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and proponent of the Surge in Iraq and FM 3-24, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Ollivant, ac-
knowledges that the manual is premised on the writings of, among others, and “most notably,
David Galula.”
47
FM 3-24 has played an integral role in the recent troop buildup in Iraq known as the Surge
under the leadership of General David Petreaus. As the apparent template for action on the
ground in Iraq since the Surge began in February 2007, FM 3-24 and its doctrinal precepts
and methods for counterinsurgency has been credited with the recent lowering of violence.
Yet the Surge and the so-called new counterinsurgency methods outlined by FM 3-24 were
not the necessary causes for the lowering of violence. Instead, the two more important and
necessary conditions were the decision by senior Americans to pay large amounts of money
to our former enemies -- the non-al-Qaida Sunni insurgents -- to ally themselves with us to
defeat al-Qaida and, as a by-product of this alliance, to stop killing Coalition Forces. That
and Moqtada al-Sadr’s decision to stand down attacks against American and coalition forces
and against civilian Sunnis were the main causes. If those two conditions were not in place, it
is hard to imagine how more american combat brigades using so called new methods would
have lowered violence. 48
Some senior military leaders look to the Surge and argue that finally, finally, the Ameri-
can Army has at last figured out how to do it. Colonel Peter Mansoor noted on the widely
read Small Wars Journal blog that “the Surge succeeded on a number of different levels.”
Echoing FM 3-24 and its reliance on earlier counterinsurgency writers like Thompson and
Galula, Mansoor argued that prior to the Surge the majority of American units had yet to fig-
ure out how to go about “protecting the Iraqi people;” it would take the Surge to do that, he
argued. Surge architect Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute recently argued
49
that it is time to recognize that the Surge with its additional brigades practicing new counter-
insurgency methods “has stabilized central Iraq, reduced violence overall and provided space
for the Iraqi government to undertake important reconciliation efforts.” 50
Emphasizing the purported success of the Surge suggests the possibility for policy mak-
ers of doing more of these types of operations, of doing more building of nations.
Reminiscent of the way the airpower theorists like Douhet in the 1920s and the French
Revolutionary War officers of the early 1960s so assured themselves that war in the future
would look as they had conceived of it in the present, the current bevy of American Army
counterinsurgency proponents appear to be doing the same thing.
Army Lieutenant General William Caldwell, commander of the army agency that writes

47 Jeffrey C. Isaac (review editor) “The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as
Political Science and Political Praxis,” (FM 3-24 reviews by Stephen Biddle, Stathis N. Kalyvas, Wendy
Brown, and Douglas A. Ollivant), in Perspective on Politics, vol. 6, number 2 (June 2008), 345-360.
48 Gian P. Gentile, “A (Slightly) Better War: A Narrative and its Defects,” World Affairs (Summer 2008); Ste-
ven Simon, “The Price of the Surge,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2008); Colin Kahl, “Coin of the Realm,”
Foreign Affairs (November/December 2007); and Benjamin Schwartz, “Schism in Sunni Community Al-
lowed Surge to Work,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 7Jjuly 2008.
49 Peter Mansoor’s response to oped article by Gian P Gentile (“Our Troops Did not Fail in 2006, International
Herald Tribune, 24 January 2008) on Small Wars Journal Blog thread, 26 January 2008.
50 See Glenn Greenwald’s blog posting in Salon magazine at http://www.salon.com/opinion/
greenwald/2008/03/27/kagan/