Surferbeetle,

You provided some good info in that last post. Now my question is, where are those people? Where were they? If we have people tasked for the purpose of standing up a government, are they doing it? Were they trying in 2003? Were they even in theater? Are they now?

Assuming that we have properly identified the skill sets necessary to do this, and tasked the job appropriately (at least on paper), do we have nearly enough of these people to do the task that they have purportedly been given?

Somewhat related point - I think the real crux of the issue regarding whether we need to "train Soldiers for COIN" and also "train Soldiers for high-intensity operations" rather than "training them to operate across the full spectrum" is a debate that completely misses the point. The real crux of the issue is not just one of whether you can pack in a certain amount of knowledge and skills into one brain. Rather, it is a question of whether you can expect the average 19-year-old Soldier to adjust his mental and emotional state on the fly to operate across the full spectrum of operations. The average 19-year-old rifleman is intelligent, resourceful, and creative. He can learn the skills and apply the knowledge. But 19-year-old riflemen are generally not emotionally mature. They have a difficult time transitioning from close-quarters combat, where the interaction is an exchange of deadly force, to face-to-face non-lethal engagements where the interaction is an exchange of information. The real question should be, can we expect most Soldiers to operate effectively in this environment? (I think the answer is yes, but....) If so, for how long? If deployments were 4 to 6 months in length and units maintained a habitual relationship with their AOR (meaning you deploy to location X, redeploy and maintain dialed in to what is occurring in location X, then deploy again to location X, and so on) and we kept Soldiers at their duty stations for 5 or 6 years, rather than 3, then we would see much better results and there would be no more wondering about the counterproductive distraction known as the Nagl-Gentile debate.