By Mike Few

Best Defense library of reading lists

As we embark on the second decade of the 21^st century, we face the possibility of spending another decade embattled in small wars. Prior to attempting to fix our military organization, reconfigure foreign policy and military strategy, and solving others' wicked problems; we should begin by gaining a better understanding of revolution.

In the philosophical sense, most conflict today is competition from the haves and the have-nots, the crisis of the nation-state, and the dilemma of political power given scarce resources. In order to seek solutions, we must first seek to understand both ourselves and others. We have to learn how to see the world as it is and not how we wished it to be.

As we are better able to see the problems before us, then we may find better understanding and alternative solutions. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this is called learning to walk in another man's shoes.

Below is a reading list that can help us along the journey to understanding. This list reflects my own journey towards understanding after fighting in the wars of the last decade. Specifically, it reflects my own frustration that we were not able to force the desired outcome in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace by Rye Barcott

Father of Money: Buying Peace in Baghdad by Jason Whiteley

The Human Face of War by Jim Starr. Military needs smaller staffs, innovation, and focus on empowering people. Book review here.

American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security by Richard K. Betts. Post-Cold War foreign policy has misused military power trying to turn a spoon into a knife.

Protestant Ethic by Max Weber. Father of Sociology describes why Americans and the Western World are do-ers and why we feel that we must fix other societies.

The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey. Che's early years when he was traveling and feeling empathy for the bottom 99 percent. Of course, after he got power, he was corrupted. Same issue we're seeing today with the Shiia in Iraq. They want revenge and payback instead of focusing on healing, forgiveness, and moving the state forward.

Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution by Matilde Zimmermann. Biography of Carlos Fonseca Amador, the legendary leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (the FSLN) and the most important and influential figure of the post-1959 revolutionary generation in Latin America. Fonseca, killed in battle in 1976, was the undisputed intellectual and strategic leader of the FSLN. In a groundbreaking and fast-paced narrative that draws on a rich archive of previously unpublished Fonseca writings, Matilde Zimmermann sheds new light on central themes in his ideology as well as on internal disputes, ideological shifts, and personalities of the FSLN.

Blood Done Signed My Name by Tim Tyson. Civil Right Movement goes violent in Oxford, NC after black paratrooper is killed by a group of white men, and the system acquits.

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinski. How the movement in Chicago forced the power structure to provide essential services to the ghettos. Why should the suburbs have their trash collected and good schools but the inner city does not?

Preface to Maynard Smith's Evolution and the Theory of Games. Nobel Laureate describes how difficult it is to model human beings competing over limited resources.

Wicked Problems And Network Approaches To Resolution by Nancy Roberts. My mentor describes her frustration in trying to negotiate peace and modernization with the Taliban in 1997 at the conclusion of the last Civil War.

And of course, Fight Club -- understanding the anarchists who reject the state.

Michael Few is a retired Army officer and former editor of Small Wars Journal.

By Lieutenant General John H. Cushman, US Army, Retired

Best Defense department of Vietnam War studies

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

      John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller

This is a sequel to my Reflections on Vietnam 1963-64: Trying to talk to Gen. Westmoreland about COIN, posted January 6, 2011. It is taken from an oral history now in progress.

Returning home from Vietnam in April 1964 I believed that I understood that situation. I had brought back copies of the flip charts that my deputy senior advisor Bob Montague had built to brief visitors to the 21st ARVN Infantry Division headquarters at Bac Lieu and to our Advisory Team 51. They described in detail the oil spot pacification scheme that the division with our help had developed and employed.

While waiting to attend the National War College, I used those charts to brief people at OSD and the CIA. I went up to West Point and briefed the cadets. I briefed at Forts Benning and Bragg.

I briefed LTG Harold K. Johnson, the Army DCSOPS. For about an hour I told him our story. At the end he said, "You know what we have to do to solve this problem in Vietnam? We have to build a command post down in the basement of the Pentagon where we can plot every platoon and every company and plot out the Vietnam situation in detail." I said, "General, even at the 21st Division we didn't keep that kind of detail. I don't see how you can keep that kind of detail in the Pentagon." He said, "That's what McNamara requires."

This was May 1964. If General Johnson had been perceptive he would have said to me. "You have just described the strategy for success in Vietnam's countryside." He would have bought the concept right then. He would have had me briefing everywhere. He did not. Eighteen months later he sponsored a massive study called PROVN which said essentially the same thing that I had been saying.^[1]

He missed a huge opportunity. We had the essentials of PROVN in April 1964.

