Slate – Two messages flutter between the lines of the U.S. Army’s new field manual on counterinsurgency wars, its first document on the subject in 20 years.
One is that Pentagon planning for the Iraq war’s aftermath was at least as crass, inattentive to the lessons of history, and contrary to basic political and military principles as the war’s harshest critics have charged. The other is that as a nation we may simply be ill-suited to fight these kinds of wars.

The manual is found here: Counterinsurgency FM3-24FD.
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