Washington Post – Thomas Ricks writes a fundamental change overtaking the Army is on display in classrooms across Fort Leavenworth. After decades of being told that their job was to close in on and destroy the enemy, officers are being taught that sometimes the best thing might be not to attack but to co-opt the enemy, perhaps by employing him, or encouraging him to desert, or by drawing him into local or national politics???It is a new focus devoted to one overarching topic: counterinsurgency, putting down an armed and political campaign against a government, the U.S. military’s imperative in Iraq.
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