Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 122

MR REVIEW ESSAY

COUNTERINSURGENCY
What the United States Learned
in Vietnam, Chose to Forget,
and Needs to Know Today
David Donovan, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers,
Jefferson, North Carolina, 2015, 224 pages

Col. Eric Walters, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

F

rom the title of this book, one could be forgiven for thinking that it was published when the
situation in Iraq was devolving into insurgency
in late 2003. It wasn’t; however, if it had been, perhaps
military leaders of all ranks and senior political figures might have adapted far more quickly to what was
happening then. Standing where we are today, in the
immediate aftermath of two counterinsurgency wars
and current involvement advising the Iraqi government
against the Islamic State, one could also imagine some
future volume similarly titled, only substituting Iraq
and Afghanistan for Vietnam.
David Donovan is the pen name of Terry T. Turner,
a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia’s
Department of Urology. He is also the author of Once
a Warrior King: Memories of an Officer in Vietnam, an
account of his tour as a Special Forces advisor in that
country when U.S. involveme