Your three-page article on current military ideas on how to fight insurgents is a humorous reading (“After Smart Weapons, Smart Soldiers,” October 27, 2007). You trot out the Pentagon’s new counter-insurgency manual, according to which “the central objective is not to destroy the enemy, but to secure the allegiance of the citizenry.” You also point out that a growing body of opinion, both in the Pentagon and elsewhere, is that “insurrections are best fought indirectly, through local allies.” Splendid. But close to the beginning of your article you cite Martin van Creveld, an Israeli military historian, who argues that “insurgencies have been almost impossible to defeat ever since Nazi Germany failed to suppress Josip Broz Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia.” Indeed. You only fail to mention that Germans have tried all the above tricks in Yugoslavia, as well as many others. Neither the Ustashas nor the Chetniks—the Croatian and Serbian nationalists, respectively—helped much in their ever-more desperate measures. And securing the allegiance of the citizenry worked only in the cities and towns, but not in the rugged Bosnian mountains, where most of the fighting actually took place. In short, the Pentagon is still a long way from a clue on how to fight insurgents.