When I got to the National War College that August with ideas on Vietnam, the Vietnamese government was in upheaval. There had been a series of coups. Things were deteriorating in the countryside. Battalions of the ARVN were being ambushed and beat up by main force Viet Cong. It got so bad there was talk of committing U.S. combat forces. It was election season. Barry Goldwater was President Johnson's opponent. That fall LBJ would not mention the possibility of sending combat forces into Vietnam.

As a student my message was, "The countryside is no place for American troops. They will only tear it up. They won't be able to tell friend from foe." I believed that pacification was the answer and that with U.S. advice and assistance Vietnamese troops could deal with the Viet Cong.

In my view there were two problems in Vietnam; one, the instability in the countryside, and two, the reinforcements being received by the Viet Cong from outside South Vietnam. I believed that I had found the solution to pacifying the countryside. I began to study the problem of infiltration.

Some supplies were coming through Cambodia. A small amount came in over the beaches. But most reinforcements and materiel were coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and entering through the South Vietnam's northern provinces. I thought that the best use of American resources would be to block the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Each student was required to write an individual research paper. I began to consider historical examples of counterinsurgency. An office at the Pentagon was keeping a library of them. I compiled a list of recent cases in which established governments had coped successfully with an insurgency (Burma, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Malaya, the Philippines and Tibet) and a list of those in which the insurgents were successful (China, Cuba, Indochina, Indonesia, Israel, and Laos, and a draw, Algeria). There were seven of each type.

For each case I wrote a one-page paper describing the government's internal measures compared to the effort being made by the opposition, grading it on a scale of one to 10. For each case, on the same one to 10 scale, I determined the degree to which the insurgents did not receive outside support.

When I plotted all fourteen insurgencies on graph paper the successful counter-insurgencies were grouped in the upper right, with a "7" or more in both dimensions. I plotted that as a "zone of success." I then gave my assessment of the situation in South Vietnam: it was down in the lower left at about a "3". I said, "You're not going to have a successful counter-insurgency until you solve both problems. The zone of success is up here and the situation in Vietnam is down here."

I derived this general principle that I put in my paper:

In order for a counterinsurgency to succeed, there must be both an internal effort substantially superior to that of the insurgents, and an effective restriction of (or an absence of} external support to the insurgents. Neither action alone is sufficient to success. Both are necessary.

That simple operations analysis with its profound truth was an appendix to my individual research paper, External Support of the Viet Cong: An Analysis and a Proposal. Originally classified TOP SECRET, it has been downgraded to unclassified and can be found in the special collections of the library of the National Defense University.

I had become convinced that a satisfactory conclusion in Vietnam was not possible if the Ho Chi Minh trail were allowed to exist. I thought that there had to be some way to use the great military capability of the United States to solve this problem. I thought air mobility could supply part of the answer. I had been following the evolution of air mobility in the Army for years and especially since the approval of the recommendations of the Howze Board in 1963 as I left for Vietnam.

While at the National War College I kept abreast of the formation of the 11th Air Assault Division at Fort Benning. Employment of that division was a key element of my paper.  My plan was to use the 173 Airborne Brigade (Okinawa), the 25th Infantry Division (Hawaii) and the 11th Air Assault Division to seize blocking positions on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

I thought that the force to seize and establish the positions on the Ho Chi Minh trail must be a coalition force, including Vietnamese and other nations' troops. As a cover plan, a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization exercise in Thailand would provide a reason for moving forces into the area. The assembled force would then launch the trail cutting operation.

Coalition partners would justify their action by citing North Vietnam's operations in Laos since 1961 to seize the trail's territory as flagrant violations of the 1954 Geneva Accords^[2]. I offered a U.S. political-military concept aimed at convincing China that it should not intervene in this defensive blocking action.

I thought that with engineer effort positions could be built and fields of fire cleared to establish positions that could be held and from which operations could be conducted to deny enemy use of routes. I made the best terrain analysis that I could based on the available maps. I determined that my planned multinational, multidivision joint force could do the job.

