Warrior Ethos

[Brandon Friedman]

There are also other problems...If you believe the cultures of Indonesia and Morocco have much in common, you need to travel more. Afghanistan and Iraq are far more closely located and they're two totally different cultures. Plus, who says the issues will occur in Muslim areas.

I didn't say the cultures were the same. I said there was a lot of overlap. That is, an understanding of the Quran is the common thread through which soldiers could communicate with locals from Marrakesh to Jakarta. And you can't underestimate the importance of that in a Muslim nation.

During the Viet Nam unpleasantness, we trained people to speak Viet Namese -- then sent a lot of them to work with Montagnards who did not speak Viet Namese. I have visions of Dari speakers playing with Urdu speakers -- or Arabic speakers. That doesn't address the personnel turbulence issue -- US Army units typically rotate about 20-30% of strength annually, thus your Dari speaker goes on PCS to Korea. We may improve on the turbulence and we should but it will still affect your proposal.That's the point -- do not target soldiers for regions, that will in any implementation fragment units.

Maybe. But then perhaps the focus of a 10-week course that includes language instruction should be on not only learning the basics of a single language, but on absorbing the principle of the importance of learning a foreign language. Maybe the point is to stress the importance of learning the local language--and to put it on par with other military skills. It's not like anyone is going to graduate from a 10-week course with any fluency anyway. The biggest problem facing U.S. forces on the ground is the inability to communicate in any meaningful way with civilians on the battlefield. Perhaps I don't have the ultimate solution, but I know very well what the problem is.

I suggest that it would merely move that debate into the Platoon that had a half dozen 'counterinsurgents.' The Platoon should be focused as a unit on its job -- which can be performed in all spectrums of combat.

Does that mean requiring one member of the platoon to have a degree causes a debate over the value of a college education in implementing infantry tactics? Does it mean that having 2-3 members of the platoon being Ranger-qualified causes an internal debate over whether all soldiers should be tabbed? And not every soldier is CLS-qualified, right? My point is that there's no issue with having a handful of soldiers in a platoon specially trained and qualified to think or act in a certain way.