From my turret there is significant resistance to change in war prosecution at the Bn and above level. Obvious examples to the contrary are evident in the past three years, but if you look at Ann Scott Tyson's article in the Washington Post this morning, there are shining examples of BN level leadership that just doesn't get it.

Fighting COIN is a tactial, small unit endeavor. This takes Majors and Lieutenant Colonels out of the common, everyday decision making posture and they don't like it. It certainly isn't the same as a large, Bn sized frontal attack.

Changes are made daily in theater but they're made at the lowest levels. We are very good at tactically adapting to the enemy. We are very poor at capturing tactical keys to success through our professional development periodicals. We're having tough times finding anyone to even submit articles to professional magazines. Why? Because the guys and gals smartest on the subject right now are getting deployed and redeployed every 14 months or so. The last thing most of them want to do is write a bloody article on redeployment.

We're doing a good job of capturing battalion and brigade lessons learned through CALL after deployments. As most of us will acknowledge, however, COIN is a tactical, small unit fight. The lessons learned of battalions and larger, however important to capture, simply won't help the strategic corporal talking to the sheik in the province.