The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the

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The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

The inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars whoâ€”against fierce resistance from within their own ranksâ€”changed the way the Pentagon does business and the American military fights wars.

The Insurgents is the inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars, led by General David Petraeus, who plotted to revolutionize one of the largest, oldest, and most hidebound institutionsâ€”the United States military. Their aim was to build a new Army that could fight the new kind of war in the postâ€“Cold War age: not massive wars on vast battlefields, but â€œsmall warsâ€ in cities and villages, against insurgents and terrorists. These would be wars not only of fighting but of â€œnation building,â€ often not of necessity but of choice.

Based on secret documents, private emails, and interviews with more than one hundred key characters, including Petraeus, the tale unfolds against the backdrop of the wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the main insurgency is the one mounted at home by ambitious, self-consciously intellectual officersâ€”Petraeus, John Nagl, H. R. McMaster, and othersâ€”many of them classmates or colleagues in West Pointâ€™s Social Science Department who rose through the ranks, seized with an idea of how to fight these wars better. Amid the crisis, they forged a community (some of them called it a cabal or mafia) and adapted their enemiesâ€™ techniques to overhaul the culture and institutions of their own Army.

Fred Kaplan describes how these men and women maneuvered the idea through the bureaucracy and made it official policy. This is a story of power, politics, ideas, and personalitiesâ€”and how they converged to reshape the twenty-first-century American military. But it is also a cautionary tale about how creative doctrine can harden into dogma, how smart strategistsâ€”todayâ€™s â€œbest and brightestâ€â€”can win the battles at home but not the wars abroad. Petraeus and his fellow insurgents made the US military more adaptive to the conflicts of the modern era, but they also created the toolsâ€”and made it more temptingâ€”for political leaders to wade into wars that they would be wise to avoid.

Country	USA
Author	Fred Kaplan
Binding	Kindle Edition
Edition	Reprint
EISBN	9781451642667
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
NumberOfPages	433
PublicationDate	2013-01-02
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
ReleaseDate	2013-01-02
Studio	Simon & Schuster

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War

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