ARMOR magazine on getting back to real soldiering: An article on 'HTESWAKAF'

The January-March issue of ARMOR magazine offers
an article provocatively titled "How to Eat Steak with a Knife and Fork! A
Return to the Core Competencies That Make Our Maneuver Force Indomitable."

Let's call it "HTESWAKAF" for
short.

I am all for being competent. But I also am for winning our
wars. I worry that we are not trying to do both. In other words, is the new
emphasis on "core competencies" a way of turning away from the lessons of the
last 12 years of our wars? Like, what if the enemy isn't serving steak?

Overall, I am a bit puzzled by such a
focus on tactical abilities, because I think our biggest flaws in the post-9/11
wars have been strategic, with generals neither able to recognize the nature of
their conflicts or to adjust to them. Yet I see little work being done there.
And one lesson of Iraq 2003-06 was that good tactics won't fix bad strategy.