■"On Ground in Iraq, Capt. Ayers Writes His Own Playbook: Thrust Into New Kind of War, Junior Officers Become Army's Leading Experts," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2004, p. A1.

Another impressive Greg Jaffe story: this time on how the return of junior officers with recent field experience in Gap counterinsurgency is shaking up that citadel of Army new thinking: the elite Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It's to the point where Lt. Gen. William Wallace "has told superiors that officers returning from Iraq who attend [the school] know more about counterinsurgency than their instructors." Out go the usual lectures and in come discussion groups. As one major puts it, "This is entirely a bottom-up war."

I would make the following distinction: it was a top-down first half (warfighting against a military), but it's a bottom-up second half (peacewaging against an insurgency). Big platforms raining down death worked just fine in the former, but it takes very innovative boots on the ground to win the latter.

The war in Iraq taught the U.S. military almost nothing, because we overmatched our opponent so effectively. The transformation of the Leviathan force is going along just fine. Where we're learning plenty is in the Sys Admin work that's followed the end of "major hostilities." Army Chief of Staff (and former commander of Special Operations Command) Gen. Peter Schoomaker says [in Jaffe's paraphrase] "the Army is in the midst of the most wide-ranging changes since World War II."

Hmmm . . . "since World War II." Interesting how we keep hearing that phrase so much in security affairs since 9/11. New era, new rule sets, and so new strategy, new structure.

I say it again, the Iraq War changes nothing, but the Iraq Occupation transforms transformation from its long-time focus on the front-half force to the back-half force. Get the back-half force down right, and it's a permanent off-season for the front-half crew. That's global peace in our time, there for the creating.

I have a tentative invite from Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at Leavenworth to come and brief in late November. College-willing, I will make that trip.