TCS Daily - The Most Important Culture War
 |
James Joyner | Tuesday, October 17, 2006 |
My latest for TCS Daily, “The Most Important Culture War,” is up. It discusses the new Army-Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual and argues that bureaucratic inertia, not lack of knowledge, is the real problem.
The Army, especially, has a long historical memory. Too many times in its history, it has been sent off to fight wars with an undermanned, under-equipped, under-trained force. It was not willing to risk having that happen again by devoting its suddenly scarce resources to missions outside its core vision of itself—like OOTWa, stability operations, or whatever buzzword was currently fashionable—at the cost of the tools needed to fight a theoretical 900 pound gorilla like a suddenly potent China.
Fortunately, the combination of battalion commanders that have grown up mostly during the post-Cold War, the harsh lessons identified* in Iraq, and coffers overflowing with money has at least temporarily created an opportunity for a cultural change. The Army and Marine Corps will continue to get better at counterinsurgency. More billets will be allocated to Arab translators and fewer to tank gunners, at least for a while.
Whether these changes will stick after our withdrawal from Iraq is another matter entirely. If history is any indication, sadly, they will not.
Read the rest at the link and comment there and/or below.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.
Follow James on FriendFeed | Twitter | Digg
- None Found
- Sarah Palin in Demand
- Actors Going on Strike
- Jonesing For An Apology
- Geither at Treasury, Richardson at Commerce
- Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State
- Terrorism Going Away?
- James Jones as National Security Advisor?
- Mark Cuban vs. SEC
- Spider Drawing in Lieu of Money
- Goolsbee Victim of Reverse Discrimination?
Comments are Closed
