John A. Nagl

With apologies to the author, I had to stop reading about half way through this book. Unfortunately, some of impact of Nagl's book was undercut by already having read about the General Petraeus approach to counterinsurgency in Iraq. Much of the Petraeus approach apparently uses the lessons and understanding outlined by Nagl in "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, so the book, and its lessons from history, weren't really new enough nor groundbreaking enough to hold my interest. Because of that, it seemed dry and repetitive to me, and my interest faded. I think we all saw how poorly prepared we were to handle political and civil unrest in Iraq, and we subsequently came to understand the benefits of the counterinsurgency as generally credited to General Petraeus. So the value in Nagl's writing seems validated. However, my interest in the subject just wasn't strong enough to sustain me, and I put the book down, never to pick it up again.… (mer)