"In 2004, when McFate had a fellowship at the Office of Naval Research, she got a call from a science adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had been contacted by battalion commanders with the 4th Infantry Division in a violent sector of the Sunni Triangle, in Iraq. “We’re having a really hard time out here—we have no idea how this society works,” the commanders said. “Could you help us?” The science adviser replied that he was a mathematical physicist, and turned for help to one of the few anthropologists he could find in the Defense Department."
--“Knowing the Enemy”, George Packer, The New Yorker, December 12, 2006
David Kilcullen has a strong background in modern military theory: Lt. Col in the Australian Army, Ph.D. in anthropology, Chief Strategist in the Office of the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, recently awarded the Medal for Exceptional Public Service, and subject of a glowing review in the New Yorker article quoted above.
You might want to read Kilcullen's:
“Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency” Military Review, May – June 2006 (203 KB PDF)
at the link in the title above.
then check out:
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/fabius_iraq_series_2006_part_IV.htm
which is where I pulled the begining of this post
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