Today's Fresh Blogs...

• Interview with General Petraeus

  Published: August 31, 2007, 12:04 pm

  Tags: Iraq, Terrorism, Ryan Crocker, David Petraeus, Diyala, Al Qaeda, Anbar, Counterinsurgency, Islamists

  in Iraq. I believe the counterinsurgency tactics of the surge is the military solution. Hopefully Iraqi leaders will match the military solution with a political solution that allows a sustainable and stabilized Iraq.

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• David Kilcullen The Terrorist Expert

  Published: October 6, 2007, 2:54 am

  Tags: Politics, General News, Afghanistan, Australian Army, Counterinsurgency, David Kilcullen, General Petraeus, Horn Of Africa, Iraq Campaign, State Condoleezza Rice

  practitioner and theorist of counterinsurgency and counter terrorism. David Kilcullen is a former Australian Army officer, David Kilcullen left the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2005 and is now a senior civil servant, seconded to the United States State Department. David Kilcullen is currently serving as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser

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• Ten Years in Iraq

  Published: October 9, 2007, 10:55 pm

  Tags: Academia, Books Movies Media, Eurasian Balkans, Lf Recommended, Military, Politics, Usa, Afghanistan, Charlie Rose, Coin, Counterinsurgency, David Kilcullen, David Petraeus, Iraq, Iraq War

  I’m straying off-topic for how I’m trying to reorient this blog. David Kilcullen (transcript available) points out the fact, that no counter-insurgency, as General David Petraeus is doing in Baghdad, has taken less than ten years to achieve a result. That result would be political, as in Northern Ireland or Malaysia, not military.

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• This just ain't what victory looks like

  Published: October 7, 2007, 1:39 am

  Tags: Counterinsurgency, Airstrikes

  The use of air strikes in a counterinsurgency is a deadly serious act. It is always seen as a desperate, last-ditch effort of an army that is losing. Air power, when you are the only side that has it, means asymmetric warfare, and asymmetric warfare is nowhere near a stand-up fight. I would even go so far as to argue that the recent reliance

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• Declare Victory And Stay The Course?!

  Published: October 15, 2007, 10:50 am

  Tags: Counterinsurgency, Aqi, Propaganda, Security, Iraq

  Good god what a load of propagandistic twaddle. Have Ricks and DeYoung learned nothing over the last 4 years? Apparently ol’ Tom is waiting until his next book to once again put away the stenographer’s pen and do his goddamn job (eg, don’t unquestioningly shovel Pentagon bullshit re: AQI as primary disruptive actor in

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• Arrested Development

  Published: December 20, 2007, 7:47 pm

  Tags: Iraq Surge, Detention, Counterinsurgency

  Petraeus' much-vaunted counterinsurgency operations were supposed to address this issue head-on, and they have, up to a point. But one of the most glaring examples of our occupation behaving counter-productively has been our detention operations, where the policy seems to have been to arrest as many people as possible on whatever grounds

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• Academia and Blind Outrage

  Published: December 22, 2007, 5:57 pm

  Tags: Academia, Harvard, Counterinsurgency

  to formulate the recent counterinsurgency field manual.The United States military is frequently criticized for not doing enough to reduce civilian casualties or to stabilize the places it is fighting to protect. Yet what happens when the outside experts who can offer such advice are condemned for doing exactly that?[...]At Harvard, some

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• Other Takes on COIN at Charlie Rose

  Published: December 25, 2007, 10:41 pm

  Tags: Academia, Africa, Books Movies Media, Eurasian Balkans, Military, Politics, Usa, Charlie Rose, Coin, Counterinsurgency, General David Petraeus, Iraq War, Montgomery Mcfate, Sarah Sewall, Sudan, The U S Army Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manu, United States Institu

  “Discussion about Counterinsurgency on The Charlie Rose Show. Two scholars, Sarah Sewall and Montgomery McFate take credit for their contributions to The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, and offer further commentary on Iraq and Sudan. Both praise the US military organization’s adaptation to the

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• "Battlefield of the Mind": U.S. Behavioral Specialists to "Deprogram" Iraqi Prisoners

  Published: January 2, 2008, 3:17 am

  Tags: American Psychological Association, Iraq War, Interrogation, Counterinsurgency, William Sargant

  their Iraqi allies organize counterinsurgency operations against Iraqi prisoners, now numbering in the tens of thousands. No matter how they label and package it, it's counterinsurgency operations that are being described. And it was the special place of "behavioral specialists" in this plan that caught my attention. So please pardon this

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• An interview from Anbar

  Published: April 19, 2008, 5:45 pm

  Tags: Iraq, Anbar, Counterinsurgency, Tribes

  One of the keys to understanding military operations on the ground in Iraq is understanding that tribes play a major part. Once you have that in mind, it's a bit easier to understand what's going on. Michael Totten has an interesting interview with a Marine captain currently deployed in the Iraqi town of Karmah in Anbar province. It gives a

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