The Col. Gentile collection and debate

[SteveMetz]

Reference Dr Metz’s implication that I am stuck in the old “cold war mindset” I suggest that he along with so many other experts are the ones stuck in a box. He like so many others are a part of the great narrative that has been constructed on US involvement in iraq. It goes something like the army didn’t’ take coin seriously before the war and because of that the army has screwed up iraq. But happily with the help of experts and some enlightened thinkers within the active army we have now finally figured out how to do it; aka the surge. I argue that this entire construct is flawed. That by and large the American army has done pretty well in Iraq—even prior to the surge--with the strategic and political cards it was dealt. My article in fact threatens the intellectual base of the new coin doctrine because it calls its basic theoretical premises into question. Counterinsurgency war is not “armed social science” as Kilkullen has called it. Instead at its basic level is violence and death; this was my impression after a year in Baghdad.

You misstate my point. Agree that the Army has done well in Iraq. The fact that the Army has done well and the chances of ultimate strategic success are still slim illustrates my point exactly: counterinsurgency is not a form of war to be won by the military. Treating it more like war will not alter this.

If we ultimately fail, it will not be because we did not kill enough insurgents. It is, in your phrase, "the strategic and political cards" I have a problem with, not with Army doctrine or performance. War may not be "armed social science" (a phrase, by the way, Dave did not invent--I heard Larry Cable use it at an SF branch conference in the mid 90s). But, by the same token, counterinsurgency is not war. But because we have this great military hammer, we treat all security problems as nails amenable to warfighting.