Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
What language? Whose customs?
No idea. I mean, it's an important question that would have to be worked out. Fortunately, there's a lot of overlap--as in, Muslim culture has similarities from Indonesia to Morocco. Also, because we don't start new conflicts every year, we could target relevant regions for languages. For instance, we're not leaving Afghanistan or Iraq any time soon, so you could start with Arabic and the Persian languages. But it would likely have to also include a random mix of languages and customs (like Somali, Korean, Urdu, etc.)--that is, unless the Army went along with Schmedlap and started PCS'ing people every five or six years and sending units back to the same places. In that case, you could really target soldiers for regions.

Bottom line, I don't know. It's just an idea. I just think that having half a dozen trained and qualified counterinsurgents in each platoon would alleviate a lot of this debate on "fighting" versus "COIN."