I don't know who Looking Glass is, but I like the cut of his jib.

Just look at the MITT/ETT program... the treatment and support of these teams when they operate in another's battlespace tells most of all how much our Army "gets" COIN.

Gentlemen, while you address this matter in such scholarly fashion, men are in crude places poorly supported and repeatedly countermanded by senior officers, your brethren, who just plain don't "get it." As long as that is a consistent narrative, any discussion of, "has our Army gone too far with this COIN thing?" is pointless.
EXACTLY! This never-ending debate is like the kid who checks under the bed and checks the closet every night, afraid that the bogeyman is there. He's not. But the kid keeps worrying. Gone too far with COIN? The doctrinal publications are very nice. They have neat illustrations and interesting concepts. The cover designs are swell. But back in the real world, the SSG, 1LT, and CPT don't even have a decent interpreter. The MITT needs to bum batteries off of a line unit's supply sergeant. Commanders deploy overconfident that they're the next Robert Thompson and within a month revert back to what they are comfortable with: raids, ambushes, cordons & searches, OPs, "presence patrols", and the like. The average infantryman still exudes the attitude that, "these people should show some fricken gratitude - we liberated their damn country." And back home, over half of the pre-deployment training is the same old weapons qual, reflexive fire, squad/section evaluations, and Table 8/Table 12. Procurement is still churning out big heavy vehicles, boats, and aircraft. And Officers are still learning how to draw big sweeping arrows (though now in PowerPoint format, projected on a 42" plasma screen).

Gentile (Is he a LTC, LTC(P), or COL?) responds:
Your quip about our discussions here of being "scholarly" has a whiff of condescension and implies a muddy-boots view of the ivory tower... this blog has many participants some with experience, but most with lots of knowledge and interest in these important matters.
It's a damned good muddy-boots view of the ivory tower, in my opinion. The discussions are purely academic, in spite of the operational experience of the participants. The debate has become a past-time among military buffs that is occasionally perceived by outsiders as something mirroring reality. It's more of a hobby for the participants and a free online broken-record seminar for onlookers. Anyone who thinks that we've gone too far with COIN, or are in danger of doing so, significantly overestimates how far we've actually gone. While some leaders "get it" they are still unable to implement it. And, not to worry - most don't "get it" anyway.