Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
Wm,

You are one of the few that implies that our interagency process is functional. They still teach us about the country team, and I have it seen it work well for missions in Liberia, Senegal, Philippines, etc.; however, there was no country team in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is a "huge" difference in scale from advising a government, to standing one up; advising a gov on economic models, to standing up a working model, etc.

The State Department (and this is only one agency) still can't mobilize enough resources to perform their functions in Iraq. The military is the only organization in the U.S. government that is robust enough to execute the DIME/MIDLIFE tasks in a situation like this. It would be worthwhile for me to see what the military's role was in post war Japan and Germany for reference.

If we are going to take those missions on, then I would argue we need a cadre of PhD (forget the PhD, we guys and gals educated on how to do this) advisors to enable us to perform these functions at an acceptable level.

Obviously State needs more funding, but just throwing money at the problem won't solve the problem, it will also require a significant culture change. Second, do we want to throw that much money at State for this type of venture? If we make that investment, it would imply we're signing up for a few more regime changes down the road. I don't think that is cost effective. The military will always provide the bulk of the doers in hostile situations.

By no means am I taking taking anything away from the country team, I seen it function well when the "right" personalties were in place.

We have all seen the result of what happens when the military waits for an alleged capability. I'm not faulting State, I understand some of the beltway politics that led to this. None the less, I think we need this capability in the military.
Bill,
I do not believe I implied the country team was still functioning. I said that it seemed it was no longer in use and suggested that we ought to revitalize it. I also suggest that we need to do a much better job of planning post-hostilities activities before we ever get around to crossing the old line of departure.
As the only real "world" power left, America has only one real reason for engaging in war--to establish a better state of peace. To that end we need to make sure that our planning and execution are designed to facilitate that state. Anything less coming from the workld's leading civilized demnocracy is just unacceptable