THE FUTURE OF SOLDIERING
The Marine Corps Four-Star General James N. Mattis currently serves as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation and also as commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command—titles that were surely announced in a PowerPoint presentation somewhere. More accessibly, from what I can tell by bouncing around the Web, he will be depicted by Harrison Ford in the forthcoming movie “No True Glory: The Battle For Fallujah,” which may be released later this year, based on the book by former-Marine-turned-journalist Bing West. Mattis is not a tall man, and his grey hair is trimmed tightly; his ears protrude a little, in a manner pioneered by President Obama and, before him, Mr. Spock. He speaks in a blunt and unvarnished fashion not typical of general officers on staff assignments at the Pentagon.
Mattis is an important intellectual ally of U.S. Army General David Petraeus, the champion of counterinsurgency doctrine, which has migrated from the fringes of U.S. military thinking to dominance. Within that fie