Quote Originally Posted by max161 View Post
"... it has long been an article of faith, confirmed in over forty years of worldwide operations, that "If you can do the UW missions, you can do all others." The objective of UW and Special Forces' dedication to it is expressed in Special Forces' motto: De Oppresso Liber (to free the oppressed)."
and having watched the effort since then with some care as well as having friends and relatives to this day involved in doing both missions, I respectfully disagree to an extent with what the SecDef said in 1992. I wonder if he still feels the same way today...

I'll say again what I said earlier:

""...nor is there any question the Groups have done (both the DA and FID missions) over the years -- and pretty successfully so. That does not change the fact that each mission IDEALLY would have operators that were psychologically and emotionally attuned to that particular mission.

Far more importantly, each type of mission requires extensive training. Attempts to make Teams adept at both will unavoidably and adversely affect capability in both mission sets. Not to mention adverse impacts on operational employment...""

That's the kind of thing SecDefs, even those who were former Intel Analysts and who are cheerleaders sometimes miss. As Bill Moore said, that's been an argument for longer than he's been in the field, I can assure you it went on hot and heavy in 1960-61 in the Team Rooms and all over the Hill but then as now -- can do and should do are different things.

I know it is not an ideal world and mission demands do their thing. I also know the SecDef is right -- it is an article of faith.

The question remains however; should that be so?