Gather The Insurgents: David Petraeus And The Plot To Change The American Way Of War Penned By Fred Kaplan Shown As Textbook

book, though published in, dates well, It is especially pertinent given recent events in Afghanistan,

Additionally, though the book is about military history, it is relevant for anyone who is or wishes to be a change agent.
The 'how to execute and implement changes' in a large, bureaucratic organization US military establishment is well illustrated in these pages enough information for a case study.


Kaplan's a storyteller and it comes out well throughout the novel, He develops characters, relationships and philosophies, If that sounds like the book is a novel well it reads like one, . . Not one boring chapter.

I recommend the book to readers interested in military history and corporate management, Fred Kaplan's "The Insurgents" is a mustread for anyone interested in understanding how the U, S. Armed Forces, and the U, S. Army in particular, adapted to the counterinsurgency threat in Iraq, Mr. Kaplan profiles a group of officers David Petraeus and H, R. McMaster among them who went "back to the future" to team with academics to study the lessons learned of America's experience in Vietnam.
I led a group of Army officers and noncommissioned officers for our professional development reading group, We chose this book and every person in the group, regardless of education and interest, found it interesting and useful.


It was the finest book I read in, On November,coincidentally mynd birthday, David Petraeus announced his resignation as CIA Director and admitted that he had had an affair with his recent biographer, Paula Broadwell.
Unlike many people, I was not even slightly surprised, Several Months previously, on April,to be precise, I had just finished reading Ms, Broadwell's book sitelinkAll In: The Education of General David Petraeus, and was discussing it with my wife.
As soon as she saw the photograph on the back of the book see photo here: sitelinkPaula Broadwell, my wife immediately asked "Are they fucking", to which I replied "I don't know, but it certainly looks like it.
" if it was that obvious to both of us, without being personally acquainted with either General Petraeus or Ms.
Broadwell, it should have been obvious to nearly everyone as soon as the book was released the previous January.
While I think that the puritanical attitude toward sexual infidelity in this country is infantile, hypocritical, destructive and frankly idiotic, it was absolutely clear to me that General Petraeus was heading for a fall, and would no doubt be publicly shamed amp vilified by every political swine in this benighted country as soon as they took their heads out of their asses long enough to notice the obvious.

Having said all that, I nonetheless awaited this current book with intense curiosity, It is my opinion that David Petraeus was the most brilliant and talented U, S. Army officer since the late sitelinkDavid H, Hackworth. One of the things I learned from 'All In' was that General Petraeus had tastes in reading material which were surprisingly similar to my own, and I looked forward to learning more about the group of officers amp academics around him who had become so influential in recent years.
I was not disappointed. This book was wellwritten and fascinating, and I would recommend it highly to anyone interested in either the recent history of the U.
S. Army, insurgency/counterinsurgency or simply Military History in general,
Človeku sa chce až zaplakať, keď si to porovná s tým aká je väčšina našich generálov a ako k armáde pristupujeme.
Absolutely brilliant! I was totally engaged listening to the audiobook while commuting to amp from work, Sat in my driveway having a very hard time shutting off the cd player each night, Wow! I had no idea the military has so many extremely well educated individuals driving the new COIN philosophy.
The planning that went into coming up with counter insurgency strategy is mind boggling, The public has no idea about what needs to happen to really win a war and see it through.


Let David Petraeus tell you, He is the most brilliant man the Army has seen in decades, And I don't give a damn who he was sleeping with cause it's none of my business and nobody else's either.


This is a book for anyone, not just the military!! This is an exceptional book on many levels.
First, as a military history, it stands on its own rights, A detailed, wellsourced, readable look at the intellectual groundings of, the planning for, and the implementation of the US Army's new counterinsurgency manual.


But strip away the topic, and it's an exceptional story of organizational leadership, dealing with change, bureaucratic infighting, politics, and organizational culture.
Any businessperson, or MBA student, will find parts of The Insurgents relevant,

Just a great book,

If there is any criticism of it, I would say that it focuses so heavily on Iraq that there is not enough focus on Afghanistan.
That may be that the policies that "worked" in Iraq have not had the same effect in Afghanistan, or it may be for one of many other reasons.
But I found it a telling note, and wanted to mention it, As a work of history, tracing the development of the idea of counterinsurgency and its adoption by the US Army, this is topnotch and strongly researched.
As a work of analysis weighing the merits and track record of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book is.


Kaplan clearly spent the bulk of his research on the first idea the history of the COIN idea, and I have seen no better narrative that covers the same ground.
But he tries to use that narrative as grounds for reaching some unwarranted conclusions about the validity of the idea of COIN.
To reach such a judgment, Kaplan should have spent far more time researching and telling the story of what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, no general history of the wars has yet been written, and is unlikely to be written for decades.


In fact, Kaplan stumbles badly in his final conclusion essentially, counterinsurgency can't and won't work because Afghanistan.
The idea that the war in Afghanistan disproved the principles of counterinsurgency is indefensible, Afghanistan is a very poor test case for the ideas of counterinsurgency, There are no proponents of counterinsurgency, no field manuals, and no case studies that recommend undertaking a counterinsurgency with fewer troops than the military recommended, after having underresourced the civilian reconstruction effort for nearly a decade, under a preaccounced withdrawal deadline.
The United States did almost everything wrong in Afghanistan for so long that even a perfectlyexecuted and fullyresourced counterinsurgency campaign would have had a hard time bringing it back from the brink, let alone an underresourced and timeconstrined one.


