Kaplan recently broke the story of the personal details behind the Petraeus CIA resignation he has supplied a very brief postscript to this book, which has a pub date one month earlier than expected. The results, under Petraeus's growing influence, was a post-9/11 Pentagon that supported an army combating sectarian militias in Iraq and committed to a role in 'nation building.' Kaplan ('War Stories' columnist, Slate 1959: The Year Everything Changed), a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, interviewed Petraeus and scores of others in this accessible narrative study of the provenance-and results-of this changed U.S. They favored the approach of the department's post-World War II founder, George Arthur Lincoln, educating officers with intellectual rigor and enabling them to respond to emerging conditions on the ground. military more adaptive to the conflicts of the post-Cold War era, but their self-confidence led us deeper into wars we shouldn't have fought and couldn't help but lose.The insurgents referred to in the title are the veterans of West Point's social sciences ('Sosh') department, with David Petraeus, who taught there in the 1980s, as the examplar. This is a cautionary tale about how creative ideas can harden into dogma, how smart strategists-'the best and the brightest' of today-can win bureaucratic battles but still lose the wars.

Fred Kaplan explains where their idea came from and how the men and women who latched onto this idea created a community (some would refer to themselves as a 'cabal') and maneuvered the idea through the highest echelons of power. McMaster-who were seized with an idea on how to fight these kinds of 'small wars' and who adapted their enemies' techniques to overhaul their own army. Finalist: The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, by Fred Kaplan (Simon & Schuster) Share: Twitter Facebook Email An engrossing look at how a tenacious general became the ringleader of efforts to reshape America's military strategy in the post-Cold War age. His latest book is The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. But the main insurgency is the one led at home by a new generation of officers-including Petraeus, John Nagl, David Kilcullen, and H. Fred Kaplan is Slate ’s national security columnist and a former Moscow Bureau Chief for The Boston Globe. The Insurgents, by Fred Kaplan, is a readable, thoroughly reported account of how Gen.

Based on previously unavailable documents and interviews with more than one hundred key players, including General David Petraeus, The Insurgents unfolds against the backdrop of two wars waged against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Insurgents by Fred Kaplan