isn't as simple as ten rules, and I think the author understands that. That author also has an agenda he is pushing, since he was one of the Dyancorp contractors that helped rebuild the Liberian Army from scratch. By all accounts they did a fantastic job, and in many respects private contractors may be better suited for conducting SSR for a lot of reasons I don't have time to dwell on now.
I question his assertion that this is the first time one country hired a company raise another country's armed forces, but need to research it further. Taking nothing away from the great success in Liberia, many of us have seen many contractors attempting to develop capacity in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans that were inept clowns that simply wasted government money. Liberia was a relatively small scale effort, and by intent or by luck, it appears they recruited a top notch team of contractors to execute this mission.Tenth, the private sector may be better at this than the government. The United States turned to the private sector in unprecedented ways during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, especially for SSR functions. In Liberia, SSR of the armed forces was entirely contracted. The United States hired DynCorp International, a private security company, to raise Liberia’s army in toto, marking the first time in 150 years that one country hired a company to raise another country’s armed forces.
With that out of the way, I agree with the author on the following:
-The military needs to get rid of the train and equip mentality, which doesn't mean we shouldn't train and equip, but realize it is a much bigger than training and equipping.
- If possible we should instill a professional military ethos, but that requires the support of the host nation government to be effective. There is a lot to be said of how we transform our citizens into soldiers, from shaving their heads, given them a new identity, and pounding into them our code of honor (values). At the end of process most discard the potential identity they had when they joined and embrace the identity as a professional soldier. This clearly hasn't happened in Iraq or Afghanistan. In some places it may not be possible, but we at least need to be cognizant of it so we can identify and mitigate future problems.
- If possible we definitely need to constrain the size of the military to a size that be sustained, but that also creates risks.
http://america.aljazeera.com/article...omesofage.html
I'm not sure what the author was talking about when he mentioned Iraq and asked does Iraq need F-16s? I guess if you have to defend yourself against Iran you probably do. He also said Iraq should have limited force projection, artillery, etc. That wouldn't have been in our interest if one of our goals was to contain Iran.Today the AFL numbers just under 2,000 men and women, a small fraction of its size during the war. Analysts say that while the army is a professional force, it may be too small and weak to protect the country. As the U.S. draws down its financial support, questions remain about whether the money spent to rebuild the AFL has been used wisely.
Not a bad piece, and it has merit if you can look beyond the author's agenda.
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