Free Republic

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 28, 2007 – The United States should approach the global war on terrorism as it would an insurgency, a senior military official said today at the 18th annual Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict Symposium here. “If we look at is as terrorism, we have a tendency to think that the solution is to kill or capture all the terrorists. That’s a never-ending process,” Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and warfighting support, said. “We’ll never be successful, we’ll never get there, if we think that’s the primary solution,” he said. “But...

A new breed of American soldier—call him the soldier-diplomat—has come into being since the end of the Cold War. Meet the colonel who was our man in Mongolia, an officer who probably wielded more local influence than many Mongol rulers of yore. In the early spring of 2003, as U.S. troops in Iraq were consolidating their hold over Baghdad, few people had their eyes on Mongolia. And yet what was happening at the time in that country—90 percent of whose foreign military training and assistance now comes from the United States—was critical to the extension of America's global liberal...

Floyd Holcom probed parched soil along Kuwait's border with Iraq in March, making sure it would support a tank's churning treads. Members of Holcom's U.S. Army Special Forces team watched Kuwaiti soldiers cut openings in the border's gleaming steel fence. The desert was eerily quiet. Then, for three days and nights, the Astoria man and his fellow Green Berets stared in awe as thousands upon thousands of tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and trucks shattered the desert silence. The most powerful fighting machine on Earth thundered toward Baghdad, trailing dust and smoke. Finally the desert grew tranquil again. The Kuwaitis sealed...