Learning to forget: US Army counterinsurgency doctrine and practice from Vietnam to Iraq

Abstract

Learning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq By David Fitzgerald Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013 285 pages $45.00 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In Learning to Forget, David Fitzgerald traces the effects of the Vietnam War's legacy on the US Army's understanding and approach to counterinsurgency. Fitzgerald, a Lecturer in International Politics at University College Cork, Ireland, broaches this topic chronologically, assessing first the role of counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War and then how the memory and lessons of that conflict shaped future institutional attempts to avoid, learn from, repeat, or even recall whatever it was that happened. The overarching argument is the memory of Vietnam has been neither static nor uncontested, but reinterpreted depending on the dominant context and personalities at any given time. The legacy, thus, remains fluid and open to reconstruction (210-211) and is used to justify a range of often incompatible arguments. As Fitzgerald implies, this historiographical tug-of-war reveals the long shadow the conflict still casts over the US Army as an institution. The book's strengths include its argumentation and structure; it is an eminently readable text. It weaves its way from Vietnam and the codification of its immediate lessons in the 1970s, to the re-encounter with irregular challenges in Central American in the 1980s, and then to the peace operations of the 1990s, and their relationship to the Army's counterinsurgency legacy. The last two chapters consider the spectacular highs and lows of counterinsurgency during the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Throughout, counterinsurgency has most commonly been marginalized as an institutional priority and area of investment, a trend bucked only by major traumatic events, (206) most recently the fear of utter failure during the civil war in Iraq. A second strength of the book is its measured tone and analysis. Fitzgerald has authored a sober and dispassionate study that resists the hyperbole and sensationalism typical of other related works. Perhaps Fitzgerald's distance from the debate, as an Ireland-based academic, affords him the necessary perspective. Nonetheless, the nuanced take on this all-too-often overheated topic is refreshing and, also, necessary. Third, the research is thorough and well documented in over sixty pages of footnotes. It is clear that Fitzgerald has consulted the relevant works, which he applies with due recognition of contending interpretations. The eye to detail and fastidious sourcing may be explained by the book's origins as Fitzgerald's own doctoral thesis, something evident in the book's initial literature review and primer on methodology. This last point relates also to one of the book's two weaknesses. Whereas Fitzgerald's analysis is commendably detached, one might wish he more often established his own view on controversial and divisive topics. He cites the dominant voices both for and against counterinsurgency's inclusion as a US military priority but refrains from presenting his own verdict. He covers the Iraq and Afghanistan wars well, but it is never explained why Fitzgerald thinks counterinsurgency succeeded in the former yet failed to produce the tangible results it needed in Afghanistan (198). …