More on the HTS
Posted By Marc on October 7, 2009
A couple of articles on the HASC assessment of the HTS have appeared. First, Max Forte has collected some of the key background documents relating to John Stantons’ original article. Second, John has a new article out at Counterpunch that is worth a look. Finally, last week I posted a longer look at the review over at the SWJ blog.
One poster on the SWJ blog made a very interesting point about retention that I have been mulling over:
What’s interesting, and not mentioned directly in any of the bullets, is the lack of an assesment of RETENTION of trained personnel in order to build a core. What good is recruiting, training and employing HTT personnel if there is no cogent way to retain them?
That was, and is, an excellent point and gets to the heart of one of the key problems that I see with the HTS as a system – it is not presented as a “career” but, rather, a “contract”. I have a suspicion that this distinction may be one of the sticking points as to why there are problems with the internal organization (contractors and careerists often clash within organizations).
JWC on 
Daniel Gallant on 
MM on 
Mr. Xyz on 
Marc on
My guess is that very few in HTS will actually be worried about this assessment. Congress has already indicated its support for the program; the testimony they have had thus far has been from HTS officials and supporters; and, it’s Robert Gates who is to report back on this, and he has already abundantly supported HTS of course. At a time when congressional leaders say they will support Obama’s decisions no matter what, there would need to be a total turn against the war in Afghanistan right from the top for Congress to maybe start looking at this more critically. Even so, HTS is not restricted to Afghanistan, so I am not sure that even an anti-war shift regarding Afghanistan would matter. Anyway, as I said, this is a guess, from an outsider.