This is an unfortunately weakness in an otherwise excellent book, Read this for the history of how COIN was rediscovered and adopted by the US Army, Ignore Kaplan's analysis of COIN's merits, which is frankly intellectually lazy and unsupported by his research, I don't think I've givenbefore but I think it's deserved in this case, This book is partially a bio of Petraeus and one of the things that kept me reading it was wondering what the author would conclude about him in the end.
It is definitely not a hagiography of Petraeus but also, not a take down with malicious intent, Because of this I would say it is a very accurate and appropriate account of US war making in the first decade of thest century.
In the end Petraeus is a bit of a tragic character, Intelligent, successful, and ambitious but perhaps misguided in his zeal, COIN methods turn out to have significant dependencies outside of the control of the commanders and several significant ambiguities.
What an amazing book. I have so many good things to say, But first a brief summary: The author Fred Kaplan takes a

look at the US Armys wrestling with the idea and practice of counterinsurgency after the postVietnam era.
Kaplan makes the point that after the Vietnam War the leadership at the Pentagon never wanted to fight another counterinsurgency again.
Instead the military as a whole focused on the more traditional concept of warfare such as big tank battles, heavy artillery and mechanized heavy infantry.
A lot of this was due to the ongoing Cold War with the threat of Russia and the Eastern Bloc.
It was also what was most familiar to many of the Generals and Admirals, But the collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeat of the fourth largest tank army during Desert Storm soon reduced the likelihood of the traditional warfare that the US wanted.
Unfortunately after Vietnam the Army has stopped thinking, teaching and training for counterinsurgency, It didnt even have a manual for that kind of warfare among its publications! This book focuses primarily on how this mentality hurt the US military and also on the men and women who tried to change the Armys way of fighting war.
It concentrate largely on the war in Iraq though it does give a brief look at Afghanistan, Having recently read a number of books on military history I must say this book was one of the best military history nonfiction I read in the first half of.

This book was exciting and eye opening, scholarly yet highly readable for the general reader, It is a look at war but was quite unique with the books direction of exploring the role of higher education among a group of unorthodox officers.
It is also an evaluation of the military as an institution while also describing in details the progress and growth of individuals who contributed towards the current doctrines of counterinsurgency.
Contrary to the subtitle of the book this is not focus primarily on David Petraeus though I suspect the publishers must have added “David Petraeus” for marketing purposes of attracting sales.
The last thing I wanted to read was a hero worship of Petraeus though I highly esteem this General.
The books gives us numerous names and background of these individuals and how they crossed path, These stories demonstrate how incredibly well researched the book wasand also how connected the author was to these individuals.

I found the discussion of the contribution of the social sciences among the thinkers and practitioners of counterinsurgency to be the most fascinating.
In fact in the beginning of the book the author traces the militarys rather interesting relationship with the study of social sciences to its origin at West Point many decades ago.
For many officers they have a rather uneasy relationship with the social sciences but there are also a few critical thinking officers who saw the importance and value of the social sciences at West Point.
These men form an informal clique that for decades have been known as the “Lincoln Brigade, ” Important for the purpose of this book is how the innovative officers who contributed to the development of counterinsurgency in Iraq were from this “Lincoln Brigade.
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For many in the military during the early years of Iraq the word counterinsurgency was a bad word.
The military and many of its generals were in denial of what the war in Iraq really was about.
There were many cringed moments in the book in which the author demonstrate how clueless and incompetent certain generals were in the early years of Iraq.
Yet while the lead generals were clueless there were also some lower level generals and Colonels who were learning and adapting.
This was encouraging. I appreciated reading about the initiative some of these men and women took in changing the game, Those who have read Thomas Kuhn with philosophy of science would appreciate seeing the theory of scientific revolutions have relevant applications here with the doctrines of counterinsurgency in that there were politics and infighting between the mainstream army and these newer innovative officers with their new paradigm.
As the author pointed out, these counterinsurgency thinkers were themselves ideological insurgents in the war of ideas and philosophy of war within the US Army itself.

After reading this book I appreciated the officers who “got it” with the war in Iraq, It was emotionally for me to read about the surge and how it lowered violence and stopped a civil war at that time.
Of course one cant read this book without thinking about the current problem of ISIS, I appreciated the leaders in the book who did their best to fix the mistakes of officers and leaders before them.
The book makes you appreciate their contribution but the author at the end of the book reminded us that even legends like General Petraeus was human, capable of err and mistakes.
The book also asked deeper questions of whether the US should ever be engaged in counterinsurgency in the first and also how counterinsurgency is not like the other historical counterinsurgency of the past with the changes that the US is officially not a colonial power, the world is ever more connected with CNN and the media and even how horrific so called successful insurgencies were in the pastnumbers and suffering that is hard for policy makers to phantom knowingly enter into today.
As a political conservative I also realize that there is too much statism in the assumption behind Counterinsurgency.
One shouldnt expect much success in “Nation building” if one understand the economics of how largely inefficient the state is as an agency of bringing about goods and services.
Readers who think through this book critically would be more reluctant in their outlook of entering military ventures that often end up being a counterinsurgency.
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