How Iraq, Afghanistan Have Changed The Military
12.26.2011 at 11:59pm
How Iraq, Afghanistan Have Changed The Military – NPR’s Talk of the Nation with guests John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post.
U.S. forces have left Iraq and a drawdown in Afghanistan is underway, but both wars have left an indelible impact on the U.S. military. The armed forces have altered strategy and tactics, and countless lives have been changed – including those of the families of service members serving multiple deployments…
Follow the link for a transcript and audio of the broadcast.
Like Bill M, Nagl continues to give me aches as well.
When will Nagl come off of the Coin-learning-and-adapting nonsense? He wont let it go, it still commands everything he thinks and says. Sadly he has convinced himself that a bumbling, fumbling, conventionally minded army learned and adapted to better coin thanks to him, the coin conference at Leavenworth in 06, and General Petraeus. Yet the truth of the matter is that the reason the US Army was able to adapt from the start in Iraq was becuase, BECAUSE, it was a combined arms based army.
But beyond any of that discussion, the simple fact is that the army did learn and adapt in Iraq from the start, and after 8.8 years we have gained relatively nothing in terms of strategy and policy gains. Instead we have the same old batch of experts spouting off half-truth, boiler plate bromides about how much we have learned, bla bla bla.
From John Nagl:
Too early to tell. I’m personally rather dubious that much has or will change but I can give him the benefit of the doubt. However, to assert that change has taken place and to imply that it is embedded is probably fallacious.
From Greg Jaffe:
That this comment came from one who is touted as one of the better military analysts / reporters is borderline scary…
I realize both remarks are quoted without context but I also believe the context changes the mildly inane aspects not one bit.
Penetrating analysis this was not. Gian is correct on this one.