Which one doesn’t belong? (AP)

Last Christmas I sent Robert or “Bob” Gates, as he insists I call him, a special, limited edition copy of my now-famous Counterinsurgency Manual. This manual comes with a lot of specialized knowledge and secret “personal” observations that the mainstream version doesn’t have, as well as notes from brainstorming sessions I and several Rhodes Scholars had at the Pentagon. In short, it’s the best Counterinsurgency Manual out there, in a market pretty much saturated by people claiming to know how to fight a war.

One of the tenets of a successful counterinsurgency is the military forces engaged being able to earn the local population’s trust, and show them that they have more to gain throwing in with—in this case, us—than with the insurgents. Seems to me in Afghanistan we’ve been successful so far by relying on a devil’s cocktail of airborne units, our mountain unit, plus the usual assortment of OGAs, ODAs, and “black ops” units. Would someone please explain to me how it makes sense for us to swap all Army units out of Afghanistan, and let the Marines take over?

Let me handle this one. It doesn’t. The Marines are just tired of getting their asses handed to them in Iraq, they want a piece of something that they see as a “soft” target, they want some success. How about this, Mr. Commandant: there is no fucking way you’re horning in on a hard-fought, hard-earned success in Afghanistan 6 years after the fact. Not going to happen. The Army’s doing fine in Afghanistan without you … deal with it.