I also described how U.S. forces available at end-1964 were substantially greater than those available at end-1960 during the Laos crisis. In 1965 we had, for example: 1,119 UH-1 and 71 CH-47 helicopters on hand compared to only a handful in 1961. We had 139 Army CV-2B Caribou aircraft and 682 Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft, compared to zero Caribou and 264 C-130s in 1961's inventory. Secretary McNamara had in four years more than doubled the Air Force and Navy's capabilities in tactical air. So I thought that adequate force was available.

After the 1964 election someone at OSD called me wanting to know more about my idea of cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail and using the 11th Air Assault Division. He said, "Tell me more about this division." I sensed that they were thinking of deploying the division and using it in the countryside. I said, "Don't use this outfit that way. It's not the proper mission. This unit should be assigned to seize and secure terrain interdicting the infiltration routes."

My notion was overtaken by events. In April 1965 a battalion of  U.S. marines landed at Da Nang. In June LBJ gave General William Westmoreland the authority to commit American troops to ground combat operations in Vietnam. That summer the 11th Air Assault Division, renamed the 1st Air Cavalry Division, was committed into Vietnam's countryside, as was the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. Search and destroy began. Half a million U.S. troops followed.

Years later, in the 1980s and 1990s, I presented this trail-blocking idea at various symposia as having had merit as a possible solution. I said that it should have been undertaken as a feasibility study. Many commented that it would never have worked, for various reasons. I'm not sure, but someone should have made a proper feasibility study. If done right, there would have been no Ho Chi Minh highway and we could have had a success in South Vietnam.

In 1984 General Bruce Palmer, who was the Vice Chief of Staff under General Westmoreland, came out with a book The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam in which he said we should have done something like this early in the war. I took some comfort from the fact that he had the same notion.

General Cushman commanded the 101^st Airborne Division, the Army Combined Arms Center, and the ROK/U.S. field army defending Korea's Western Sector. He served three tours in Vietnam.

^[1]Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam (PROVN) March, 1966:

"PROVN examines the situation in South Vietnam within the context of history and in broad perspective. Specific problems of pacification and long-term development are identified, and specific actions are proposed to alleviate them...

"PROVN submits that the United States and the Republic of Vietnam must accept the principle that success will be the sum of innumerable, small and integrated localized efforts and not the outcome of any short-duration, single master stroke."

^[2] Text: "Final declaration, dated July 21, 1954, of the Geneva Conference on the problem of restoring peace in Indochina, in which the representatives of Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, France, Laos, the People's Republic of China, the State of Viet-Nam, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America took part...

"In their relations with Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-Nam, each member of the Geneva Conference undertakes to respect the sovereignty, the independence, the unity, and the territorial integrity of the above-mentioned states, and to refrain from any interference in their internal affairs."

By Bob Goldich

Best Defense guest book reviewer

I just finished an incredibly insightful book, David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency 1945-1967. French is a distinguished British historian who has produced superb books on, among other things, British Army mobilization and training in World War II, and the British regimental tradition. IMHO, Four of the many conclusions he comes to in this work are:

1. The British used a lot more coercion and force in their COIN operations than more hagiographical accounts of those operations admit or imply. This isn't new, but he gathers together information from ten post-WWII British COIN operations to make his point very meticulously.

2. Because of the gross misinterpretations regarding (1), COIN doctrines based on a supposed "hearts and minds" and humanitarian-oriented doctrine are based on a totally incorrect interpretation of history. Last line of his book, page 255: "Misleading history had contributed to producing a misleading doctrine."

3. British success in post-WWII COIN was mixed at best. Oft-cited Malaya worked very well. By any standards the British lost in Palestine, the Suez Canal prior to the late 1956 invasion, Oman, and Aden. The British suppressed the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the short run, the same in Nyasaland (Malawi), but within a few years had to grant Kenyan independence anyway. In Cyprus, the British had to grant Cypriot independence and retained only two military base areas on the island. In Oman they failed in the 1960s and had to go back and do it in the 1970s. I think this part of his analysis is very significant, because if we compare his list of successes and failures with ours, we come across as no worse or better.

4. The British were, in general, not particularly prepared in advance for COIN operations, did not adapt rapidly, and had enormous problems in transmitting sound operational analysis to the field. Interestingly, in view of our recent discussion about conscription and COIN, he cites the use of National Servicemen (two-year draftees) as a real drag on developing effective COIN units due to huge personnel turnover.

This book ain't cheap but it is well worth the dough.

"The Basra area is of great importance."

