Of course, you need to understand that I am naturally biased in favor of Special Forces. I came of age when The Ballad of the Green Beret by Barry Sadler was a national hit and I have always felt the strong stirrings of patriotism the song induced. I admire the combination of military professionalism and mental acuity that sets these troopers apart from any others. Their work in Vietnam showed the power and strength of combining an American cadre with indigenous troops. No village using this combined fighting force ever fell to the NVA and the early, and controversial, work with the Phoenix program came heartbreakingly close to breaking the back of the enemy. In any case, I am predisposed to favor special efforts to win the hearts and minds of the ordinary people of the countries we are working in. It's a proven method.

That's all on the good side, and I wish the story ended there. Sadly, a Secretary of Defense as smart as Donald Rumsfeld continues to allow incompetence in his generals. Let's start with troop assignments. The 82nd Airborne is a great fighting outfit that any army would be proud of. They will undoubtedly continue to play a key role in any war scenarios that require crack troops ready to engage and destroy the enemy. Saddam can kiss goodbye to any of his Republican Guard units that come into contact with them. Unfortunately they have not had the training for low level conflict that is required for combing the villages of Afghanistan for al Qaeda. They're just the wrong tool for the job. No blame for the troops, but the brass that sent them into that role made a mistake.

Let's follow up with the absolute crock of shit public relations job the brass is doing to laud their use of the 82nd in Operation Mountain Sweep. It's the same cover-your-ass mentality that lets the FBI pretend the Phoenix Memo was not worth passing up the line and the Minneapolis office couldn't have caught an important suspect. I haven't forgotten Colleen Rowley's charges against the administration of the FBI, and this army episode smacks of the same incompetence and circling the wagons.

Let's follow that charge with some chicken-shit general in Washington getting his tit in a wringer over beards on the Special Forces and ordering them to shave. Does anyone believe that was anything but a petty slap at some casual, but effective troops. I'm all for discipline, but....no, I really care a lot more about results. Screw the regs about facial hair. Escort that General out of the Pentagon with his walking papers.

I'm prepared to let President Bush run Afghanistan operations the way he wants. The Soviets obviously did it wrong, and so did the British. It's a unique terrain, a fiercely independent people, and a tribal social environment that's resistant to central coordination. Bush has some canny Afghan-savvy advisors and maybe they're doing things right. One thing that is beyond debate is that teams that can share a friendly cup of tea with a villager are a valuable asset. Isn't the whole end goal of the War on Terrorism to create a world where people don't want to kill us. I want a world where if we're not loved, we're at least respected for good manners and the common sense not to frisk an Afghan woman. Anybody, from four star to buck private, who works against that goal doesn't belong in the field or in command. Do you hear me, Rummie? Shake the tree! Lots of people will help.

Office politics in the army are undoubtedly more intense than in the civilian world. Most midlevel managers at Xerox haven't studied Von Clausewitz. You can't hop from Ford to GM to Daimler Chrysler if you are an Armor officer. It's US Army Armor or nothing, and the brass gets smaller (albeit bloated) near the top. Boat rockers don't get promoted, so if you want those stars there is intense pressure to conform. The Special Forces famously don't get along with the brass and perhaps that's why they're so effective. And so disliked by the brass. If there is one lesson from the failures of our intelligence pre September 11, it's got to be the lesson of cooperation and sharing. The FBI is squarely implicated as an incompetent, suspicious, inbred organization that failed our country. It has to change. This Newsweek article highlights an equivalent level of incompetence in the military and it's got to change too. I guess that's why I think the debate over the Homeland Security Agency is such waste of time. If we won't change the FBI, CIA, and NSA, why should it matter who's in control of the Coast Guard or INS?

This post was triggered by the Newsweek article but it triggered reminders about Vietnam. Not from a hand wringing point of view, but from a historical lesson in guerilla warfare. A Max Boot editorial from exactly a year ago speaks directly to the issues raised in the Newsweek piece and makes many of the same judgments about the failures of military bureaucracy to understand the lessons they were observing.

To go along with Max Boot's analysis I have a "Why we Lost" article from a Vietnamese point of view. The Vietnamese author has a great feel for the propaganda war that was being waged unseen, cheaply, and effectively by North Vietnam. I couldn't help thinking of Bonior and McDermott as I was reading the propaganda comments, and much as it pains me to admit that any US Congress persons could be so gullible, it's unquestionable that Saddam played them. The Why we Lost article is worth careful reading, particularly for those who either weren't paying attention or weren't born at the time. We made lots of mistakes, but we did a lot of things right. Sadly, our brass seems to be making many of the same mistakes and only the Special Forces are still doing things right.

Before we send any troops into Iraq, I'd like to see them and the 82nd Airborne have a couple of days of Arabic lessons and a quick tutorial on manners. I don't want Martha Stewart troopers, but I wouldn't mind if some of the Special Forces attitudes towards an occupied population rubbed off on our regular soldiers. I remember the Chicago taxi driver jumping out of the trenches in Kuwait to surrender during the Gulf War. There's no sense smacking somebody around when they are predisposed to be friendly. I am confident the vast majority of the Iraqi population will understand that we're intervening for a regime change, not a population change. If we approach them respectfully we're going to get a lot more accomplished with less bloodshed. My earnest hope is that we can generate a flood of mail to Rumsfeld and the DOD to get them to shape up.