I am not advocating a "conventional only" American army. Clearly, the American Army needs to have the capability to do irregular warfare and counterinsurgency when it needs to (hopefully policy makers when deciding when to commit American ground power, however, will appreciate the limits of that power in what it can accomplish). But what has happened in the American Army over the past two years, and what i have been arguing, is that the American Army has been turned into a counterinsurgency only force which is not good for the Army or the nation. There needs to be a balance.

And with a good deal of humility I can say as a relatively senior officer that I was brought up mostly doing conventional operations but when duty called to do Coin I was not too bad at it (probably about a B to B+ student at it if I had to self-assess).

As to the notion that the Marines are somehow naturals at both conventional warfare and Coin while the army is not; well, that is not a notion based on reality but a myth propagated by the institutional interests of the marines that puts their existence above all else. So when the Army is focused on conventional operations then the marines highlight Coin to show difference. This is what the marines did after Vietnam in trying to show that they were the ones that had figured it all out with Caps; ironically during the war the marines placed very few resources into Caps. Now in Iraq the marines are in effect doing the same mission as the Army so it is in their interests to argue that they can do both well and can easily move back and forth between the two when in this rendering the Army can not hence showing how they are different from the Army.