Seen more than one mediocre commander get an epiphany from some source and turn out great; far, far more than go the other way. All things considered, the guys in Afghansitan are doing great. There's a learning curve on each rortation and that's to be expected, unavoidable and not terribly problematic. Some units go with little or no contact for a few weeks and get lazy; that's human nature and is always a problem in any COIN operation. Commanders just have to watch it and jack 'em up.

We can do better on language training -- seems to me there is no central authority directing the program so there is no program -- there should be one and it should include a structured by echelon series of courses of increasingly large vocabularies. It would help if CentCom would stop trying to play mix and match on who goes where and return units to the same AO for the continuity factor. There's no need for a bunch of Mech in Afghanistan and there was little need for light infantry in Iraq. Then people could get a language program going instead of wondering which language they might need...

There should also be a Theater/National (or Corps level at a minimum) training course for Interpreters...