Review: Policy lessons from an unexpected source

In April 2008, Paul Wolfowitz admitted that the US was “pretty much clueless on counterinsurgency”2 during the first year of the Iraq War. This confession says much about the ongoing war in that country. At that time, it will be remembered, Wolfowitz was the US Deputy Secretary for Defence and together with his boss, the then Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was a leading “Neo-Con” (Neo- Conservative) – as this ever more notorious thread of American foreign policy thinking has been called. Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies Vol. 36 (2) 2008: pp. 99-112