COIN and FM 3-24

Be Honest: Who Actually Read FM 3-24? by Starbuck at Wings over Iraq. BLUF: “At a US Army Combat Training Center, an informal poll of Observer-Controllers, many of whom had just returned from counterinsurgency conflicts and had advised units of counterinsurgency tactics, only twenty percent admitted to reading FM 3-24. Perhaps the problem with counterinsurgency lies with us, not with the doctrine?”

Starbuck is Wrong by Carl Prine at Line of Departure. BLUF: “Starbuck is wrong. And in his drive to keep getting it wrong, he’s trying to rewrite FM 3–24, the military’s chief doctrinal publication on counterinsurgency. But that just makes him more wrong. He’s wrong about me. He’s wrong about what I believe. He’s wrong about the literature that informs FM 3–24. He’s wrong about what the manual says and he’s wrong about what it left out. He’s wrong about historiography. He’s wrong about how a caste of top officers and diplomats came to understand “strategy” in the wake of the occupation of Iraq.”