This commentary is provocative but unfocused--citing everyone from Chairman Mao to Edward Gibbon, and from the Mau Maus to the Moros, as it dissects and criticizes the new Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual as "deeply disturbing, both for the practical dangers it creates and for the dishonest approach employed to craft it." Still, there are some marvelous passages, as when the author says bluntly that "Entrusted with the mission of turning Iraq around, Petraeus turned out to be a marvelously focused and methodical killer..." and "Given the responsibility of command, he recognized that, when all the frills are stripped away, counterinsurgency warfare is about killing those who need killing, helping those who need help — and knowing the difference between the two (we spent our first four years in Iraq striking out on all three counts)." In some respects, I couldn't agree more!