More Blood Soup

NPR do luv them some Nagl. John Nagl, Mr. Soup with a Knife genius, has been one of their regular counterinsurgency go-to guys for a while - and they did pick the right horse. Nagl is climbing the rungs of power (to the Defense Policy board along with neo-imperialist Robert Kaplan). You can bet we'll hear a lot from this COIN snake oil soup salesman.

Yesterday on ATC Siegle had a chummy talk with Nagl about our clients in the colony of Iraq. It was the typical "training wheels" talk about whether Iraqis can manage without all the great protection and security the US military has brought to Iraq. Siegel asks Nagl, "How well prepared are the Iraqis to deal with threats to their own security?"

Nagl brags that they are capable of handling counterinsurgency, but "they certainly still need our help for deterring conventional attacks from some of their neighbors." Later in the interview Siegle picks up this thread to remind us of the Iranian threat(!?):

"Are Iraqi forces sufficiently trained and improved to deal with any interference in their country by Iran?"

That was certainly out of the blue, but Nagl doesn't miss a beat and chimes in with, "No. The short answer is no."

Yet again NPR's discussions about US counterinsurgency is an utter whitewash - never touching on the sickeningly brutal aspects of these dirty wars. Instead they allow people like Nagl to peddle their "brilliance" without challenge. Probably the best all-around dissection of the movement that Nagl represents is found in this piece by Justin Raimondo.