Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
I submit that this not "an approach" but a statement of political intent, or at best a statement of personal belief, born of political opinions. Armies do not exist to address the root causes of conflict among the disenfranchised populations of the world. They are instruments of policy. They are not the makers of the policy.
The essence of SF is deal with root causes, and this has little to do with making policy, as we don't pick where we go or determine what our missions are when we get there.

It is far more a recognition of the old saying that "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

As big Army searches for validation for sustaining itself into the next QDR timeframe they are drilling hard into how to be such a prevention force as part of "Irregular Warfare" and "Security Force Assistance"... Certainly there is a role they can play as they possess so much tremendous capacity and talent, but as a whole are far better at "pounding out a cure" than subtlely preventing the problem in the first place; which probably gets to the heart of WILF's concern.