Quote Originally Posted by jkm_101_fso View Post
...Instead of putting the leaders in the class, we asked for volunteers in the ranks of E-5 and below, to include some mechanic and admin types that didn't go out of the wire that often. Wrong answer. The training should have been for leaders. The training was also conducted after duty hours, so the incentive was low to participate. If it truly was a priority, we would have done it during duty hours and made it mandatory for leaders...but how realistic is that when there are so many pre-deployment tasks? It was a half-ass attempt at "looking like" we cared about COIN, but not really.
You shot yourselves in the foot. Seems to me in the situation you describe the "we" stops at Battalion.

As for your Corporals and what they know, one way to look at it. I'll simply suggest that like the Generals, they'll do what they're trained to do. Note that the Generals who went into Iraq did well, even great, at what they'd trained to do -- clobber the evil enema -- and didn't have a clue what to do with looters or setting up a secure environment...