-Gen. George C. Marshall to President Franklin D. Roosevelt,  30 June 1942

Brig. Gen. Terence Hildner died in Kabul, apparently of natural causes. He was 49 years old and commanded a logistics unit.

I am pretty sure he is the only general to die in theater in the post-9/11 wars. My condolences to his family and soldiers. 

Meanwhile, an Army lieutenant colonel, Daniel Davis, who served in Afghanistan, says in an article that the war isn't working and that our military leaders are not telling the truth about the war. I don't feel equipped to judge his piece. One reason I don't write much about the Afghan war, and instead invite guest commentaries, is I don't understand the war there. On the one hand it looks like it is going badly. On the other, in my experience, if you aren't moving around the war constantly observing it (and not just seeing it in one place), then you probably are at least six months out of date.

That said, friends of mine point out that the article is longer on charges than on specifics. Also, despite the breathless tone of the New York Times article about Davis, one friend points out that the officer is hardly a newcomer to dissent, having written opinion columns frequently for the Washington Times.  Here is another piece he wrote on Afghanistan.

This is the best article I've read about how to think about American moves in the war in Afghanistan.

From a recent speech by Gen. David Petraeus (USA, ret.) to the Reserve Officers Association:

Speaking of reservists, up front I wanted to share with you a story from a recently declassified operation that took place in the Pacific Ocean area, an operation that, for the press, has been unreported until today. During this particular operation, one of our best reserve units was deployed to perform a sensitive mission on a desert island where they had to hire some local inhabitants as scouts and translators. It turned out, however, that the locals were cannibals.

So the commander, who in his civilian life was an expert in foreign languages and in dealing with different cultures and…made a point of speaking to them before the contract was finalized. "You're part of our team now," he told the cannibals in their language. "We'll pay you well for your service, and we'll allow you to eat any of our rations. But please, he said -- please don't eat any of our troopers."

Well, the cannibals responded reassuringly and promised not to eat any of the unit's soldiers, and they then shook hands with the commander and went to work.

Everything was going smoothly until about four weeks later, when the commander called the cannibals together for a meeting. "You're all working hard," he said, "and I'm very pleased with your performance. However, one of our sergeants has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to him?"

The cannibals all shook their heads and professed to have no idea of the missing sergeant's whereabouts.

After the commander left, however, the leader of the cannibals turned to the others and asked sternly, "Which one of you idiots ate the sergeant?"

The cannibals all hung their heads until finally one of them meekly put his hand in the air and said, "I did."

"You fool," the head cannibal shouted. "For four weeks we've been eating lieutenants, captains and even majors -- [laughter] -- and no one noted anything - [laughter, applause] -- and then you had to go and eat a sergeant." [Laughter]

I've been reading Peter Schifferle's America's School for War: Fort Leavenworth, Officer Education and Victory in World War II. Generally I found it kind of dull, feeling a bit like a biography written only about what a person did between 9 and 5 every day.

That said, I was intrigued and persuaded by his basic conclusion: Senior American commanders were much more competent in World War II than in World War I, he says, especially in the difficult art of coordinating the combat arms (infantry, artillery, armor, aviation) to break through enemy lines and then exploit that breakthrough. The reason for this competence, he says, was the education they received at Fort Leavenworth in the interwar period. He quotes the comment of German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who after being captured in 1945 reportedly said, "We cannot understand the difference in your leadership in the last war and in this. We could understand it if you had produced one superior corps commander, but now we find all of your corps commanders good and of equal superiority."

Col. Paul Frapollo, USMC (Ret.) writes to the Marine Corps Gazette (Feb. 2012 issue) to bemoan openly gay people being allowed to serve in the military. "Now that Congress has decreed that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders can serve, I predict that political correctness, carried to these extremes, will ultimately severely weaken our combat capabilities."

He continues that "our country was founded as a Christian nation," and adds that he is especially troubled because, he says, "I am a Catholic." As such, he writes, he could not serve alongside open homosexuals. 

It seems to be that he wants to nail the door shut after he made it in. There was a long period in American history when Catholics were not regarded as Christians, and in fact were discriminated against because of that. In the 17^th century, Catholics were forbidden to settle in Virginia and Massachusetts. The local newspaper I read every week in Maine was founded as an anti-Catholic vehicle -- and a Catholic priest was tarred and feathered in the town in the 19^th century. That was about the same time a mob burned a convent in Massachusetts. (That anti-Catholic cartoon above, by the way, is from 1876. It depicts Catholic bishops attacking innocent schoolchildren.)

