What has it come to when you start getting anxious over a new budget document released by a federal agency like the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which some readers, of a certain age, will remember as the former Government Accounting Office? Maybe I…

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee haven’t heard the news that more Americans call themselves pro-life than pro-choice, according to the Gallup organization.

This week, in a 13-10 vote, every Democrat but one, Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, opposed…

If you are blessed, as I am, to have grandchildren, you may not realize that they are more than just treasured children of your children, a gift beyond measure. They are also indentured servants who will be paying off your…

With the disclosure of confidential memoranda discussing the permissible limits of aggressive interrogation of terrorist suspects, the Obama administration has thrust the issue of torture back into the public domain.

In response, former Vice President Dick Cheney proposed that subsequent government…

In his 1835 masterpiece, Democracy in America , Alexis de Tocqueville, reported on his observations of the American scene after an extensive tour of the new Republic. One of his most profound insights had to do with the genius of Americans…

I love the Jesuits. I pray for their conversion daily.

Maybe my prayers are going to be answered. While lounging in my hotel room last week, on a business trip to Boston, I was jolted, upright, by the TV news announcer…

I love the Jesuits. I pray for their conversion daily.

Maybe my prayers are going to be answered. While lounging in my hotel room last week, on a business trip to Boston, I was jolted, upright, by the TV news announcer…

Having made several attempts, on American Spectator Online, to make sense of this interminable, albeit exciting, election, I have been chastened by events throughout its unpredictable twists and turns. Thirty days out from the election, with the end game now…

Once in a while, not often, you stumble across a statement or quote from some person of prominence that startles, cuts through the fog, and smashes your mind against the wall of reality, a reality that you really did not…

"American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could." – from a "pocket guide" prepared by the Special Service Division of the Army Service Forces, U.S. Army, 1943

Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, Commanding General, III Corps, has come home after another tour of Iraq. By some estimates his time in that theatre exceeds that of any World War II general which, in and of itself, is indicative of the challenges over there.

This homecoming brings with it much praise for his leadership in implementing the counterinsurgency doctrines developed by General David H. Petraeus and set out in the new Counterinsurgency Field Manual. The implementation of these ideas, along with the surge of additional boots on the ground, proved to be more successful in reducing violence and casualties than many of us had imagined given the carnage and chaos then extant.

"It is not unfair to say that in 2003 most Army officers knew more about the U.S. Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency," claims Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl, a veteran of both Iraq wars and author of the highly praised Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (2005). Nagl was a member of the writing team of the new Manual for which he wrote the Forward for the University of Chicago Press edition.

Generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno, along with the inimitable Col. H.R. McMaster, author of the Vietnam classic Dereliction of Duty, have worked hard to overcome the loss of institutional memory of irregular or counterinsurgency warfare which may have been misplaced during the great Cold War stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union.

General Odierno's accomplishments have even caused at least two analysts to christen him "The Patton of Counterinsurgency," an explicit reference to the late, "hard-charging" general's relationship to the "diplomatic" Eisenhower.

What is interesting, even compelling, about General Odierno's triumphant return is that it may signify a very real turnaround from his prior reputation as a commander who acted contrary to the tenets of counterinsurgency doctrine. The Washington Post's headline for a recent story on Odierno reads, "Evolution of a U.S. General in Iraq. No. 2 Commander Transformed Tactics."