Eliot A. Cohen:

In Afghanistan, we have a plan -- but that's not the same as a strategy.

The kind of specific knowledge needed does not lend itself to treatises, much less bestsellers. Making COIN work in real time requires the right kinds of practitioners, vast patience and local knowledge of a kind that is difficult to build up and easily perishable in large organizations. As Obama will discover, even setting the strategy seems easy by comparison.

David Kilcullen:

You've got to make a long-term commitment.

Stewart Brand:

In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

John Nagl:

I am starting to understand in the pit of my stomach how hard, how long, how slow counterinsurgency really is.

There is no prospect it's going to end anytime soon.

Obama's COIN toss