BLACKFIVE: Peace Corps with a punch

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Peace Corps with a punch

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Grim noted the Sec Def and other senior military leaders have been talking about mission creep and the fact that many jobs have been shunted to the military because, well the State Department sucks Hoover. Now that is unfair to the people doing good work there, but I would find it hard to listen to anyone talk about it as an effective organization.

We do need a robust America-promoting, civilian-based effort to go alongside military COIN efforts. Grim rightly points out that many of the missions in COIN that the military should be doing ought to be part of a larger effort headmanned by the State Dept.

When I was in 1st Group we once had a Company Commander who said something that while mostly correct was incandescently stupid for the situation. He was addressing a room full of two dozen ramp-jumping, door-kicking, slim-waisted, barrel-chested freedom fighters who were planning an operation to rescue the leader of an allied country we were in that was in the middle of a coup. He chose this moment to inform us that even though we were right in the middle of this whizbang, shoot-em-up mission we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we were really "Peace Corps with a punch". There were the requisite "Did he really freakin' say that?" baffled looks and then eventually a few giggles as the complete idiocy it took to bleat it out became apparent. We called him MAJ Frank Burns from that moment on.

His point was that the vast majority of our missions were not combat and related more to the long war and COIN and he was correct, it was his timing that made it so excremental. Special Forces often work directly and sometimes even subordinately to US and other civilian agencies and groups. In Iraq Provincial Reconstruction teams have worked with US and Iraqi forces to increase the quality of life in the country, but overall we still do a fairly poor job of military/civilian cooperation.

On Medical Civil Assistance missions we often interacted with people who had never seen an American and may never see another. We also worked closely with the local military and governments showing them directly what US foreign policy is all about. We were often the first US Government officials to interact with a nascent ally as when we opened relations with Singapore in the late 80s to gain an alternative port when the government in the Philippines asked us to close the bases there. My team and several others began training with the Singaporean military and further good relations grew out of those missions.

We need a comprehensive program that takes the best of COIN, Civil Affairs & Psy Ops from the military and pairs it with nation-building, diplomacy, quality-of-life improving things State is supposed to do. Then we need the Got Milk brainiacs who conspire to sell us all kinds of crap we don't need to brand and market the US to the world. FFS, we deserve tons of credit for all the good we do and what do we get, the Abu Ghraib "Prisoner on a Box" for a logo.

Of course we could always just wait for the Messiah's installation and everyone will love us instantly.