John, I think you are absolutely right in the need for more information on the historical development of the doctrine and, IMO more importantly, the thinking behind the doctrine. That was one of the reasons why I was calling for a "scholarly" or "annotated" version (full citations, etc.) of FM 3-24.

I've been watching and reading a fair bit about the reaction to COIN doctrine (thanks, Gian !) and trying to think of ways to reduce some of the cognitive dissonance introduced by the use of pseudo-koans such as "sometimes, less is more". I think that one of the crucial ways in which this could be done is to define the universe of discourse or, at the minimum, set some decent fuzzy boundary conditions on it.

For example, you noted Wendy Brown's piece as being

Neo-marxist, not understanding the nature of Vietnam, Iraq, COIN, the US military, or even the chain of command as specified by the Constitution, National Security Act, and Goldwater-Nichols.
and I think that's a pretty fair characterization of it. But, while I do think she misses the practical point, she has hit on a much larger point. Of course, being an Anthropologist, I have to make that point by telling a story .

In February, I was listening to a talk by Tom Barnett where he's talking on about the interface zone between the global economy and the third world and how the wars of the next century will be fought to bring the Third world into the global economy. Now this actually matches the perceptual structures underlying Brown's position and is the underlying structure of the economic reconstruction inherent in COIN practice. In effect, for both of these people, COIN doctrine is the formalization of the kinetic branch of economic warfare; an ongoing, "long war", that both appear to assume is inevitable.

This assumption of inevitability, along with the shared assumption of an economic base driving the conflict, shapes and conditions the concepts that are used in FM 3-24. What is most worrisome to me is that this shaping assumes a form of "centralization" (for want to a better term) that is grounded in theory but not in reality (as a example, Kilcullen's Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt shows the dangers of assuming such a centralization).

Now, I've got nothing against grounding doctrine in theory, but I do have a real concern about grounding it in bottom-down theory that structurally and perceptually excludes many of the things that are happening in reality.

Anyway, that's my 0.198 cents...