Hi John,

Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
Yeah, Marc, it is selection by merit (as BTW) is selection for command. But this command is a peculiar kind of job and any old COL who has been command selected may or may not have the aptitude to really work in SFA. As you well know, the BCT commander must interact with his HN counterpart. So, he's not just working with US forces but also with HN forces and his SFA teams are really the pointy end of his spear.
Sarcasm just doesn't come across well in online venues . Honestly, I think the process you outlined would work very nicely - I'm just not that sanguine about it ever getting past the bureaucratic mindset unless there was some way to institutionally "regularize" it (aka stick it in a box... maybe as an MOS or some such, but that gets us into other discussions...).

I think Bill hit the nail on the head when he talked about SF guys "caring" about the people they work with. Obviously "empathy" and the ability to listen become crucial skills for any BCT/BDE commander in an SFA setting, but there is also another, probably more important, skill which might be called "cutting through the cultural c$@p" on both sides and getting to the lived reality core of the problem.

Let me go back to something you said in the same post
So, the practical question is how we get the BDE commander to SEE his advisor teams as his primary maneuver force. My answer would be selection of the BDE commander.
It strikes me, possibly 'cause I'm working on that Shrivenham paper now, that there are two answers to this. One, which you suggest, which is careful selection of the commander. The other lies in reworking the rhetorical placement of advisor teams (BTW, Kilcullen does a good job of this in Accidental Guerillas (p 270-271) using a rhetoric of ROI). I'll admit, there are some serious dangers with that one as well .

Okay, back to work...

Cheers,

Marc