Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post

At some point folks should really go back and re-read Clausewitz and heed his guidance that history should inform the commander's judgment and knowledge but never, never, accompany him to the battlefield.

In a sense, Niel, you are violating St Carl's guidance by having the past of Vietnam as told (wrongly, I might add) by Krepinevich accompany you on your present journey of memory of your recent battlefield experience in Iraq and accounting for it.

gg

Sir,

I will leave it to you to read this - written while I was still in Iraq (prior to further corruption at Leavenworth and pre-SWC membership), to judge whether I adhered to St. Carl's perscription or not.

I would submit that a secondary point of my essay was to learn from the past, and adapt the prinicples to the present, rather than slavishly adhere to a cookie cutter approach. The whole point of that article was to understand your environment on its own terms and devise an appropriate solution.

The first point was, of course, we shouldn't have made the mistakes in the first place, because a trip to the library was full with examples of what didn't work in the past.

Niel