I can imagine someone writing awhile ago that allowing Catholics to be colonels in the Marines would weaken the institution.

But eventually, what some people call "political correctness" deemed that anti-Catholicism was wrong. And so there were no complaints when Paul Frappollo enlisted in the Marines in 1949, and he rose to command a fighter squadron in Danang during the Vietnam War.  And yes, someday there will be an openly gay commander of a Marine fighter squadron, if there hasn't already been one. 

By Douglas A. Ollivant

Best Defense department of Army-ology

Determining the state of cultural change in the Army is not an exact science. However, if you believe, as I do, that "personnel are policy," then who the Army selects as its next generation of senior leaders is an important -- even critical -- indicator.

This is not to say that reading any particular promotion list is a clear lens into the inner workings of the Army -- far from it. I once memorably heard it said that interpreting messages from any one promotion list is akin to the old Sovietology of trying to determine who is up and coming in the USSR's leadership by observing their positions on the stand at a May Day parade. Another mentor compares it to deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls. But bringing it back to the General Officer list, there are lots of factors in play -- the existing pool of candidates from which the board can choose, the projected requirements (by specialty) in the near future, the relationships of candidates to the board members, diversity preferences and etc. That said, nothing speaks to what the Army values more than who it promotes. Those who hope to someday be among those promoted are watching closely.

There are a number of surprises in the latest 2-star (Major General) selection list. For purposes of determining future leaders, I will focus on the combat arms officers and pass over those with specialties in personnel, logistics, and acquisition. Not that they are not important, but they are not future combatant commanders or Army Chiefs of Staff -- and they know it.

There is a well-known track to becoming a Major General. You command a tactical battalion and a tactical brigade in succession, preferably spending time as the Operations Officer (G3) and/or Chief of Staff of one of the ten tactical divisions just before or after these jobs. Upon promotion to one-star, you serve either as the Deputy Commanding General of one of these same divisions, or (in rare cases) command one of the three Combat Training Centers, in California, Louisiana or Germany. Time as an executive officer to a four-star general is desirable, and time on a Joint Staff is necessary to fulfill Goldwater-Nichols requirements. These are the rules of the game as generally understood, particularly for Armor and Infantry Officers. Aviators, Artillery and Air Defense Artillery have slightly more relaxed rules, but the path is recognizable and all tend to follow it. Recently retired GEN Petraeus, for example, followed this path without variation from Lieutenant Colonel through Brigadier General.

The majority of the officers on this list successfully followed this path (or a near variant) -- Paul Funk, John (Mike) Murray, Bryan Owens, John Rossi, Ross Ridge, Jeff Bailey, Kenneth Dahl, James Pasquarette, Jeff Colt, and Joseph DiSalvo. This remains the widest, most traditional path for success. I do not mean to imply by this that those who take this path are somehow undeserving, or that promotion based on this path is automatic. General Dahl, for example, stayed on this script (though without being a divisional G3 or Chief of Staff), but still managed to build on his experience as a leadership instructor at West Point (with a grad degree in Organizational Management from North Carolina) by layering both a year at Harvard's JFK School and a year as the Senior Army Fellow at Brookings. Dahl was hardly shirking, however, as these two academic "tours" were separated by a two-year brigade command that included a tour in Iraq. It is definitely possible (though difficult) to play by the rules and still engage in one (or more) of the "broadening experiences" that the Army frequently talks about. For that matter, it is equally possible to have no particularly novel assignments and still be a first-tier strategic leader.

But there are far more exceptions on this list that I would have expected. Brigadier Generals H.R. McMaster (rightly or wrongly seen as the litmus test for rewarding the eclectic) and Mike Shields were each selected despite not having duty "with troops" since their brigade level commands. The former spent time working on doctrine at the Training and Doctrine Command, then went to command the Anti-Corruption Task Force (Shafafiyat) in Kabul, where he still labors. Mike Shields, on the other hand, has over the past three years become one of the leading experts on high-level Operations-Intelligence Fusion, first for the Joint Staff and now at JIEDDO, the counter-IED command. It will be interesting to monitor whether either (or both) are selected for divisional-level command.

