Small War Deep Think
Small Wars Journal loaded with good stuff:
Australian LTC David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency advisor to Petraeus, on the controversial “gated communities” of Baghdad.
Juxtapositon of a couple of curiously related topics: “DoD Models Insufficient for (Gaming) Unrestricted Warfare,” the latter being not Clausewitzian absolute war but anything goes war; and excerpts and related links on Yingling’s “Failure in Generalship.”
Meanwhile, a series of must-reads on counterinsurgency: Luttwak in Harpers on US failings, and Kilcullen in Baghdad on Luttwak’s failings. Luttwak, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, lays out a clever ambush to take down cumbersome American imperialist counterinsurgency efforts, but ironically appears to have parked his ponderous academic behemoth in the middle of nimble, reactive counterinsurgency practioner/scholar Kilcullen’s neighborhood. Kilcullen has him tied down pretty quick. One minor point Kilcullen didn’t mention, there is increasing evidence that locals are telling U.S. and Iraqi forces where to find the insurgents, contrary to what Luttwak writes (and in fairness some of the most prominent examples such as the shift of Anbar tribes making news after he went to publication). I’d add that Kilcullen very politely didn’t point out that Harper’s virulently anti-Bush war stance made it an ideal vehicle for Luttwak’s clumsy, overloaded assault to lumber forward upon. But by the time Kilcullen was done with that bitchslapping, he didn’t need to.
Read on, Thoughts from the Field parts I through IV, reaction from field commanders on Kilcullen’s “Twenty-Eight Articles, Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency.” All good. A window into their world.
Topics: military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:11 am on Tuesday, May 1, 2007
3 Responses to “Small War Deep Think”
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May 1st, 2007 at 2:04 am
2007.05.01 Dem Perfidy // Islamism Delenda Est Roundup
See previous: 2007.04.30 Dem Perfidy // Islamism Delenda Est Roundup The Virtue of Torture Hatched by Dafydd ab Hugh Ayn Rand once published a book titled the Virtue of Selfishness, which I didn’t actually read: While I like her fiction,
May 1st, 2007 at 2:54 am
“Two other gated communities have already been established (in Ameriya and Ghazaliya districts) with no public protest, indeed with great support from the population.”
http://tinyurl.com/2wqkk8
Looks like Kilcullen has become just another shill.
Let’s hope his colleage Col. McMasters stays away from the Koolaid.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:42 am
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