A New Strategy in Iraq

In the New York Times today this is an article outlining a new manual that the military is developing for dealing with the insurgency in Iraq. The is not only necessary but way past due. There is only one problem that I see. Namely, that this manual already exists, it has simply been ignored for over 60 years. The Marine Corps in the 20's and 30's conducted a larger number of long term deployment in Latin America training local troops to combat insurgents. They also did a great deal of what we now call "nation building." They took the lessons they learned and incorporated them into the Small Wars Manual. It is available from Amazon in a larger number of printing. It is sad that a 1940 manual has consistently been ignored by the military and its civillian leadership. So now we get to recreate an already existing wheel.