I wish some of you coindinistas (I use that term intentionally here to make my following point) would stop throwing these silly little catechisms in our faces. You know things like

"you dont get to pick the war you want to fight," or

"you are not going to kill your way out of this one," or

"in coin politics infuses actions to the lowest levels" or

"in coin man, you cant say 'not my lane," or

"when I was in coin i ate fish and man-kissed with sheiks because I realized what I was doing was inherently political,"

(and when we question calls for “diplomacy” we are not the new millennium’s Emory Uptons who are telling our political masters how and when they can use us!!)

My point is that in this thread to try to sum up and the fact that many of us have done coin at the business end with combat soldiers we get all of the political, nation building stuff; the thing of being respectful, of negotiations by certain levels of leaders with locals. Got It!! Did it!! So Ken White in the Nam ate rice with farmers and me and Big Rob Thornton in the Bdad ate kbobs with sheiks or Iraqi Army colonels!!!

What we are saying, I think, is that for this coin stuff to happen by combat forces first and foremost they must be just that: combat forces, trained, organized and deployed as such. To start throwing catchy words like diplomacy as a potential skill that combat soldiers must have, many of us took a step back and worried about what that actually means on the ground in terms of training, priorities and functions. Does a captain at a cop in the Korengal need to be able to talk, negotiate, bla, bla, bla with the locals? Well yes sure a big duh he does. But does that same concept before that young captain’s company ever gets to the Korengal from Fort Drum, Pendleton, Fort Benning, etc play itself out by meaning that instead of going to the shoot-house for a month it gets classes from the local community college on conflict resolution? See what I am getting at, and I think this is in line with RTK’s concern too.

gian