http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1967/Three-Cups-of-COIN.aspx
Since I can’t quite get over the latest on Greg Mortenson, I went back to examining the disgraced author-guru’s unrenounced, unrepudiated impact on US COIN strategy in Afghanistan, a large subject I’ve touched on before. In a nutshell, as written here:
Mortenson’s unusual life as counselor to generals started back in September 2007, when then-Lt. Col. Christopher D. Kolenda “reached out” to him. Kolenda’s wife had sent “Three Cups” to Kolenda in Afghanistan where, as the New York Times put it, “Kolenda knew well the instructions about building relationships with elders that were in the Army and Marine Corps’ new counterinsurgency manual, which had been released in late 2006. But ‘Three Cups of Tea’ brought the lessons to life.”
By the end of 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported, Mortenson was in the Pentagon for a private meeting with Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen. By the summer of 2009, Mortenson had met with Mullen several times, Mortenson wrote on his blog, “to consult on new approaches to strategic policy in Afghanistan.” And “in the frantic last hours of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s command in Afghanistan” last year, the Times reported somewhat breathlessly, Mortenson was among those the general “reached out” to via email en route from Kabul to Washington. This, the Times wrote, showed the extent to which military leaders “have increasingly turned to Mortenson … to help translate the theory of counterinsurgency into tribal realities on the ground.”