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William Arkin, writing in the LA Times, takes on the myth that US Special Ops should be the be-all, end-all model for US military transformation:
"Sure, the post-9/11 wars have had their successes, and special operators have performed well," Arkin writes. "But the question must be asked: Is there something about the special operations man-to-man, blow-it-up strategy that leaves us where we are today?
..."Many also remember Tora Bora, the mountain battle on the Pakistani border. Osama bin Laden was supposedly trapped; somehow, he got away, along with many of his senior aides. The rest is history.
"'They just moved," says retired Army Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, former European and Bosnia task force commander and now a professor at the University of Texas in Austin.
"...This is the problem with a special operations strategy that, by definition, relies on small numbers. These forces can move quickly, blow things up, bolster and protect friendly forces. But they cannot cover all of the avenues of escape or occupy territory. And they cannot establish popular support when they are here one day and gone tomorrow.
"What was the biggest complaint about Operation Iraqi Freedom...It was that the United States was not deploying enough troops. After Baghdad fell in just three weeks,...the peace plan is a shambles: There are not sufficient troops on the ground to maintain security. Nor is there a basic strategy beyond the 'raid over the beach' approach.
"Is a special operations bias partially responsible for the state of affairs in Iraq?
..."The answers to these questions are far from clear. What is clear is that the Pentagon is not addressing them in an objective manner. That is because at the top of the Defense Department there is a love affair with the clandestine, with the easy-to-employ force of lethal special operators and their brethren in covert intelligence."
Read the whole piece here.