Counterinsurgency by the Book

The lessons of a new Army Field Manual.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Saturday, July 8, 2006, at 7:09 AM ET

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.