Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
I suggest that the answer is not one or the other. If the US Army can't train a clan, region, tribe, or sect, then the methods need to be found to enable them to do so. Just because their belief system does not correlate with western values does not mean that are incapable of generating effective combat power if well trained and led.
Concur. Folks seem to forget that we did have a fair amount of success training Montagnard elements in Vietnam once we focused on basic skills. If Americans have a failing (and it's not genetic...it's more cultural) it's trying to do too much too soon. You can even find examples of this historically within our own training efforts (the Civil War springs to mind).

I'd also argue that we were successful in training activities in Central America during the 1920s. Granted, we were propping up some questionable regimes, but the training seemed to work well enough.