The PR campaign on the COIN effort in Afghanistan

ARTICLE: "The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Afghanistan Edition," by Nathaniel C. Fick and John A. Nagl, with an Interview of Gen. David H. Petraeus, Foreign Policy, January-February 2009.

Very good stuff. Very realistic and sensible.

A favorite para:

For a military built on avoiding casualties with quick, decisive victories, many believe such precepts veer far too close to nation-building and other political tasks soldiers are ill-equipped to handle. Still others attack the philosophy as cynically justifying the United States' continued presence in Iraq--neocolonialism dressed up in PowerPoint. Either way, the manual's critics recognize a singular fact: The new counterinsurgency doctrine represents a near total rethinking of the way the United States should wage war.

Sort of sums up the universe of reviews I got on PNM too.

Also very much in my vein is the next para:

But such a rethinking has never been more necessary. Technological advances and demographic shifts point to the possibility of an increasingly disorderly world--what some military strategists are calling "an era of persistent irregular warfare." The United States conventional military superiority has pushed its enemies inevitably toward insurgency to achieve their objectives. And in a multipolar world where small wars proliferate, there is reason to believe that this doctrine will shape not only the next phase of the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the future of the U.S. military.

Amen, brother.

The U.S. general's famous observation on connectivity: "Where the road ends, the Taliban begins."

The rise of people like Petraeus and Fick and Nagl and Mattis and Mansoor and Meese and Kilkullen and so on and so forth--this is the Iraq war fixing the U.S. military. That's why Obama keeping Gates was so crucial: it makes possible the lock-in.

Brilliant bit from Petraeus interview also fits my next piece in Esquire:

One cannot adequately address the challenges in Afghanistan without adding Pakistan into the equation. In fact, those seeking to help Afghanistan and Pakistan need to widen the aperture even farther, to encompass at least the Central Asia states, India, Iran, and even China and Russia.

You don't think having a guy this smart become president some day would be a good thing?

Comments

[Arrigo Berni]

Tom:I was struck by one line in Gen.Petraeus' interview: "One of the concepts we embraced in Iraq was recognition that you can’t kill or capture your way out of a complex, industrial-strength insurgency." It seems to me this learning would also apply to the Hamas/Hezbollah problem Israel has. But I am not sure the current Israeli leadership would agree. What are your thaughts on this?