The Army We Need

[Surferbeetle]

In this sense as RTK argues, the Army should build itself around its core functions of fighting; from there it can do other missions required of it. I just dont see it going the other way, that if we build primarily a nation-building army and then expect it to fight an enemy who stands and fights, well it will not be a pretty picture.

Sir,

I appreciate your comments and would greatly appreciate on references on diplomacy (or other topics) that you are willing to share.

With respect to your above statement, I too believe that we must have a steel core to our Army that excels at MCO, however, that steel core must also be able to consistently apply effective COIN skills as well. Why? It is my experience that we (the Army) bear the brunt of figuring things out and that there is much more to war than 'just' MCO.

As a CA-Bubba, I was privileged to be attached to the 101st ABN DIV during OIF 1, and their ability to mix solid MCO skills with innovative CMO TTP's as needed was most impressive to me. I traveled the country fairly extensively during my tour and did not see this same mix everywhere. I do not mean to say that we were perfect, I humbly note that we are still fighting in Iraq and that things are still not stable.

Today, and many times when I attend CTC's, it seems to me that the emphasis for this war is still on MCO/COIN as opposed to COIN/MCO. Agency and DOD interaction/teamwork is not where it should be IMO and current force structure has much to do with this (DOS, USAID, SOF, and USAF in particular). I do not claim to have the silver bullet to our problems but I truly feel that we must change our approach in order to arrive at better outcomes. As Ken says there is a difference between diplomacy and Diplomacy and I am still working that one out...

Regards,

Steve