Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
Wilf:

Sure does set the bar low on the intel and expectations side.
If you cannot get the high bar then set the bar low
Assume we go into each future complex problem set without a clue or goal, and that our opponent (who sometimes didn't graduate an equivalent of high school and controls no satellites or PhD farms) knows everything.
Complex problems? I think you mean conflicts or wars, don't you? What does history show you? How did the US Army fail in Vietnam, Korea, and Mogadishu? Those alone are reasons for upping the bar... and it never was. So why now?

Where is the challenge to get ahead of background understandings, to develop responses, including non-military ones, before the problem, whether military or not, is dumped in DoD's lap as the agency of last resort for actions beyond US borders?
The challenge is the job. Nothing is more difficult than warfare. Non-military responses should not be something done by the military.

Seriously, the paper is predicated on a series of mythical problems. I know why it is doing this, but its a bad thing to do. Why invent a whole range of imagined complexities when the evidence shows the normal everyday conflict is in fact the problem most are finding very hard to imagine and this cannot prepare for.