A small point about news coverage of Iraq. It seems pretty clear from everything I’ve read that U.S. soldiers in Iraq haven’t been trained in all the skills they now need to occupy Iraq effectively. Press coverage has focussed very much on the lack of preparation for the occupation of Iraq. Very little, by contrast, has been written about the longer term lack of preparation by the U.S. military for tasks requiring broader goals than all-out fighting. Surely the problems the U.S. is facing in Iraq now stem partly from lack of preparation of this sort as well.
From a political point of view, if you want to twist the military’s arm on this, or at least get their attention, you might propose the creation of a sort of MP force under the heading of the State Department. If the military only wants to blow shit up, then let it. But the U.S. clearly needs (needed!) a lightly armed, but highly skilled, force to take on this kind of task.
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