But, how much clearer can he be than this?

The lessons taken from Vietnam would indicate that, in general, involvement in COIN should be avoided.

I don’t think you’ve in anyway established that he disagrees with the military’s conclusions here. If he did, you’d be able to quote him saying something, somewhere, like, “The military was wrong.”

That stuff about “not reading too far into the lessons” is standard academic bet-hedging boilerplate. In papers, you say that about your own primary thesis, which you obviously agree is basically right.

My interpretation is still the correct one. Sorry.

Up.

Word.

I accept your defense. I will note however, when I defend Insty on such things it is usually when he says something somewhat less prejudicial than the little bon mot you threw in. Yet, I also think it is alright when he occasionally buys something that may in fact be less than well founded and includes a snarky comment. He is actually pretty good about posting people who correct or have altered ways of looking at it. A trait you demonstrate here, and so therefore absolution is granted and charges of pettiness dismissed with prejudice.

Since you’ve defended the Instapundit linking to ideas he finds intriguing without necessarily agreeing with (and have called me to task for calling him out on it), I’d appreciate the same courtesy. Don’t confuse being flippant with being a dick, though I’ll grant they’re often really close together.

Of course a corollary, and reading the thesis, his later work, and what he and others, who have long argued for beefing up our capabilities in this area have said in various forums, is that not being willing to fight them does not work. Every potential opponent thus need only turn their tactics in that direction to stymie even the most limited objective. We will give up, no matter how one sided the conflict in fact is. That may be alright in many peoples eyes, they don’t want us intervening militarily under almost any circumstances, anywhere. Petraeus however isn’t arguing that here, but making the point that the military has a responsibility to provide a military capable of fighting and maintaining such wars, it is the civilian leadership who needs to decide whether to do so. The military instead was trying to undermine the possibility of such a decision by making it more difficult to do. Petraeus points out that this is problematic (as well as undemocratic)

There are two problems with such reasoning, however, and the senior military seems acutely aware of them. First, presidents may commit the US to involvement in a conflict whether optimum forces exist or not.

The second problem posed by such reasoning is that American involvement in COIN is almost universally regarded as more likely then in most other types of combat…

Also, notice that his reasons for viewing counterinsurgencies as problematic are because of the political aspects of waging them. He is not saying that we shouldn’t want to fight them as opposed to large scale conventional battles because they are in fact more difficult militarily, but because they require political will to be maintained for long periods. They are not more deadly or expensive necessarily. So it is a bit disengenuous to sit there and say they are not a good idea because people like me will bitch and moan about them. If that is the issue it is in your power to solve it. Stop. Worse is to use the mans noting of people such as yourself’s behavior to argue that he thinks that COIN operations are inherently a bad idea. He doesn’t think so. Any particular campaign might or might not be a good idea, but they can be, and they can be won.

Vietnam actually shows that, as does the French campaign in Algeria. Both were lost despite a successful COIN campaign. In fact, COIN has a pretty good history of success. That is what is driving Petraeus’ essay. By being unprepared for Vietnam and not launching a true COIN campaign until the war had become a divisive political issue, the victories were rendered moot when we cut off funding for South Vietnam and they fell to a massive conventional invasion short of ammunition, supplies and air cover. Instead of learning the proper lesson, developing such capabilities in advance, he is arguing the military compounded the error by trying to avoid having to face the possibility in the future.

You can feel free to disagree with all that, but that is his argument, not what Sullivan is implying or something as cut and dried as they are a bad idea.

So no, Sullivan is misrepresenting what Petraeus is arguing, by acting as if his observations about the military leadership’s response to Vietnam is one he approves of, and Keith is right to point it out.

As for Joshua’s remarks

like expediency or career advancement, right?

It is real easy to throw out such stuff about a man with a very difficult job. However, given even Petraeus’ guarded assessment of any really good outcome from his campaign it seems especially petty and small to suggest this is a prime motivator. Honest critics who have actually met and worked with the man all blanch at such suggestions, not least because they know how high the chances of failure are.