Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Agreed, but that doesn't change anything!

- Then it needs to be challenged and held to greater rigour than I had previously suggested. Seems like HTTs should work for the State Department then
I would suggest that the Army should work for DoS, at least in COIN.


Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
IWhat I will also offer is the rant that I think it is totally presumtuous for a HTT to draft a report on the goings-on in my TF's AO, without ever setting one foot on the ground, talking with one single local national (to say nothing about taling with sheikhs, muktars, and men-on-the-stree), or perusing the conditions at any local market. So then how can that HTT presume to write a report about tribal and ethnic tensions on an electoral process, when we already know what their executive summary says? This same report smells exactly as if they simply read intentions reports and intelligence summaries and then slapped their own shade of lipstick on the baboon's ass. It remains a baboon's ass, however.
I cannot imagine how an HTT can continue to collect their prodigious salaries and never leave the wire. Did the commander not let them out of the gate, or did the HTT not leave based on their own judgement?

The problem lies in the fact that the folks who are tasked with employing aspects of HTT support just don't frigging know how to do it, and at time don't want to be bothered...Right as I got into country, the non-kinetic effects manager of our higher headquarters was concerned about the pending arrival of a human terrain team to his command, and he frankly did not know what to do with them, in part because he did not have the exposure, training, or both. I pointed him in the direction of this Council and the data repository of the Journal, in the hope that he would get enough read-in information to avoid getting steam-rolled by any agenda. Heck, he already had a huge wall chart of reconstruction project information that was in various states of disarray. He "got it" but he had neither the staff or time to manage the volume of the effort as effectively as he probably could have. And then a HTT gets tossed into the mix?
I wonder why he couldn't form a council of the various actors to cause them to coordinate and self-direct. He sounds like a micro-managing type who got what he deserved, frankly. Way too many folks in the military who manage/direct assets without knowing how to lead or to just let others do their jobs.

To me, a staff officer or commander would be well-served to look at product, first, and then share that vision with the actors, who can then be convinced/coerced/massaged into getting the commander's product.

BTW - the staff officer or commander have to expect that the actor gets his/hers, too, in the process of helping each other out.