![]() ![]() It was a different kind of warfare that required not just fighting, but what we now call 'nation building' that required cultural sensitivity to the people around them, required living among the people, protecting the population, earning their trust so that they, in turn, will tell us who the bad guys are." And so, what you have to do is not merely capture and kill the insurgents, but change the social conditions. They respond to people's needs in a country where the government is not satisfying those needs. Kaplan, who writes the War Stories column for Slate, explains that Petraeus and a number of his West Point peers were interested in the writings of counterinsurgency theorists who believed that "insurgencies grow out of something. "We tend to call it irregular warfare even though this kind of warfare is the most common," Kaplan tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. ![]() Kaplan says that while counterinsurgency is not a new kind of warfare, it's a kind of war that Americans do not like to fight. ![]() Petraeus and follows the four-star general from Bosnia to his commands in Iraq and Afghanistan.Ĭentral to the story are ideas of counterinsurgency. In a new book, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, journalist and author Fred Kaplan tackles the career of David H. ![]()
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