But....

Submitted by Keith Lembke (Afghanistan), Mar 30, 2014 at 07:17

Policy will eventually drive force structure. Can anyone really tell me what our policy is going to be in ten years? In 72 we left Vietnam saying we would never do that again, a sentiment codified by Bush Sr. In 92 we became the world's police force enforcing the Western progressive rules of law on the rest of the world. All of a sudden in 2001 we find ourselves in the middle of two insurgencies. Through every phase the roles and means have changed - the SOF community taking anything they could get for force structure growth. Ironic also that we continue to preach that our strength lies in our ability to fight with our allies even though the clear majority of the last five wars have been paid for by the US. Iraq, in fact was unilateral. Afghanistan was heavily US funded and manned - though we did launder a lot of money to modernize a lot of other armies in return for their mostly limited involvement.

The fact is our national interests will drive the military requirements - the SOF being used extensively for "hyper" conventional operations since the counter drug money flowed in the 90s. With a reduced conventional force structure - they will continue to be used in that fashion. Hopefully we never fight a really good enemy someday who will force us into a war of attrition because that is the danger of this strategy. Forever is a very long time.

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