The Coming Age Of The Urban Guerrilla Analysis

When you think of the words “urban guerrilla” what are the first things that come to mind? In addition to those words, what are the first thoughts that come to mind when you see “out of the mountains”? These are the keywords that stood out to me when picking this book to read. With not having any prior knowledge of either of these two phrases, my mind began to wonder when I initially glanced over the title of this book. Let’s start with the phrase “urban guerrilla”. Carlos Marighella, a Brazilian writer, defines urban guerrilla as “a person who fights the military dictatorship with weapons, using unconventional methods”. Essentially meaning anyone who is against the military and what they do, will try to disrupt, damage, or destroy any and …show more content…
He began to write this book after an ambush occurred in the one of the mountains of Afghanistan. Out of the Mountains, The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla is what he would eventually title it. His overall thought process, or purpose of this book, was trying to think beyond the patterns of the usual counterinsurgencies. Kilcullen also served as the senior advisor to General David Petraeus during his time as commander of US forces in Afghanistan. He uses numerous outside source evidence throughout the book that go to support his theory about the future of, what he calls, “competitive control”. He explains throughout the book that not only is the current war a big issue, but every urban and non-urban city is vulnerable to numerous types of threats, present and future. This book also breaks down different times throughout his tours when his convoy would get ambushed and some of the events that occurred during those ambushes. Later concluding that every one of those ambushes were poorly constructed and would fail if they were conducted in front of him during his time as an instructor at a tactics school in his military career. Most importantly, this book breaks down the present and future conflicts and dangers of the world and its environmental war adaptation. Included in this theory were specific urban identities that …show more content…
Kilcullen wants the reader to focus more on the future rather than the now. He wants us to think outside of the box and get our minds out of the mountains in which our country is currently fighting in. I initially thought this book was going to be about some heroic, hard fighting, day-by-day, gruesome, killing stories of a group of guys and their tours during the war. But it was actually a lot more interesting and informational than expected. The way David Kilcullen proposed his own idea of the future through his own experiences and tons of studies and other statistical data. Through the progressing technological advances, we will increasingly gain more knowledge about our enemy and their plans, yet, at the same time they will never give