4

The United States Army’s counterinsurgency in Iraq suffers from an often superficial analysis with regards to critical matters such as its strengths and weaknesses, as well as its successes and limitations. This paper illustrates the necessity of analyzing empirical evidence in order to see how practices relate to discourses and simultaneously shape, and are shaped by, the sociopolitical context in Iraq. Far from concluding that counterinsurgency has to be forgotten about or seen as a silver bullet in its own right, this article shows how US military courses of action in Iraq have evolved and acted in a specific strategic context characterized by power relations.