Either transactional development or coercive civil affairs, we use money as a weapon. We're the military. We use everything as weapons. As Schmedlap noted, we finally fixed our process to get access to money and flood the community w/ short and simple projects; however, our output is still skewed. Niel talks to that issue. Many times, we just don't know how our actions effect the community. By flooding cash to certain leaders, our armed social work may disrupt the natural order of things that only stokes underlying tensions.
A commander must use discretion and discernment with all of his weapon systems. In my case, I would go in once a week to meet with the elders. I would flash $5000 and tell them there was more where that came from, but I refused to do any reconstruction until the level of violence diminished. To me, it didn't make sense to pave roads that would just get blown up again. Additionally, I was having to give the elders respect for others classes- "no, it's not okay to behead your neighbor and take his property." As we went back and forth, I learned something very disturbing. Their grievance was not about what they did not have. It was envy over what others had. In cases like that, there's not much we can do.
In the clearance and hold phase, money can be used effectively to achieve security and stabilization, but this short term effect does not equal long term development and prosperity. I'm not convinced that this type of work can be accomplished by those in uniform. As I studied others that are having success (Greg Mortensen and Mohommed Yunnis), their work is often ad-hoc and decentralized. I'm not sure how to incorporate their work into our centralized, bureaucratic processes.
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