Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

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Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in Washington

When John Nagl was an army tank commander inÂ the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West PointÂ and Oxford, he could already see that Americaâ€™sÂ military superiority meant that the age ofÂ conventional combat was nearing an end. Nagl wasÂ an early convert to the view that Americaâ€™s greatestÂ future threats would come from asymmetricÂ warfareâ€”guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents.Â But that made him an outsider within the army;Â and as if to double down on his dissidence, heÂ scorned the conventional path to a generalâ€™s starsÂ and got the military to send him back to Oxford toÂ study the history of counterinsurgency in earnest,Â searching for guideposts for America. The resultÂ would become the bible of the counterinsurgencyÂ movement, a book called Learning to Eat Soup withÂ a Knife.

But it would take the events of 9/11 andÂ the botched aftermath of the Iraq invasion toÂ give counterinsurgency urgent contemporaryÂ relevance. John Naglâ€™s ideas finally met their war.Â But even as his book began ricocheting aroundÂ the Pentagon, Nagl, now operations officer ofÂ a tank battalion of the 1st Infantry Division,Â deployed to a particularly unsettled quadrantÂ of Iraq. Here theory met practice, violently. NoÂ one knew how messy even the most successfulÂ counterinsurgency campaign is better than Nagl,Â and his experience in Anbar Province cementedÂ his view. After a yearâ€™s hard fighting, Nagl wasÂ sent to the Pentagon to work for Deputy SecretaryÂ of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, where he was tappedÂ by General David Petraeus to coauthor the newÂ army and marine counterinsurgency field manual,Â rewriting core army doctrine in the middle of twoÂ bloody land wars and helping the new ideas winÂ acceptance in one of the planetâ€™s most conservativeÂ bureaucracies. That doctrine changed the course ofÂ two wars and the thinking of an army.

Nagl is not blind to the costs or consequencesÂ of counterinsurgency, a policy he compared toÂ â€œeating soup with a knife.â€ The men who diedÂ under his command in Iraq will haunt him to hisÂ grave. When it comes to war, there are only badÂ choices; the question is only which ones are betterÂ and which worse. Naglâ€™s memoir is a profoundÂ education in modern warâ€”in theory, in practice,Â and in the often tortured relationship betweenÂ the two. It is essential reading for anyone whoÂ cares about the fate of Americaâ€™s soldiers and theÂ purposes for which their lives are put at risk.

Country	USA
Author	John A. Nagl
Binding	Kindle Edition
Edition	Reprint
EISBN	9780698176355
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Penguin Books
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
NumberOfPages	290
PublicationDate	2014-10-16
Publisher	Penguin Books
ReleaseDate	2014-10-16
Studio	Penguin Books

Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice

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