Admiral Olson News Today

The chronic failure to address the interoperability issue between special operations and conventional military forces, rooted in divergent organizational cultures and exacerbated by inadequate senior leadership, has stymied effective collaboration and joint operations, ultimately undermining the strategic and operational effectiveness in Afghanistan.

Adapted from remarks at the Special Forces Association Convention.

Adapted from remarks at the Special Forces Association Convention.

That maybe the most important aspect is understanding cultures. if there is one thing that we can look back as a society in the united states and really in all of the west and realize is that we dont understand the culture well enough to figure out how to win a war. and to the degree that they could, these women helped us with that a lot. >> absolutely. you talk to admiral olson, the first navy saleeal operational command and they said we will never kill our way to the end of this war. we need m...

Special operations leaders asking how are we going to win this war. ten years in. 2010. if we cant talk to afghan women. we need american soldiers finest american women in uniform to go along cy the battlefield alongside special operations night in night out. to talk to women and see if what they could learn to save troops lives. i think it is the ultimate story of female friendship in the unlikeliest of places which is the special operation battlefield. >> i was surprised that the army itself r...

tone deaf they are at bad time. the person that led the petition is 22-year-old molly. shes here and we appreciate you coming in, molly. >> thanks. i appreciate it. >> you and i were talking before. you said you set up this petition a week ago? >> one week ago. >> what made you decide to do it? what made you decide ive had enough? >> im 22 years old and working two part-time jobs. i dont have another $60 a year to give to bank of america. i knew thousands of measures feel the same way....

Certain respects. lets talk for a second about counterinsurgency coin which is, of course, a sort of military doctrine that petraeus was instrumental in developing in its current context as deployed in iraq. youve reported on it a great deal, wrote a great series for "the washington independent" about it. i wonder are we going to reach any point of coin backlash? mean, i think coin -- what happened in iraq has sort of given the coinistas as they are called a sort of confidence and petraeus is th...