Counterinsurgency (COIN) has once again become the subject of contentious debate within the U.S. Army. Its supporters insist that the new approach enshrined in the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Field Manual (FM) 3-24, Counterinsurgency, led coalition forces to turn the tide of the campaign in Iraq. Critics argue that the surge and the end of the Shia uprising, not COIN, led to the dramatic decline in violence from 2006-2009. The failure of the new approach in Afghanistan, they claim, supports their argument that expeditionary COIN does not work. How this debate gets resolved could have significant implications for U.S. Army force structure in a time of shrinking defense budgets. The author, Dr. Thomas R. Mockaitis, considers what role, if any, COIN should play in the Army of the future. He examines the U.S. military's historical experience with intrastate conflict as background for understanding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He then reviews the current debate over COIN...

Counterinsurgency (COIN) continues to be a controversial subject among military leaders. Critics argue that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the U.S. military, particularly the Army, "COIN-centric." They maintain that equipping U.S. forces to combat insurgency has eroded their conventional war fighting capabilities. Those committed to preserving and even enhancing COIN capabilities, on the other hand, insist that doing so need not compromise the ability of the military to perform other tasks. They also point out that the likelihood of even a mid-level conventional war remains low while the probability of unconventional engagements is high. This monograph reviews the COIN debate, analyzes current force structure, and concludes that contrary to the more extreme positions taken by critics and proponents, the U.S. military has achieved a healthy balance between COIN and other capabilities.

High-interest, nonfiction articles help students learn about science and social studies topics while developing skills in reading comprehension. Each story is followed by questions that cover main idea, details, vocabulary, and critical reasoning. The format is similar to that of standardized tests, so as students progress through the book s units, they are preparing for success in testing.

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Pit your wits against the greatest detective of them all with this collection of over 130 fiendish and hugely entertaining narrative puzzles. Some involve riddles, some plays on words, and some rely on mathematical principles. Use your powers of logical deduction, and see if you can match the towering intellect of Sherlock Holmes. Not only does this collection include brilliant puzzles to ponder over, but it presents these quandaries within exchanges between Holmes and Watson. In this way, this puzzle book retains the same cosy Victorian charm that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales are so loved for. Featuring the original pen and ink illustrations by Sidney Paget and George Hutchinson, this gorgeously designed puzzle book will immerse you in Holmes's mysteries and keep you entertained for hours.

How humans and technology evolve together in a creative partnership. In this book, Edward Ashford Lee makes a bold claim: that the creators of digital technology have an unsurpassed medium for creativity. Technology has advanced to the point where progress seems limited not by physical constraints but the human imagination. Writing for both literate technologists and numerate humanists, Lee makes a case for engineering—creating technology—as a deeply intellectual and fundamentally creative process. Explaining why digital technology has been so transformative and so liberating, Lee argues that the real power of technology stems from its partnership with humans. Lee explores the ways that engineers use models and abstraction to build inventive artificial worlds and to give us things that we never dreamed of—for example, the ability to carry in our pockets everything humans have ever published. But he also attempts to counter the runaway enthusiasm of some technology boosters who claim everything in the physical world is a computation—that even such complex phenomena as human cognition are software operating on digital data. Lee argues that the evidence for this is weak, and the likelihood that nature has limited itself to processes that conform to today's notion of digital computation is remote. Lee goes on to argue that artificial intelligence's goal of reproducing human cognitive functions in computers vastly underestimates the potential of computers. In his view, technology is coevolving with humans. It augments our cognitive and physical capabilities while we nurture, develop, and propagate the technology itself. Complementarity is more likely than competition.