If you are a true believer in the American Army’s new counterinsurgency doctrine then don’t read Ralph Peters’s critique of it in the most recent edition of Armed Forces Journal because your mind won’t be changed.

However, if you believe it is the duty of the intellectual, as Carl Becker once said, “to think otherwise,” then you should. In this piece Peters questions the underlying premises of the new doctrine by pointing out its hyper-reliance and very selective use of certain historical “lessons” while not considering others. Although he does not mention him explicitly, the pen of Peters implicitly lacerates LTC John Nagl and his role in the writing of the new doctrine. According to Peters, certain individuals have used their position as primary writers of the new doctrine to “validate” their own personal theories…at the expense of our men and women in uniform.” In his most strident remark Peters states that “doctrine should be written by successful battlefield commanders, not by doctors of philosophy playing soldier.”

I am not a true believer in the things that Ralph Peters writes. Some of his stuff is quite good but if you follow his writings there are huge inconsistencies and contradictions that he never comes close to trying to resolve. Although in this piece he makes a valiant try at it but he fails miserably. On the one hand he criticizes the American new Coin doctrine but on the other hand he lavishes praise on General Patraeus for moving beyond it and fighting the war in Iraq the way Peters thinks it should be fought. Arguably General Patraeus and his team have been following the new Coin doctrine to a “T.” As I see it Peters’s problem is that he really does believe there are serious problems with the new Coin doctrine but his political interests as a hard-line conservative who writes for a conservative New York City newspaper forces him to write about the successes of the Coin doctrine inspired Surge. You can judge but in my mind in this piece he did not come close to resolving this contradiction.

I am not a true believer in Peters or in FM 3-24 so if you too are not then I commend his article to you.

gentile