John Uberti appears on this list, despite having had "only" a garrison command as a Colonel, usually regarded as a career-ending assignment. But his selection pales in surprise next to that of Gordon Davis. Davis' resume is rich in operational assignments, in no small part due to his assignment in Italy in the mid-‘90s, which took him to now largely forgotten deployments in Mozambique, Zaire, Liberia, Congo and Rwanda. Having fluency in three European languages to talk to coalition partners in these locations probably didn't hurt. However, General Davis's resume has what most officers would consider not one, but two fatal flaws -- he commanded a training battalion as a Lieutenant Colonel, and a training support brigade as a Colonel. Simply put, training battalion commanders -- let alone training support brigade commanders-are generally seen as having culminated their careers, destined to top out as full colonels. That Davis' talents have been recognized despite being placed in these commands (commands are slotted by a very obscure formula, not necessarily by merit) of course speaks incredibly well of Davis, but is also a welcome crack in the rote formula to success.

Douglas A. Ollivant is a principal at the O2 Group (a strategic consulting and technology firm), and senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He is a retired Army officer.

Everyone is always telling junior officers what to read, so in the February issue of Army magazine I was pleased to see their own list of favorites, compiled by "Company Command," with also-rans also identified.

1. Once an Eagle, by Anton Myrer

2. We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young, by Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway

3. Platoon Leader, by James Mcdonough

4. Taking the Guidon: Exceptional Leadership at the Company Level, by Nate Allen and Tony Burgess

5. Black Hearts, by Jim Frederick

6. Small Unit Leadership, by Dandridge Malone

7. On Killing, by Dave Grossman

8. Band of Brothers, by Stephen Ambrose

9. Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

10. Infantry Attacks, by Erwin Rommel

Also-rans include The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel (no. 15 with a bullet). At no. 25 I was impressed to see East of Chosin, by Roy Appleman. I actually thought that The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa, by Michael Burgone and Albert Marckwardt, would be higher than no. 37, as would be the book on which it is based, The Defence of Duffer's Drift, by E.D. Swinton, which came in at no. 20.    

I've heard one aging Army Ranger lambaste Once an Eagle as a cheap, melodramatic novel. Say what you will, I don't think one can understand today's Army without having read it. Which is why I dedicated my novel A Soldier's Duty (which is not on anyone's list) in part "to Sam and Courtney."      

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

When it comes to the on-the-job dangers MWDs and their handlers face on the frontlines from IEDs, Taliban sniper fire, it's easy to forget that some of the most lethal hazards are not the far-away extremes of combat zones, but much closer to home. For Dingo, a five-year-old Marine Corps working dog, the lethal enemy that almost got the better of him was a snake hiding in the grass of his own backyard.

It was an unseasonably warm afternoon in early December. Handler Cpl. Stacy K. Chester and were running training drills along the edge of the woods in Cherry Point, NC when Chester noticed a red mark on the German Shepherd's leg.

"When I saw the swelling begin to rush up Dingo's leg and I knew it was a snake bite, I thought the worst," said Chester.

The veterinarian at the air station quickly determined that Dingo had suffered two punctures and the rapid swelling told him that there was a great and lethal amount of venom in Dingo's system. Chester quickly called around but no antivenin could be found -- the nearest supply that they could find was in Norfolk, VA hundreds of miles away and the window of opportunity for treatment was closing fast.

When the higher-ups at the station heard of Dingo's dire situation word from top came through: "Do whatever it takes to get that dog treatment." The search and rescue team was contacted and they transported Dingo to the Norfolk naval station, saving his life. "If we had to drive him to get the antivenin I wouldn't have Dingo here with me right now," Chester said. "They saved my best friend."

There are a few things we can takeaway from Dingo's brush with death. For the vet clinic at Cherry point, it's knowing where the locations of local antivenin (which they now do). But for the rest of us it's knowing that among these teams there is an immediate call to action - that they do rally around their working dogs. There was no hemming and hawing over resources, no measuring of value. According to the pilot who flew Dingo to Norfolk, they were just saving one of their own.

My first thoughts when briefed by our operations section was, 'Wait a dog?' After being told that it was a working dog I said, 'Hey we have a Marine bitten, let's get moving.' Those dogs are just as important to this base as the Marines. They protect us and detect bombs that could kill hundreds of Marines. I was happy to fly him."

