Army Chief to Civilian Agencies: Step Up

In case you haven't seen it, I want to draw your attention to Government Executive's Oct. 1 feature on Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. As former commander in Iraq, Casey has a unique perspective on not just military efforts overseas, but those of civilian agencies, too:

It's not just the armed forces that are going to cause this nation to succeed at what it's doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror. In this type of war, it's the political; it's the economic elements that have to reinforce what the military is doing. So there are huge opportunities for the rest of the government to contribute to what is going on here. And I think that is going to take some real cultural change in the different organizations of the government. The military wasn't the only one that was downsized as a result of the Cold War.

USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development], the United States Information Agency, those things were really taken down, so we don't necessarily have the capability anymore to go out and do the things we need to. What do the other agencies or governments need to do to operate in the environment we're going to be operating in for the next decade or so?