Congratulations are in order for Major Niel Smith (many of you know him as Cavguy on the Council), US Army, for submitting the winning entry in this month's Armed Forces Journal essay contest. His entry, Lost Lessons of Counterinsurgency, is indeed one fine read.

The book that most changed my career path was The Army and Vietnam by Andrew Krepinevich. Krepinevich’s book fundamentally altered the approach I took as a company commander during my second Iraq tour in 2006.

When I returned to Germany in 2004, fresh from my first 15-month tour in Iraq, I was convinced there had to be a better way to fight this kind of conflict. A year of operations in Baghdad and three months fighting the first Sadr rebellion made it clear to me that our strategies and methods were inadequate to meet the demands of the environment. As a new company commander, I had an obligation to become as educated as possible on counterinsurgency. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where to begin. As an armor officer, my professional military education to this point included great detail on how to fight at the National Training Center or in the Fulda gap but contained absolutely nothing on counterinsurgency...
Much more at Armed Forces Journal.