The major problem with the US military is its existence excellence. Our nation has crafted an astonishing weapon, but has no idea how to use it, or, more to the point, what to use it for. Why are we in Afghanistan? Because it's a bounding sea for White Whale hunting, apparently.
The Pequod was well-equipped.
Here's the detail from the Rolling Stone article that kills me:
Moving around to different bases, McChrystal took solace in baseball, a sport in which he made no pretense of hiding his superiority: In Little League, he would call out strikes to the crowd before whipping a fastball down the middle.
Good for him. Of course, even in Little League, that bullshit only takes you so far -- eventually, you're gonna meet the guy who takes your best junk yard. More to the point, it's hard to imagine anyone more revoltingly misapprehending the Little League ethos; that's bad sportsmanship, to the point of egregiousness that even a dick manager would be forced to bench the punk.
You know, the inter-military debate about counterinsurgency is fascinating, I suppose, but it's all bullshit unless (1) COIN is being undertaken in the context of a coherent strategy and (2) the nation(s) in whose name it is being waged (fought) is (are) going to support it without being relentlessly bulshitted. Neither (dumbass) condition applies in Afghanistan.