Great article from The Australian about David Kilcullen, an expert in counterinsurgency and adviser to General Petraeus in Iraq:

. . . [W]hen the invasion of Iraq was being planned, Kilcullen was one of a handful of senior military advisers in the coalition of the willing to voice a dissenting view. “I was one of a bunch of people … who said ‘Iraq is going to be a lot harder than you people seem to think, based on 20 years of experience doing it and studying it. It’s going to take a lot more than you seem to be willing to commit.”‘

If you don’t want to read a Bible-genealogy-like listing of his achievements, skip this next quote:

Kilcullen is one of the most influential Australian military minds of his generation. He grew up on Sydney’s north shore, the son of academics. He studied counterinsurgency as a cadet at Duntroon, served for more than 20 years in the Australian Army and was awarded a PhD in political science from the University fo NSW for a thesis on Indonesian insurgent and terrorist groups and counterinsurgency methods. He has been a military adviser to the Indonesian Special Forces in counterinsurgency, taught counterinsurgency tactics at the British School of Infantry, and served in peacekeeping operations in Cyprus and Bougainville. Kilcullen also commanded an Australian infantry company in counterinsurgency operations in East Timor and trained and led East Timorese forces after the independence vote in 1999. He was a special adviser for irregular warfare to the 2005 US Quadrennial Defence Review and is Rice’s chief strategist on counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism, working in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.

His no-nonsense guide to fighting insurgents, The 28 Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level CounterInsurgency, is used by the US, Australian, British, Canadian, Dutch, Iraqi and Afghan armies as a training document.

And I love these parts:

“Part of it is that I’m not political. Not Democrat, not Republican. I have no party affiliation in Australia either, so I don’t have to say, ‘It’s all going very well, Mr President.’ I just tell it like it is.”

. . .

Kilcullen says he’s been targeted in Iraq as a civilian adviser but he has also been targeted in the US. “There’s this war about Iraq going on in Washington. I have been targeted by enemy insurgents but also by the far Right and the far Left in American politics as a bit of a hate figure.

“The far Right thinks I’m too nice to Muslims and that I should be killing more of the enemy and focusing less on the population, and I should be saying up-front Islam is the problem, which is not the case. And the far Left think I’m some sort of Nazi occupation leader locking up Iraqis.”

. . .

“Some on the far Right call me a jihadist lover but I’ve got a pretty long body count of jihadists that I’ve either killed or put in jail. These dudes who sit behind desks in Washington, when you’ve killed half a dozen jihadists you can come and talk to me about not liking jihadists.”

Nice. These guys don’t mess around. That’s why I’m glad we have them over there leading now.

Read the whole story, though. I’ve just pointed out his achievements and a funny part I like. The real meat is in the story.