Quote Originally Posted by 120mm View Post
First, everyone mentions SF, and why they aren't doing this. Frankly, for all I know, SF IS doing this, but if you are in a regular army unit, you will never ever find out, as SF keeps all this wonderful information to themselves. Which is why SF CANNOT be allowed "in the loop" for developing ethnographic information for regular Army units...
They don't keep it to themselves -- with some dumbass exceptions; most will willingly share -- an equal or greater problem is that some dumbass regular army units don't listen.
...And in the process, that sharp person would become just another acculturated and compliant soldier.
Not everyone's all that compliant. I spent 45 years in it fighting compliance almost all that time. I know a lot of guys who wouldn't succumb. You've been around the system a while -- are you compliant?
A lot of these issues could be solved by putting the DoD out of the counterinsurgency business. If you accept that counterinsurgency is a political problem, then put politicians in charge of it.
We did that in Viet Nam, it was called CORDS and it worked. Worked very well, in fact. DoD didn't like that, the Generals didn't like that and Congress didn't like that. DoD didn't because their money was being spent by USAID. The Generals didn't because COIN is tedious, messy, dirty, lengthy and not predominately a military effort, it messed up the tidy Army in many ways. Congress didn't like it because it was expensive and required too much clout be given the Executive branch. Practicality and effectiveness were not items of concern.

So we decided not to do that. Until we had to do that and everyone had forgotten how. That's with a State Department and and Army with some continuity in charge -- and now you want to put politicians who roll over at two, four and six year intervals in charge...