Behind the times, obviously, as I just finished "Imperial Grunts," by Robert D. Kaplan, a really adept look at the GWOT. Not only in Afghanistan and Iraq (up to the 2004 cease fire in Fallujah) but with the Army and Marine advisers in the Phillipines, Mongolia, Columbia, and the Horn of Africa. I expected to discover that most of them, in those seldom reported places, were Army Special Forces, and that’s generally true. But not all. In the Horn, for instance, it’s one platoon of Marines from Camp Pendleton. Yes, one.
The gist of the book is that the trigger-pullers of our military are "spread thin" in more places than Iraq and Afghan. But it’s not a conscript’s war. Too complicated for mere cannon fodder. Lots of presence patrols and digging wells and building schools. Only when the intel from all the good works starts to flow in do they saddle up and go kill some bad guys–or, depending on the Rules of Enggagement, help the indigenous folks do it. Three years old as it is, it’s worth a close read. You’ll learn a lot.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 