The goal of such research is not to prepare our
personnel to administer those particular countries,
but to attempt to make valid abstractions and generalizations which will allow 38Gs to understand a new
country and develop feasible plans and programs to
operate within it successfully. We cannot create 38Gs
who are expert on every country; rather, we should be
looking to formulate principles of analysis which we
can teach to our 38G experts so that they can rapidly
and accurately evaluate a new mission environment.
Note that the standard of governance in an occupation or liberation scenario is restoration of basic
governmental services, such as delivery of food and
water, basic health services, transportation and other
infrastructure services, and public order services such
as police and judicial functions. In most areas where
we may have to operate, the services rendered by the
local government are relatively rudimentary even in
the best of times, so that is the standard for which we
are seeking to achieve in an occupation or liberation.
Conclusions and Recommendation
In Afghanistan and Iraq, we spent years in painfully developing techniques, tactics, and procedures to
assist and strengthen the governments of those countries. Many of the problems that we faced as conditions
deteriorated would simply not be issues in the early
phases of an occupation or civil administration, and
possibly might never become issues if the proper steps
are taken at the beginning. The temptation we will
face is to structure our future doctrine and forces on
the basis of the lessons that we most recently learned,
rather than determining what lessons we should have
learned before we began. It is important that we struc-
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