Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
On the research / thinking front, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how the CF can / should integrate their socio-cultural knowledge gathering and analysis, especially given our withdrawal from a combat role in Afghanistan. It's taken a while, but the picture is slowly coming together.

Cheers,

Marc
Marc, One would think that almost anyone with background from their military experiences would be a great source of knowledge, but it seems to me that sociocultural analyses continues to take a back seat (as far back as post-1991). We can't even remotely figure out what the Chinese and Russians are doing, yet alone a far more complex subject like Afghanistan.

I'm certainly not going to argue with Malinowski, but I've known people that devoted their lifetime to going local, but yet, had no idea what they were talking about.

One of the things I immediately recognized was the pathetic use of interpreters. Locals like their own spin on things and that never translated into something our Embassy folks could comprehend. It's no wonder we're in the mess we're in