US could do far more in this role for obvious reasons, not least of which that you have far more specialist advisers available to field. That’s already been done though and I’d question whether there’s enough call for it to really make a difference from what’s done now. Beyond that, there could be a huge capability for an expansion of assistance missions to reap all kinds of benefits, particularly how the face of US forces is perceived today.

Ain’t like there’s any shortage of work…
http://www.bombharvest.com/synopsis.html

Somewhere between 1946 and 1951, the American military and intelligence institutions stumbled into an imperial culture, and they’ve been dragging the rest of us along into their nightmare ever since. When I was child in the 1950’s and all our parents had been the 20-year-olds in the war, we could pretend it was fairly benign … yet with the counterattack of the plutocrats in the Carter Presidency and their triumph of Reaganism, and then morphing into the total corruption of the military- industrial- Congressional- media elites into an imperial class under Bush-Clinton-Bush II, it clearly has become cancerous to the planet. The industrial-media corruption links in themselves, for example, have so far prevented any progress away from the oil/auto economy.

So what do we now create for future? The question of the ages is, is Obama totally compromised by the military-media establishment (whose philosophy he had to embrace to navigate the media to get elected) and can we the people lead him and our still-retrograde Congress to newer and better choices that allow the creation of a world based on cooperation rather than conflict — as FDR fully intended, and might have worked harder at creating if he had lived past April 1945.

The signing of the China-Taiwan improved-ties agreements is a huge symbolic step, which may hopefully help remove one of the major stumbling blocks in our efforts to build a world not characterized by conflict and expectations of conflict. (Of course problems will always exist, yet adults can negotiate them, and must if we are to survive the 21st Century as species, rather than kill and war over them.)

I also like Kenya declaring a national holiday. The son of a Kenyan can become the world-imperator !!! Here in the United states, the challenge for progressive blog-heads is to actually organize a political institution that will fight to educate and eventually cure America of the need to have an imperial foreign policy. I’ve been talking about this for a year, and I have a record of relatively successful political organizing, I guess it’s up to me to do it …

This era of persistent conflict will result in high demand for Army forces and capabilities.

That’s the missing part of the equation. Conflicts are looked at as permanent campaign opportunities, and neither military nor state should be used for campaign purposes.

Shouldn’t the military always be preparing for new and emergent conflicts while focusing on all the possible future conflicts?

In the COIN article one of the officers said “We won’t have time to focus on [blank] if we focus on [blank].”

Maybe I’m overestimating our military, but can’t soldiers train for multiple contingencies at a time?

I know it was hard work for my high school football team to focus on all the possible formations and plays, but, we still did it and were pretty good at it. (I know that’s a simplistic analogy, but it’s not completely out of left field, is it?)