Book Review: Doctrine Man!!

The early 2000s were supposed to mark the triumph of precision warfare. Instead, they gave us Iraq and Afghanistan, that is to say two endless campaigns that exposed the limits of technological superiority and the contradictions of modern military doctrine.

In a unexpected evolution, Operation Enduring Freedom weirdly became at some point a war of PowerPoint, of ambitious acronyms and disconnected strategies. For those who fought them, the real battlefield wasn’t just outside the T-walls, it was inside the inbox, buried under an avalanche of emails labeled "URGENT//COMMANDER’S INTENT"...

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war"... from "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint", The New-York Times.

In this strange, surreal war environment, Doctrine Man!! emerged. A comic strip, a social media voice, and a cultural outlet for military professionals who needed to laugh just to stay sane. But behind the humor was a deeper truth: that cynicism and sarcasm were sometimes the last line of defense against the institutional absurdity that came to define the forever wars.

The Author : Steve Leonard

Doctrine Man is the creation of Steve Leonard, a retired U.S. Army strategist and former senior officer in the doctrine community. His career comprised several years during OIF and OEF, serving in both operational and institutional billets. Most notably, he spent time at TRADOC, working directly with the bureaucratic machinery that churned out doctrine: field manuals, leadership models, and decision frameworks that often bore little resemblance to the combat reality on the ground.

After retirement, Leonard transitioned into academia. Today, he teaches at the University of Kansas. In the past, he wrote for defense journals, and was active through the Modern War Institute, where he spoke on strategy, leadership, and military culture.

But it was through his alter ego, Doctrine Man, that Leonard achieved "cult" status, becoming an unofficial voice of the post-9/11 military generation. His work captured a truth that field manuals couldn’t: that while the mission might have been unclear, the absurdity was unmistakable...

The Cartoon: a Mirror of Modern War

The character of Doctrine Man is part staff officer and part philosopher. His world is filled with absurd briefings, contradictory orders, and a bureaucracy that often seems more dangerous than the enemy. At the center of it all is the infamous "reflective belt": originally intended as a simple safety measure, the reflective belt became an infamous symbol of bureaucratic overreach during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Troops were often scolded for not wearing one, even while fully armored, armed, and operating under threat. In Doctrine Man comics, the belt represents everything absurd about military regulation: a fixation on appearances and compliance, even in the middle of war. It’s a small detail, but one that perfectly captures how rules sometimes mattered more than reality...

First appearance of the reflective belt...

Each service had its own policy regarding reflective belts...

Doctrine Man started as a simple comic passed around in military circles. It quickly evolved into a full online presence, blending sarcasm, insight, and real-world experience. The humor is sharp. It’s obvious that it has been written by someone who lived the doctrine, staffed the operations, and saw firsthand how disconnected strategic intent could be from tactical reality...

You have to live it in order to understand it... Cf. "Poo Pond" in Kandahar.

Beyond the comics, Steve Leonard has published several books expanding on his themes of leadership, conflict, and culture. These include for example The Further Adventures of Doctrine Man!! or Fifty Shades of Multicam, and collaborations like To Boldly Go and Strategy Strikes Back (i.e. how Star Wars explains modern military conflict), all available on Amazon. Some are collections of his comic work, others blend humor with essays on war, strategy, and leadership.

Doctrine Man used to maintain an active online presence:

• On Instagram, he still shares commentary on military culture.

• His small YouTube channel features a few short animation movies.

• And the est of all: on Flickr, he’s archived hundreds of his comic strips.

Everyone gets its moment with Doctrine Man...

Afghanistan and the Air Force

In the world of Doctrine Man, Afghanistan was a tragic comedy of contradictions. The comics never mocked the enemy or the troops who fought them. But they made no effort to soften the absurdity of that two-decade war that never made strategic sense at the ground level.

One recurring theme is the way the average Afghan man (or "goat f*er") was often dismissed in planning rooms, only to turn out to be far more adaptive, patient, and committed than our doctrine gave them credit for. While U.S. forces rotated every 9 or 12 months, the insurgents never left. They knew the terrain, the culture, and the politics. We had PowerPoint. We had the clock. They had the time. And they won...

Apparently, Bin Laden's computer revealed precious intel...

Staying long enough in a remote FOB will make any goat look pretty...

The U.S. Air Force doesn’t escape satire. If the Army is overregulated and overworked, Doctrine Man paints the Air Force as detached, fighting the same war in name only. In his comics, pilots are often portrayed as immature kids, always in flight suits and far from the reality on the ground. The satire isn’t malicious, it’s a critique of systems. Doctrine Man shows the imbalance between those who live the war daily on the ground, and those who engage with it remotely, often insulated by layers of technology and distance. The Air Force isn’t mocked for its skill, but for the illusion of control, and the impersonal nature of remote warfare that became so prevalent in Afghanistan, through UAV controlled from the other side of the world for example... And for sim pilots like us who fly these missions virtually, it’s a reminder: even perfect execution from the air doesn’t always mean victory on the ground.

Conclusion

If you serve, or have ever served, in the armed forces of a Western military, you’ll recognize yourself in many of Doctrine Man’s situations. The pointless meetings, the micromanagement, the despair of daily life in a FOB, all of it hits close to home because it is home.

If you haven’t worn the uniform, Doctrine Man offers a rare window into a side of military life that’s rarely portrayed honestly. It’s not about heroics or Hollywood action. It’s about the day-to-day friction, the cultural quirks, and the internal contradictions of modern warfare, things that don’t make it into the recruitment posters or the news.

But if you’re a DCS player, this will ring especially true. The scenarios you fly, the operations you build, the missions you simulate, all exist in the same military ecosystem that Doctrine Man draws from. His comics reflect the same doctrines, structures, and human limitations that your virtual campaigns are built around, only with a well-placed punchline.

Doctrine Man doesn’t offer solutions. What he offers is understanding, and a way to laugh at the impossible while still showing up every day to do the job. And in a war where so much never made sense, and where the ending still stings, that understanding matters.

I hope you’ll appreciate it as much as I did!