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This afternoon I had the honor and pleasure to be on a Bloggers Round Table with LTG Caldwell and LTC Leanord in reference to the release of the NEW Stability Operations Manual. For those who don't know who LTG Caldwell is, he is the Commander of the Combined Arms Center (CAC) at Fort Leavenworth. He is a Champion of the Milblog Community and a wonderful advocate for those of us that can not only shoot but think. I want to open my comments with the relief that I feel about a piece of doctrine that ACTUALLY will apply to our frontline leaders as well as the conference room leaders and policy makers. On my first Tour in Iraq I was a young, idealistic Squad Leader that was ALL about letting my weapon and Squad do the talking but as the Tour progressed I found myself as an Instrument of Foreign Policy and trying to implement a fledgling Domestic Policy. How did I know what to do you might ask. I DIDN"T! My peers and I would look at our missions and responsibilities and then approach our mentors to gain that special insight but for the most part they were just like us shooting from the hip and reading between the lines of command messages. In an effort to better myself adn performance at the time read International Relations Textbooks, as well as any manual or text I could find about municipal and state government so that I would have an idea of how and when to handle certain aspects of my mission. This new Manual really provides perspective, history and importance to this subject. This being an Election season and everyone seems to have an opinion especially about our "Stability Operations", so the timing of this doctrine is impecable. I beleave that now the General Public can look at this doctrine and better understand the roles and responsibilities of the Army at least. FM 3.07 actually is a decent read even if you are not into informational and instruction reading. The Army is an institution that does learn from its mistakes. The lessons learned by young crazy guys like me and my peers along with the ENTIRE Chain of Command are now on teh pages of this doctrine. I want to turn my comments from perspective to content quickly; key words and phrases really captured and maintained my attention such as ,"Unity of Effort", "Whole Government Approach and "A Comprehensive Approach". These demonstrate the intuitive ways we can move forward after and during major combat operations globally. I don't think there is an American or Canadian out there that has put more than 15 seconds worth of thought into these campaigns that has not thought about there being a Unity of Effort. Of course the saying actually is more specific that what it appears but just the verbiage can give one reason to hope. Squad Leaders, Platoon Leaders, Commanders and Planners a like do not want to be alone in the fight and effort. We have Subject Matter Experts in our American arsenal so why not use them. Even if the Diplomats are TOO scared to work out of the country and cry there needs to be a WHOLE GOVERNMENT APPROACH. This however only is what we do and to my knowledge we really have not put anough emphasis on the wonder NGO representatives that work along side us or in conjunction with us. LTG Caldwell really touched on this with his comments on them and its refreshing to see doctrine that reflects their involvement and efforts in these tasks. I am including a link below so y'all can download it for free and share it with your subordinates etc. It is for sure on my Required Reading List, so all you young Hooahs out there start reading! FM 3-07 Stability Operations I am currently also finishing up my reading of "In a Time of War" by Bill Murphy Jr. so in the next couple days look forward to my review and recommendation of that.
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