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| Home Front: Politix |
| Stephanie Savell: U.S. Counterterror Missions Across the Planet |
| 2019-02-22 |
| [Unz Review] "Training." It sounds so innocuous. It also sounds like something expected of a military. All professional soldiers undergo some sort of basic training. Think: calisthenics, negotiating obstacle courses, and marksmanship. Soldiers require instruction, otherwise they’re little more than rabble. Sometimes soldiers from one country even train the troops of another, imparting skills from the basic to the complex. The U.S. military calls this, among other things, "building partner capacity." Sometimes a foreigner steps in and whips sorry soldiers into shape, as former Prussian army officer Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben did with George Washington’s Continental Army. And sometimes the foreigners, like the modern heirs to the army that Steuben trained, can’t even seem to successfully teach their wards, like Iraqis or Afghans, jumping jacks or pushups. (Nor does anyone seem to ask why Americans are teaching jumping jacks or pushups to such trainees in the first place.) And then we wonder why one of those proxy armies folded in the face of a tiny terror force in Iraq in 2014 or why, after almost two decades of assistance, another is taking unsustainable losses, as is the case in Afghanistan now. Each year, through a vast constellation of global training exercises, operations, facilities, and schools, the United States trains around 200,000 foreign soldiers, police, and other personnel. From 2003 to 2010, for example, the U.S. carried out this training regime at no fewer than 471 locations in 120 countries and on every continent but Antarctica. Most of it goes on behind closed doors, far from public view. And almost all of it escapes independent scrutiny. Is the training effective? Does it achieve the desired results? Is it worth the cost? Does it conform to U.S. laws? It’s often difficult to glean basic information about what types of training are taking place, let alone the results. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 From 2003 to 2010, for example, the U.S. carried out this training regime at no fewer than 471 locations in 120 countries and on every continent but Antarctica. What happens in Antarctica stays in Antarctica. We do not discuss it with outsiders. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2019-02-22 15:28 |