Military Must "Learn" and "Adapt"

The Army and Marines release a new Counterinsurgency Field Manual. From Defense Link:

The manual codifies an important lesson of insurgencies: it takes more than the military to win. “There are more than just lethal operations involved in a counterinsurgency campaign,” said Conrad Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, in Carlisle, Pa., and one of the leaders of the effort. He said the team working on the manual decided early on to emphasize the interagency aspect of counterinsurgency fights. “The military is only one piece of the puzzle,” Crane said. “To be successful in a counterinsurgency, you have to get contributions from a lot of different agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and host-nation organizations. There are so many people involved to make counterinsurgency successful.”

...The new counterinsurgency manual uses examples from fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also uses examples from the Napoleonic War, the U.S. experience in Vietnam, and counterinsurgency efforts in the Philippines, Malaya (now Malaysia) and South America. Crane and McDaniel agree that insurgencies are the wars of the future. The idea of a nation taking on the United States army to army or navy to navy is remote, given the U.S. conventional expertise. “Enemies will make us fight these kinds of wars until we get them right,” Crane said. “Then they’ll switch.”

I think the problem with the current conflict in Iraq is that its been analyzed to death. On the one hand you have Democrats who overly criticize the War for political reasons, to get back at Bush and restore themselves to power. Then you have Republicans who are afraid to look weak and refuse any major change in the way the war is being fought. Through it all, its hard to perceive who's right and wrong, but I believe you can't go wrong if you support the President and the troops, as long as the latter are in harms way.