Bill M: Yes, DofS is trying to correct their course. Initially in Iraq they sent a bunch of kids -- first-tour diplomats who didn't know anything. More recently, though, some more mature careerists have ponied up and are nw doing their jobs. As to the internal training and re-organization, I do not have much info. The only State people I'm really in with are the younger crowd who do not know what existed before.

I disagree, though, that is takes a scientist -- I like the term warrior-scholar. There is a quotation commonly attributed to Thyucidides, but I guess who actually said it is debateable: "Any nation that draws too great a distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools." I agree with this wholeheartedly. The Human Terrain System, the MITTs, and enlargement of military academia such as Naval Postgrad School (NPS), Air Force Institutue of Tech (AFIT) and the increase in civilian academics at the War Colleges are improving that condition, in my opinion, but the real results won't be visible for at least ten years. I say that because you can't really analyze anything with certainty while you're still in it. That's the value of being able to step back.

More to the point, the military has to value advanced education in the mainstream. I mean really value it -- like modify the reward, pay and promotion systems. We have yet to do that or even seriously consider that as a range of options as far as I know. Most of the Services do have some systems in place to improve their way of doing business; the USAF is the best, but the Marines, however, are the antithesis of warrior-scholar development. It is widely known in the USMC officer ranks that to leave the Corps for two years to get your advanced degree is death to an operational career. I was friends with four USMC FAOs and they were dead certain of it; yet they chose to go that route because 1) the country needs them to, and 2) their gifts (skills, learning capacity, and holistic problem-sovling nature) exceeded the capacity of the traditional USMC to utilize them. That's not me saying that; they said that. They are among the few Marines I hope I work with again.

As for an organization for COIN: what about a coalition Constabulary? One realization could be a civilian-led, military-managed civilian law enforcement force that possesses enough "umph" to deal with things up to but not including Fallujah I & II or Najaf. The bureaucratically separate military -- under the auspices of a federal national emergency could be seconded to the Constabulary only as much as they were absolutely needed. It would piss off the military, but oftentimes the desired "military" endstate goes a tad (or a lot) too far for manageable return to civilian control. A Constabulary would be able to exclude the bureaucratic difficutlies we have here in the USA with the gap in capabilities between the FBI and the Military to deal with issues like the Davidians and domestic terrorism. While those institutionalized difficulties here in the US may be appropriate given our history and culture, most other countries don't have those same inhibitions.

As for our COIN orgnaization, whoa -- that is a hotly debated topic on teh SOF side of the military house. Many of us firmly believe in an Irregular Warfare Command, for a variety of reasons. I don't know if there is a place in this webiste for that debate already, but I could go into it -- since that was a heavily considered sultio to our (SOF) bureaucratic ills.

Our part in the Constabulary would have to be perceived as light-handed not as conventional occupation. That rules out armored and armor-mechanized units. A tank will always represent full war or occupation. The degree of local buy-in would have to be higher, but that is the nature of COIN anyway. In this way, the linkages between the population and the state (civil society) would be jump-started and the dependencies could be more easily dumped on the municiple, provincial and federal governments from the bottom-up. The leap from "similiar-faced law enforcement" to grass-roots institutions is easier than from an "occupation military and their lackies."

I say this rather than the Middle East status quo for employment of military forces within the state's own boundaries because that is dysfunctional for legitimate civilian control and democratization in the very long term. A Constabulary with this power, however, must be ultra-transparent, ere it becomes the usual "secret police" we keep reading about in history.

Could the Sons of Iraq become a form of this state-run, publicly governed entity? I think so -- there is popular and elite buy-in from their portion of the society. Though, its plausible only if the the Shia can form something as wholly representative. The Kurds pretty much already have had something like this for a while, but it is not governed by the state and is certainly not transparent; that would run contrary to their long-term goals of independent Kurdistan.