The acclaimed author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (2005), Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl served as the operations officer for Task Force 1-34 Armor - part of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division - during the battalion's September 2003 to September 2004 deployment to Iraq's volatile Anbar Province, and during which he discovered an environment that was "far more difficult than [he] had imagined it could be." In this email interview, Nagl explains that, even though the term "counterinsurgency" was not yet "being widely used to describe what was happening in Iraq," the waging of it in the face of a "very determined enemy" became the overarching mission of his task force. In particular, Sunni insurgent elements as well as those of the al-Qaeda in Iraq group arrayed themselves against his unit - using everything from sniper fire and improvised explosive devices to car bombs as their weapons of choice - and, as Nagl noted, "We could practice classic counterinsurgency against the Sunni insurgents but the AQI members had to be killed." Drawing upon his both in depth historical knowledge and his on-the-ground experiences in Iraq, Nagl discusses the often complicated intersection between counterinsurgency theory and practice, stressing among other things the need for far greater interagency presence and cooperation. (Indeed, after returning from Iraq, he was actually asked to take the lead on writing the Army's new counterinsurgency field manual; and while his job at the Pentagon precluded his spearheading the project, he did offer a great deal of assistance.) In addition, Nagl reflects on his task force's efforts to recruit, organize, train and mentor Iraqi security forces, and also talks about how the Internet and other technologies can be used to "disseminate best practices in counterinsurgency" to those who are (or will be) conducting it in the field. "The key to success in a counterinsurgency environment is not to create more insurgents than you capture or kill," Nagl said. "A stray tank round that kills a family could create dozens of insurgents for a generation. Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible…. Always consider the long-term effects of operations in a counterinsurgency environment." As he reminds us, "Killing an insurgent today may be satisfying, but if in doing so you convince all the members of his clan to fight you to the death, you've actually taken three steps backwards."

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