How To Win

[Tom Odom]

So do you mean that when the man on the ground comes to write his reports, and recommends actions, that such recommendations could be said to be "setting and defining foreign policy."

I guess the line from "Charlie Wilson's War" - "we don't have a policy on Afghanistan" - must have been true.

Ignoring the later sarcasm, I mean the sum total of interaction on the ground--be that writing reports, meeting with counterparts including the Vice Presient/Secretary of Defense one on one, or sharing information with a senior operations officer or a senior intelligence officer--enter into the creation and defining of foreign policy. If one is summoned to the VPs office and he is poised to pull out of a reciprocal program, then what you say in that office and how you react defines where the foreign policy that established that program in the first place. That is but one example.

Tom