Colin Gray misfires on COIN

I'm a
big fan of Colin
Gray's work, so I picked up his article in the new
issue of Prism with great
expectation.

I was disappointed. This is not his best stuff. Basically he
says we need to think about counterinsurgency in the context of strategy.
Indeed, he repeats the point this several different ways.
It doesn't strike me as an astonishing insight. Nor did I put down the article
thinking about counterinsurgency differently. The article is long on assertions
and short on specifics, so it feels like a lot of shadowboxing with unidentified
players.

I may well be wrong. We all have off days, and it may be
mine, not his. Gray's no slouch, so I am going to put the article aside and
re-read it down the road, and see if it feels different.