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SWJED
06-26-2007, 11:33 AM
Dave Kilcullen's latest at the SWJ Blog - Understanding Current Operations in Iraq (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/06/understanding-current-operatio/).


I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I’ve been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I’d like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what’s happening, right now, in Iraq.

This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I’m not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits of whatever political ilk. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations...

John T. Fishel
06-26-2007, 12:24 PM
A link to or copy of this Kilcullen bolg should be sent to every member of Congress, starting with Sen. Lugar!

SteveMetz
06-26-2007, 02:55 PM
A link to or copy of this Kilcullen bolg should be sent to every member of Congress, starting with Sen. Lugar!


John, John, John--you're working on the assumption that our elected leaders want the truth, would recognize it if they saw it, and would act on it if they recognized it.

SWCAdmin
07-03-2007, 11:40 AM
See also this more spirited discussion over here (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=3305), driven from William Kristol's comments on this entry.