Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
I think Nagl was starting down the right path in Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife. Many view that book as a history piece on Vietnam and Malaysia. It was actually a book about how Armies adapt. Being perhaps among the first to tackle that topic using contemporary case studies, it surely has some errors or shortcomings (unlikely that someone is going to get it right on the first try). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that many have picked up where he left off or spent much time revisiting the idea of how the Army adapted. Most of the criticism, praise, and follow-up has been focused on the historical analysis, even though it was not history book. I would recommend books that pick up where he left off. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any. All of the bright ideas on COIN are neat, but I think the biggest obstacle is our inability to apply them. We need to crack that nut first.
Bickel's Mars Learning, although it doesn't follow up and Nagl since it came out prior to his work, does deal to a great degree with learning and applying lessons from COIN campaigns (although it's dealing with the Corps and covers the interwar period). Most of the stuff about Vietnam deals with either the COIN stuff or the major unit actions, and sadly I can't offhand point to a single work that deals with the applications of lessons learned and preserving those lessons in more depth than Nagl did. There are some from previous conflicts, though. Crossing the Deadly Ground springs to mind, although it does have a tight tactical focus. I'm sure there are others that just aren't coming to mind at the moment.