Posted on 04/07/2005 9:37:42 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
The military will become more involved in humanitarian missions, an assistant secretary of defense said Wednesday at Fort Bragg.
''We are going to turn the Defense Department into a different type of department,'' Thomas W. O'Connell said. ''The mandate is on the wall. We are going to have to be prepared as an armed force to do much more on the humanitarian side, transition to and from war. I've got some strong feelings on this. I think we are going the right way.''
O'Connell, who is 59, has been assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict in Washington since July 2003. He said special operations will play ''a heck of a lot more important role in the global war on terrorism.''
O'Connell spoke to about 200 people at the President's Luncheon of the ninth annual symposium and exposition of the Braxton Bragg Chapter of the Association of the U.S. Army.
The retired colonel has been commander of the 82nd Airborne Division's military intelligence battalion and director of intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.
The annual budget for special operations is about $6.7 billion, which represents 3 percent of U.S. military expenditures, he said after the meeting. About 50,000 people work in military special operations. O'Connell also is involved in counternarcotics, on which the military spends $1 billion annually.
O'Connell works with Army Gen. Doug Brown, the combatant commander of U.S. Special Operations Command at Tampa, Fla. Brown reports directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. His command oversees U.S. Army Special Operations Command at the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg as well as Navy and Air Force special operations.
Legislative authority
''This year, one of the successes that we've had is that we have legislative authority for the first time for special operations forces to recruit and train surrogates in the war on terrorism,'' O'Connell said. ''It's about damn time, and a lot of people deserve a lot credit for working that through the Congress. Now a lot of people are fighting it, like CIA, State Department, but we are going to stick with it.''
O'Connell said public affairs is a constant battle.
''Every journalist wants to find out some special ops secret, and every expert in the Pentagon thinks that they, somehow, are experts in special operations, as well. It's funny, you don't get people standing up saying, 'I'm a logistics expert.'''
O'Connell spoke of the 7th Special Forces Group, which has headquarters at Fort Bragg. The group's soldiers speak Spanish and conduct training missions with the armies of Latin American nations.
''Seventh Special Forces Group and U.S. Southern Command have done an absolutely brilliant job in turning around Colombia,'' he said. ''I was there in the early '90s during some of the more exciting times when we were going after Mr. Escobar, which we eventually got.''
Mark Bowden, in his 2001 book ''Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw,'' told the story of how U.S. and Colombian forces tracked the drug lord in the early 1990s. In the years before his death, Escobar reportedly ordered bombings, killed and kidnapped scores of people, and had a commercial airliner blown out of the sky.
The Colombian government is making progress in dealing with insurgents and narcotics, he said.
''The population now views the army, because of the professional training of the 7th Special Forces Group, with higher regard than they do the Catholic Church,'' O'Connell said.
O'Connell said he is ''a very strong supporter of psychological operations.'' Fort Bragg's U.S. Army Special Operations Command oversees psy ops, which includes the use of broadcasts and printed materials to influence behavior and attitudes in foreign countries during peace and war.
''We are going to turn the Defense Department into a different type of department,'' Thomas W. O'Connell said. ''The mandate is on the wall. We are going to have to be prepared as an armed force to do much more on the humanitarian side, transition to and from war. I've got some strong feelings on this. I think we are going the right way.''
Translation - 'we have to increase recruitment'.
Calpernia,
Thanks for exposing this bit of junior secretary's idiocy to the bright lights of clear analysis.
Here's what the dope should've said.
First, it is not the job of the military to build nations, rather, it is their job to protect this nation by killing it's enemies and destroying their weapons of war. To distract them from that goal is a major mistake.
The task of nation-building is the job of the State Department, and uses the help of both Treasury and Commerce. The military provides security.
We can only hope that the current administration will implement a general staff system whereby senior political operatives in the executive branch coordinate the work of the top four Cabinet Secretaries. Too long have they wandered around with only their own preferences for guidance.
It's been a major failure of this administration, and of all previous administrations - except perhaps for George Marshall's - to coordinate the actions of our senior government managers.
Thanks for the ping!
great - now we're exporting our nanny state and our taxdollars overseas for this ?
how about we just cut out this type of junk and concentrate on the mission of defending the homeland ?
Why do we have a Peace Corps? Either use it for humanitarian operations, or disband it.
naw....
/sarcasm?
How do you get that conclusion? This article is about future missions for Special Operations -- they only need about 50,000 people now, and for the most part they have more volunteers than open slots (with some exceptions in Army reserve Civil Affairs and PSYOP units). What does recruitment have to do with it?
Bump!
I didn't think about the roles played by State, Commerce, Treasury, etc in the war on terrorism, but you're right -- this war should be a "full court press" with everyone doing their part of the overall job. The general public has roles they can play as well.
I'm new to an Army Civil Affairs unit, so I'm trying to learn all I can about Special Operations. It's an extremely impressive organization, but also prone to misunderstandings about the missions. And I've got a nagging feeling that as impressive as the organization really is, we could use new ideas. We need new ways to reach out to foreign populations and help them believe in democracy & good, limited government -- and the other core values that have made this country so exceptional.
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