In a Military Times story by Natalie Oliverio published June 24, 2026, Peter Mansoor recounts his combat experience and offers insight on military leadership. Excerpts from that story follow. A Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired) and the Mershon Center Major General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History, Mansoor commanded the U.S. Army’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division in Iraq and provides a vignette of an assault on a fortified Mahdi Army position in the Iraqi city of Karbala. 

Mansoor also provides insight regarding the challenge of the approaching retirement eligibility of thousands of post-9/11 veterans. Doctrine can capture many lessons from war, Mansoor said. The harder task is preserving the judgment leaders develop after years of making decisions under pressure. The military learned important lessons during Vietnam, he said, but much of that knowledge faded as the services shifted focus elsewhere. When U.S. forces entered Iraq and Afghanistan decades later, many of those lessons had to be relearned.

“Troops can be retrained relatively quickly for counterinsurgency warfare,” Mansoor said. “But it takes years to educate a leader on what it would take to fight a counterinsurgency war.”

Read the full story in the Military Times.