Seems appropriate to quote that last line of the WP article.Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser, wrote recently on the Web site Small Wars Journal, "All that the new strategy can do is give us a fighting chance of success, and it certainly does give us that."
And I will say that historically, the services in general and the Army in particular because I was Army have a long-standing love and distrust/disregard (not hate) relationship with those who are viewed as "too intellectual." We go in cycles and we are hopefully now re-entering a cycle where history is not viewed as a "background setting" for events. I actually had a self-declared historian use those very terms in telling me a history page was of less value than a web page on urban operations.
There is another article in this vein worth reading on Ike Skelton and history on the EBird and US News and World Report called "Armed With History."
Best
Tom
Bookmarks