I'll Have What They're Having

Earlier this evening, I was lucky enough to go to a CNAS launch event for Tom Ricks' new book, The Gamble.  While the centerpiece of the evening was undoubtedly the banter between Nagl and Ricks (the Wallace and Davis of COIN?), and getting to meet some really interesting people, there's one important fact to report:

The bar served Cabernet Sauvignon.* I guess we know what side CNAS is taking in the great Counterinsurgency Drink Wars... 

*Okay, and Chardonnay, and a couple beer selections too.

Wherein This Blog Establishes An Official Preference

Tom Ricks (Hat tip to Abu Muqawama) has the real story behind the Surge; it all was decided over a bottle of wine:

On the long flight home to Washington in a C-17 military cargo jet, Gates, who declined to be interviewed for this article, disappeared into his mobile home in the plane's belly with Pace and a bottle of California cabernet sauvignon. A few days later, Odierno got the word: Gates wants you to have all five brigades.

While there's certainly nothing wrong with drinking California Cabs (at my former wine bar, I used to serve this vintage, which is really quite good), there are clearly superior options for the Official Drink of Counterinsurgents. And don't buy this whole nonsense that leading COIN blogs try to pass off about arrack; one whiff of my former Sri Lankan roommate's favorite bottle has convinced me that this must be either a dastardly in-joke, or an extended Tim Powers reference.*

No, the proper drink of the counterinsurgent is clearly gin. What more could hearken back to counterinsurgency's dusty and slightly disreputable British history** than the favored liquor of Churchill? And this legacy is still alive in the Middle East; the Jordanians to this day make amazing gin that compares to Hendrick's in quality, and Gordon's in price!*** Clearly, there was a knowledge diffusion effect.

* According to Tim Powers' detailed historigraphic backstory notes for Declare, T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, and others used to take a shot of one half measure kerosene, one half measure arrack mixed together. I leave it to the reader to decide whether this was as a sort of initiation, or simply to cut the arrack's taste...

** About which more later, when I get around to cleaning up my senior essay enough to put it up on this blog.

*** Contrary to popular conception, working as a bartender tends to have the same effect as working in a chocolate factory; spending all day with the product tends to make it rather less appealing on one's off hours.