This statement by General Carter Ham shows that the US doesn't get it.

“We’ve focused exclusively on tactical and technical,” General Ham said in a speech in January in Washington. “We didn’t spend probably the requisite time focusing on values, ethics and a military ethos that says when you put on the uniform of your nation, then you accept the responsibility to defend and protect that nation, to abide by the legitimate civilian authority.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/wo...anted=all&_r=0

I guess the good general is unaware that MANY African officers have passed through Sandhurst and Saint Cyr. They received better training there than AFRICOM could ever hope to deliver.

He probably isn't aware that a good number of really nasty leaders/insurgents had advanced degrees in philosophy/political science etc (examples include Robert Mugabe & Hissen Habre).

All Nigerian regular combatant officers pass through a Military University (they do four year courses in Engineering, Arts, Sciences) & all short service officers are college graduates.

(Officers lead most revolts & plan most coups).

The second naive assumption is that the US is going to train children, that none of these men had motivations for joining the Armed Forces. The life of an African soldier is rough, extremely rough - and nobody willingly submits himself to that life without expecting something in return - you can figure out what that means.

I went for a series of interviews for Military School, none of the guys I met where in any doubt about their motivations for joining the Army.

To assume that US training will simply erase those motivations is extremely naive. (The Nigerian Army is very prickly about the condescending tone of "US training").