FM 3-24

FM 3-24 is the Army and Marines’ counter-insurgency manual. It was written in part by one Sarah Sewall, who is now an adviser on the Obama campaign. In the Weekly Standard, Dean Barnett, not seeming to know this, blasts her along with Samantha Power as embodying “dovish idealism” in the course of his critique of the “Obama Doctrine.” It’s a lot of juvenile giggling over “climates of fear” (because serious people know that fear distracts us from the important task of killing people) and very little in the way of hard-nosed analysis.

In addition to pointing out some other bone-headed errors (”Her name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you dumb douche.”), Spencer Ackerman helps elucidate why the “critique” is substantively flat out wrong….

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