As they say in Congress, “allow me to revise & extend...”. The Army/Marines HAD a lot of counter-insurgency experience coming out of Vietnam — AND they lost it pretty quickly. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of effort made to retain the body of knowledge gained.
That's weird. I thought my time in India was just for that purpose. silly me. I guess that Sec Def Navy just knew that I hated cold weather.
Then there were those British guys and their little Tibetan friends I met that were really good at playing hide and seek in the Indonesian area..... and those Army guys that were in Georgia, and those other Marine guys in Africa.... and those spanish speaking fellers south of us....
I think maybe we didn't call it "COIN" but I can pretty much say that somebody in the Army, Marines and those lunatic squids from Virginia and California might have retained some counter-insurgency training.
Follow the money. Who gets to suck off the government nipple more and make bigger checks. The officers ordering billion dollar jets or some guys that like to use any weapon that shoots, a couple of flares, a knife, map and household products to blow stuff up and rattle the enemies cage.
IF we had a huge Predator force or any UAV force way up out of sight, you could seriously put the hurt on people in urban or jungle warfare.
Man, to be 30 years younger and have good knees..... some satcom equipment, optics,map, rifle, knife and let the good times roll ....hahahahahahaha...
The press and the PC weenies make you think that we forgot how to fight in a low intensity environment. I know that there are many in the FR that might possibly disagree with that assessment.
The bottom line is that we'll still need boots and eyeballs on the deck. Those have to be trained up to speed every 4-5 years to replace the worn out boots and eyeballs.