It shows how detached from reality Krepinevich actually is. Clearly he has not gotten over his flawed interpretation of the American Army in Vietnam and that it could have won the war if we would have had more infantrymen and scouts trained to speak vietnamese and knowing of Vietnamese culture dispersed into thousands of cap-like outposts starting in 1965; you laugh, that is actually one of the bluf premises to his book. That and of course the usual suspect that the US Army until 68 and Abrams was trying to fight Normandy all over again in the central highlands.
gg, personally I still haven't seen an accurate assessment on the Vietnam War. The ones I have read tend to present a notable bias towards more carrots or sticks, and tend to disregard that there were two fronts. There was a conventional front, and more CAP teams with Viet Linguists wouldn't help defeat NVA regulars, while on the other hand more CAP teams would have been key in defeating the insurgency (VC) quicker. From my numerous readings, GEN Westmoreland failed to find the correct balance and his emphasis on defeating both the VC and NVA regulars with the same tactics led to the problems we encountered, which GEN Abrams was later able to correct. Much like what we see in Iraq, we finally got the right General in place who understands where the balance point is for this particular conflict.

Back to your post, I think Krepinevich was half right, his proposal would have helped defeat the VC quicker, but he missed the boat completely on the NVA threat. I strongly concur with your statement below, and that Krepinevich is out of touch with reality. A BCT that I am familiar with is preparing to deploy and they are conducting extensive language and cultural training. The Army and Marines are adapting, but the most important skills an Army brings to a conflict is its combat skills. That is so obvious when stated its seems foolish, but I get the feeling that there are those who are attempting to make the entire Army into a Special Forces Group. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but I still think we need viable conventional combat arms folks (the big stick) that can dominate any enemy on the battlefield. Contrary to what some academics appear to think, those skills aren't learned overnight, it takes weeks, months, and sometimes years to develop the leaders and Soldiers to conduct HIC at a high proficiency. As everyone stated, the key is finding the correct balance point for each conflict, because it will move.

Serious defense analysts should stop trying to prove academic points and consider the effects of the recommendations that they are making.