I thought I was the only one perplexed by the "military" doing "development"

...but I am finding out that the more I talk to people, the more confident I get that the military-development marriage is a flawed, if not arranged or even worse, forced one.

With all due to respect to the military people and their mentality, but how would they feel if a group of economists started doing their job? When did we throw away our close-to-heart concepts of "specialization" and "you do what you are best at and I do what I am best at"? I wonder how many of the guys in their uniform haven been adequately trained on participative democracy, or rural development or poverty and inequality, etc., which they claim to tackle all at once in addition to defeating insurgency, and many other lofty goals the set for themselves. William Easterly, whose ideas and works I deeply respect, commented on the utopian goals set in the Army Field Manuals. Read it for yourself for more details.

The PRTs in Afghanistan have a "clear, hold, build" strategy. While I respect their intents to do good, if I were them, I would be humbled to do the first two alone, leaving the third part of the strategy to those who are better (more effective and more efficient) at "building", but that's me...

One of the people we talked to in the US Forces in Afghanistan was wondering why NGOs would not want to be within miles of the military. I wonder why one would wonder on such questions...