Posted on 07/28/2008 4:29:58 PM PDT by Coffee200am
U.S. military strategists say they are changing approach to emphasize humanitarian missions on an equal footing with combat operations.
The shift reflects experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and indicates recognition that combating radical ideologies and averting future wars means the Pentagon must use so-called soft power more often. That concept is reflected in revisions to a document called Joint Operations which lays out basic Defense Department concepts for all military branches, the Boston Globe reported Monday.
This could jeopardize recruitment of the people you need around when it’s time to kill people and break stuff.
Maybe, but it allows you to put your people in an area where insurgency is likely, so that when trouble breaks, you have ground knowledge and contacts among the local players. It gives you an excuse for being somewhere that you couldn’t otherwise justify being in.
These folks should be managed by intel or special forces though. The military isn’t a charity organization, as you say. If they have guys in an area giving out medicine and drilling water wells, there should be someone paying attention to the military and intel aspects of what they are doing.
Finally, what we have ALL been waiting for, the Peace Corpsification of the US Military.
Hillarys Dream. Obamfiscating the military and populating it with more sensitive offiers and enlisted men who have the ooptyion of sucking on each other in their quarters and elsewhere.
Warms the cockles of my heart it does.
The US Marines in their present format are the best distributors of aid to foreign countries that there ever was. No need to change a thing.You will notice that they do not give hand outs to dictators, which is what this new approach is actually designed to do , to appease them instead of going to war.
...and they can afford to do this only because they were competent in the application of hard power when the circumstances required.
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