...on the ISG report, from T.F. Boggs, a Sergeant in the Army Reserve, just back from his second tour in Iraq. Sergeant Boggs finds it curious (and appalling) that no members of the vanuted panel had recent military experience. He also strongly refutes the group's assertion that soldiers don't want to train Iraqi troops because it isn't a "career enhancing" move. I'll second that notion. Training host-nation troops is one of the primary missions of our special forces teams, and they've been working that task in Iraq since Saddam's statue was toppled.
Bottom line: when a "study group's" so-called "military expert" is a former Clinton Secretary of Defense (who hails the "Agreed To" framework with North Korea), well, take their advice with a huge grain of salt.
Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt has major reservations about the "experts" consulted by the ISG, and more importantly, those who were ignored.
3 comments:
The Iraq Study Panel recommends that the U.S. begin a “diplomatic offensive,” and remove most combat troops by early 2008. It's interestinf to hear troop opinion, As far as the public goes, I thought you'd be interested...Generally speaking, the public consistently favors diplomacy over force in foreign affairs. According to our Foreign Policy Index, 61% of Americans favor more emphasis on diplomatic and economic methods when it comes to fighting terrorism. Contact me for more or go to http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/major_proposals_detail.cfm?issue_type=americas_global_role&list=2 for more information.
One of the reasons that MARSOF was created was to take over the FID mission from SF. That works great in Uzbekistan. Not so great in Iraq when the numbers don't work in your favor (too many troops to train per trainer). So then you get Joe. And Joe is good at his job, but doesn't have the cultural awareness to bridge the gap. So, you want it bad...you get it bad.
Billy Hallowell makes a great point. Unfortunately, the State Department is essentially an unwilling and unable participant in the WOT. The Cold War approach is not a viable solution. One of the biggest problems in the WOT has been the State Dept inability to think out of the box. OGA can think out of the box, they just can't tell you about it.
Billy, generally speaking, the public consistently favors winning over talking in foreign affairs. I'm at a loss to understand how your foriegn policy index was produced in the face of Nick Berg, Daniel Pearl, and the other unfortunates that you seem ready to write off for talk. Is it that you don't value anything outside of your immediate existance.
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