Niel: The little thing was turned into a book by NYU Press a few years back but don’t buy it since the price has become somewhat prohibitive. I bet the Leavenworth library has a copy of it. Anyway, just as you quipped a few weeks ago that I would be proud of you for mentioning the need to maintain hic capabilities I think you would be pleased with my criticism of the air force and airmen in their zeal to create an independent air arm and the arguments they were making at the time for the absolute decisiveness of air power.

Bill: Agree and good question: "what is the Coin debate about?" To me it is not a maximalist set of arguments of an either or proposition on things. As I have said before, the different view always acknowledge the others positions; eg, Niel acknowledges the need to maintain conventional capabilities, or John Nagl always does the same too. And I have never said that the army should not maintain its capability to do coin because it must. I think where the debate is at, prompted rightly by discussions on the SWJ and AM and specifically by folks like Herschel Smith, is to get at a clear and detailed understanding of what we really mean by "balance." Ken has weighed in often very clearly on these matters. It seems to me that as Herschel stated we have to take out the red-pen, we have to make choices. And I imagine if you put a Coin proponent in a room with me as a "Con" proponent and said take this list of defense resources and start cutting, then produce a scheme for how to organize and train the military and specifically the army for the future, well at that point agreement would most likely go away. I for one, in simplistic terms, would not want to trade-off armor and firepower in the force for more light infantry and soft-power-like systems. Certainly there is a need for the latter, but if it came to a tradeoff (which invariably all of these things must come to that) my vote would be for firepower and protection as a key element in the force.

Schmedlap: Well the exchange between me and LG has been interesting. I have made my points about his well articulated but in my mind still discrete views. But stepping forward a bit, if he is correct along with you about a bunch of rhetoric out there as to how Coinized the army has become but in reality it is not even close to that ideal, then I think we are in actually more trouble than less. That is to say we have the worst of both possible worlds here; an army that still can’t do Coin and an Army that in so trying to do Coin has become deficient in its capabilities at the higher end of the fighting spectrum.