Quote Originally Posted by Tom Odom View Post
Again this is an Army FM--it is not an exclusionary document that says we will operate by ourselves (as in the Army and greater DoD). Yes it is political and it has to be: a stability operation is very political in all phases.
True but I flat out object to mellifluous tone of a number of our manuals today. As Wilf mentioned this is scary:

""address the root causes of conflict among the disenfranchised populations of the world.""

That's not remotely military and it lays the Army open to being misunderstood -- plus it's indicative of a mind set that says 'we can help the rest of you benighted clods.' Not a good message to send IMO.
But as I work right now in one--my third--I can attest that we do get picked when no one else can or will do the job. We do not get to pick or not pick our missions; our influence is on how we execute those we are picked to do and this manual addresses that issue.
Understood and agreed -- I submit we are also guilty for various selfish reasons of encouraging that pick; that our influence could be better (for us and the nation) used to insure the best agencies get picked for jobs, not the one that is most available and that it would behoove us on some of these missions to be more honest and up front with our political masters.

John T. makes a very cogent point:
I see FMs as being the military's textbooks. They provide a place to start thinking about how to address the problems of their particular topic. In no way do they provide all the answers.
He, as usual, is correct. The problem is that we do not educate or train people to realize that; we tell 'em the book is the gospel -- mostly because it's easier on the trainers. That is IMO, more criminal than not telling the politicians all we know about what's likely to happen.

MarcT's comment:
If you mean his "continuation of politics [actually, I think "policies" is a better translation] by other means", then the answer is "sort of". I view politics as the ecology of human interaction where that interaction takes place along a series of skewed probability vectors based on a) froms of social relations, b) cultural forms of interaction, and c) a co-operation-conflict continuum.
Is correct I think and is more than pertinent because the probability of "skewed probability vectors" is significantly enhanced when force is introduced (no matter by whom). Put force in the equation and you really get very badly and dangerously skewed probability vectors. Add in the other two factors and you go from bad to worse. Those situations are not fun...

That leads back to another accurate comment from Tom Odom:
Overall the good professor is making the same argument that having a manual on stability operations creates stability operations. Thinking about something in advance is better than ignoring it until it bites our collective butts.
The Prof is mostly wrong on that but it does send a message that brilliant minds have considered this and it is feasible. It may not be -- Afghanistan being an example -- and it, unless you read the fine print (which Politicians are unlikely to do or understand even if they did) sends the message 'this can be done and we really know how.' IOW, the METT-TC problems are elided for the civilian policy maker who thus might make a flawed decision. I've noticed many of those do not trust folks in uniform and thus read our books to make their decisions...

John's point also comes into play -- people believe the book, rightly or wrongly. If the book say this is good, people will believe that -- even if it's dumber than a box of rocks as a thing to do. Therefor, what is written in the books becomes terribly important in the armed forces...

As an aside, committees of scholars under time pressure and concerned with politically acceptable phraseology likely will not produce good books that can be read and applied by the inexperienced. Napoleon knew this (at least mythically).

Thinking about something in advance is emphatically better than ignoring it until too late. Wasn't there some idea of teaching people HOW to think instead of what to think? I believe thinking in advance is highly desirable -- but flawed thinking can send you on tangents and into doing things better done in other ways.