Stevenson’s army, August 17

– Michele Flournoy has second thoughts on US counterinsurgency doctrine, writes Fred Kaplan, author of the case study of the doctrinal battle, The Insurgents.

– Kori Schake has doubts about how we train foreign armies.

– Tom Nichols says we, the US public, are responsible for the Afghan debacle because we wanted out.

– WaPo is just out with a tick-tock [“72 hours at Camp David.”] It describes an Aug. 6 Pentagon exercise that revealed potential problems and says senior NSC officials had 36 planning meetings since April to work out withdrawal.

– There are some dramatic details about the ongoing evacuation .

– Politico has a good compendium of expert commentary on what next.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).