SWJ contributor Bob Tollast interviewed me last week on a few points regarding the developing transition in Iraq. An excerpt of one of my answers is below. The whole interview can be found here.
The tenets of pop-centric COIN have come under increasing question recently, as has FM 3-24. I do not want to try to enter that debate in a few sentences here. I will just say that FM 3-24 is written from an outsider’s perspective as to how to conduct COIN, which is one of its major flaws – that being, conducting COIN on behalf of someone else instead of letting others take care of their own problems with some assistance (e.g., foreign internal defense as the military terms it). I question how much AQI is really conducting, much less winning, a campaign to win over the Sunni populations. While there are increasing references to Maliki’s growing strongman status and his relationship to Iran, I don’t see that as driving the Sunni population into the arms of AQI.