You've got to be pretty wonky to look forward to an evening of reading a history of U.S. Army doctrine, so I am coming out with my hands up to confess: When my copy of Walter Kretchik's book arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to dig in. (For those scratching their heads, my pocket definition of military doctrine is: How a military thinks about what it does.)

When I put it down, I was not so happy. Kretchik's argument is that "the American Army has been far more adaptive and innovative than scholars have acknowledged." I wasn't persuaded.  

This book is not a narrative history of how each version of the manual came to be. It doesn't explore the clashes over doctrine, nor even much the personalities involved. I found it more a once-over-lightly trot through what the changes to each edition of 100-5, as the Army's capstone manual was known for years. I think I learned more from Robert Doughty's history of the evolution of Army tactical doctrine from the end of World War II to the end of the Vietnam War.

Even so, the book is useful as an overview for people trying to track how Army doctrine has changed over the centuries, and especially since the Vietnam War. It usefully summarizes the contents of each edition of the Army's operations manual, highlighting differences and changes. 

Bottom line: This one is only for the hard-core fan of American ground forces doctrine. The rest of youse who are only occasional doctrinal dippers would be better off sticking to the selected papers of General DePuy. 

By Col. Robert Killebrew, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Best Defense department of doctrinal affairs

Is counterinsurgency dead?  As U.S. combat forces have withdrawn from Iraq and are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in 2014 -- just twenty-four months from now -- various defense thinkers and publications have declared the U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency (COIN) over. Actually, nothing could be further from reality. The real story is that COIN is still very much alive, in Iraq, the Philippines, Colombia and a dozen other places where the U.S. still has interests and that, in Afghanistan at particular, the United States is moving, finally, into true counterinsurgency.

Over the past nine years Americans, and particularly the American government, have gotten a picture of a sort of COIN-influenced military operation conflated with pictures of U.S. troops spilling out of armored vehicles or patrolling, grim-faced, through insurgent areas. But in fact, the "geometry" of real "counterinsurgency" is between an indigenous government and locals trying to overthrow or weaken it. When outside troops enter the fight, as we have done successfully in many more theaters than just Iraq and Afghanistan, they risk becoming the third party in what is essentially a family feud. Practical COIN, as practiced by the United States, is to support the local combat forces, not to carry the fight ourselves. The employment of American combat power, which is generally overwhelming, risks "stealing the oxygen" from the essential relationship between a local government and the insurgents who are fighting it. It may be necessary for one of our troops to shoot an insurgent from the next village, but killing somebody's cousin isn't going to make either us or the local government loved. If there ever was a doubt, look at the celebrations breaking out in Iraq with our departure.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the destruction of both governments made it necessary for us to take on major combat roles while we rebuilt the security forces. While the performance of our troops was superb, our initial effort to re-form both the Iraqi and Afghan armies was grudging, too limited and far too slow. In our we'll-do-it culture, we forgot that so long as U.S. forces are carrying the bulk of the fighting in somebody else's insurgency, we are delaying the time when the host government starts fighting the "real" COIN campaign and we provide assistance and support, which is the Americans' real role in COIN.

Iraq is over (or paused) for us, and the Iraqi government will now fight its own insurgents unaided. In Afghanistan, by 2014 we will shift from the current U.S. (or NATO) troop-centered conflict to a true COIN campaign of assistance to Afghan forces. What this means is that Afghan forces do the fighting, helped by small American advisory teams embedded in Afghan units, living and fighting alongside Afghan troops, and backed up by U.S. airpower and logistics. This is not new to us - -we know how to do COIN. U.S. advisors have worked alongside and supported local troops for decades, starting as far back in our frontier days and lately in Vietnam, El Salvador, Colombia, the Philippines and elsewhere. In Colombia, a success story, a Colombian general complimented the U.S. for getting it right and  "letting us fight our own war." In Afghanistan, U.S. Special Forces troops have been living with the Afghan army in Afghan uniforms, previewing what we must be doing by 2014.

Whether the Administration, the Defense Department and the services have the stomach for such a shift to the actual prosecution of a COIN effort is an open question. Our commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, is calling for a shift to an advisor-focused effort by 2014, which means many more combat-experienced NCOs, captains and majors for duties in Afghanistan instead of in battalions and brigades back in the U.S., which will delay "reset" by the Army and Marines. But if our Afghan allies are to prevail in their war and preserve their country, that's what it's going to take. We are reaching the end of our domination of the war in Afghanistan; the real COIN campaign is about to begin.