ABSTRACT
Many view the doctrinal manual co-authored by then-Lieutenant Generals David Petraeus and James Amos in 2006, as advocating an approach centered on winning civilians' hearts and minds via superior public services. For most of the post–Vietnam era, the conventional wisdom among Americans held that counterinsurgency (COIN) was a hopeless project, especially for democracies like the United States (US). The Iraq surge did suggest that COIN was not impossible, and that if the United States was willing to invest the time and resources, then it could eventually defeat an insurgency. The ensuing 2009–12 surge in Afghanistan certainly looked different than Iraq's in 2007. The frustration interacted with widespread awareness among the troops that COIN was continuing to involve bitter combat with sometimes heavy US firepower. In fact, US interests will rarely align naturally with the host's in COIN. If COIN were quick and cheap, it would be worth the stakes in Afghanistan, and again no dilemma would exist.
