The Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) that our Task Force confronted in 2004 looked on the surface like a traditional insurgency. But under the surface it operated unlike anything we had seen before. In place of a traditional hierarchy, it took the form of a dispersed network that proved devastatingly effective against our objectively more qualified force. AQI’s unorthodox structure allowed it to thrive in an operating environment that diverged radically from those we had traditionally faced: the twenty-first century is more connected, faster paced, and less predictable than previous eras. Though we
...more
