I am not in a rush to ignore FM3-24; in fact in my “Eating Soup…” piece I say up front that its middle chapters are relevant and useful to senior commanders in Iraq. My critique of the manual was directed at its paradoxes in the first chapter. I based my critique on my impression of the paradoxes after a year of combat as a tactical battalion in Iraq. My impression expressed in the form of a critique argued that the paradoxes removed the reality of war—which at its most basic level is fighting—from the manual.

Understandably with this critique I questioned the theoretical and underlying premises of the Coin doctrine. I also argued at the end of the piece that the influence of the new Coin doctrine has pushed the Army into dogmatism in its current operational approach in Iraq.

I believe that FM3-24 has become the defacto operational doctrine of the United States Army and it has not been questioned or seriously debated as such. I do believe that what we are seeing is unique with the American Army. This Coin doctrine has become so overriding that it now prescribes action. In short, it has moved beyond the accepted definition that doctrine is authoritative but requires judgment in action to the point where it determines future action. As I have already argued in a previous posting I believe that the Surge and many of its tactics and methods are an example of our dogmatism run wild. Ironically during the Cold War Soviet Officers used to quip that they didn’t need to understand American Army doctrine because the American Army never followed it anyway. Now, ironically, one can argue the opposite. Want to know what the Americans are going to do? Just read FM3-24.

As far as your comment of not wanting to have the army repeat “its past mistakes from Vietnam” I couldn’t agree with you more which is why I have been thinking and writing about this topic. But brace yourself here: it is not me who is repeating these past mistakes but you. The mistakes from Vietnam as you imply were that the American Army became so consumed with conventional warfighting that they ditched and refused to consider problems of unorthodox war. Well, inversely, as I see it that is what we are doing now with Coin and to our detriment. I know this idea does not go over well with many because so called Coin experts and practitioners after being pushed to the sidelines during the Cold War now are enjoying their place in the sun and anything that challenges and questions their dominance is attacked.

Onward social science warriors….