You make some solid points, but let me take issue with a few:
Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units (gendarme) composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great job at Philippines with this strategy.
Not sure I would hold up the Philippine War as a paragon of US military involvement; Otis' war strategy essentially consisted of concentration camps, wholesale slaughter (e.g., the Moro Crater Massacre), the deliberate blockading and starvation of urban populations, and commonplace torture and summary execution of enemy soldiers and innocent civilians alike, all waged in the name of "liberty," "democracy" and freedom from a warlike religion -- though the religion in that case was Catholicism, not Islam. Fluency in Tagalog wasn't necessary when your primary method of communication was the sharp end of a bayonet. An average day in the Philippines made My Lai look like a Amnesty International convention.
75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman Legions times.
Actually, the "tooth-to-tail" ratio has steadily increased in favor of logistical support; US combat brigades in World War One consisted of about 78% fighting soldiers, versus about 43% of a current combined arms brigade (for theatre-level forces, the numbers were 53% to 25%, respectively. The fighting strength of theatre-level forces in Iraq is actually below the Jackson-Nunn threshold mandated for Western European forces.) But, as you point out, this isn't the entire story; what the author fails to understand is that it takes a lot of logistical footprint to support every one of those special forces teams. Furthermore, once you start adding in Abrams armor, SBCTs, Navy ships, Marine and Air Force aviation, and all the rest of the panoply of modern war, plus the need to provide "blankets, beans and bullets," it's remarkable the military has a 1:3 warfighter ratio. (To put it another way, the author would be well-advised to recall the old military maxim, "Amateurs talk about strategy; professionals worry about logistics.")
BTW Russians captured Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'.
But hundreds of Russian soldiers have died in Eastern Ukraine since then, though the Kremlin has been burying (so to speak) the actual extent of casualties (cynically, Putin doesn't mind getting his soldiers killed, it's the gravedigging he hates). The US isn't the most protective of its soldiers -- that honor probably goes to Israel, the "Hannibal Protocol" notwithstanding -- but for a country engaged in a decade and a half of open warfare, it's remarkably loathe to endanger its warfighters.
Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units (gendarme) composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great job at Philippines with this strategy.
Not sure I would hold up the Philippine War as a paragon of US military involvement; Otis' war strategy essentially consisted of concentration camps, wholesale slaughter (e.g., the Moro Crater Massacre), the deliberate blockading and starvation of urban populations, and commonplace torture and summary execution of enemy soldiers and innocent civilians alike, all waged in the name of "liberty," "democracy" and freedom from a warlike religion -- though the religion in that case was Catholicism, not Islam. Fluency in Tagalog wasn't necessary when your primary method of communication was the sharp end of a bayonet. An average day in the Philippines made My Lai look like a Amnesty International convention.
75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman Legions times.
Actually, the "tooth-to-tail" ratio has steadily increased in favor of logistical support; US combat brigades in World War One consisted of about 78% fighting soldiers, versus about 43% of a current combined arms brigade (for theatre-level forces, the numbers were 53% to 25%, respectively. The fighting strength of theatre-level forces in Iraq is actually below the Jackson-Nunn threshold mandated for Western European forces.) But, as you point out, this isn't the entire story; what the author fails to understand is that it takes a lot of logistical footprint to support every one of those special forces teams. Furthermore, once you start adding in Abrams armor, SBCTs, Navy ships, Marine and Air Force aviation, and all the rest of the panoply of modern war, plus the need to provide "blankets, beans and bullets," it's remarkable the military has a 1:3 warfighter ratio. (To put it another way, the author would be well-advised to recall the old military maxim, "Amateurs talk about strategy; professionals worry about logistics.")
BTW Russians captured Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'.
But hundreds of Russian soldiers have died in Eastern Ukraine since then, though the Kremlin has been burying (so to speak) the actual extent of casualties (cynically, Putin doesn't mind getting his soldiers killed, it's the gravedigging he hates). The US isn't the most protective of its soldiers -- that honor probably goes to Israel, the "Hannibal Protocol" notwithstanding -- but for a country engaged in a decade and a half of open warfare, it's remarkably loathe to endanger its warfighters.