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Britain had a Policy in Oman. The Sultan wanted us there.


This "COIN is 80% political" is rubbish. All war is political. Soldiers set forth policy, using violence. Politicians create policy. No...

Sorry but that is patently not true. How many times do I refer to the need for a strategy that reflects the policy and strategy achievable in tactics? Ever read any of my posts? This is what I spend...

OK, the Policy may be very dumb, combined with a very bad strategy. That does not mean bad tactics, like passively sitting around doing nothing.

That's not really relevant to the context.

To quote the article,

That is garbage. The job of an Army is to destroy the armed opponent. That may include conducting "Security Operations" and "good" Patrolling (as opposed to stupid) is...

If this is actually true, then it would seem to be a very significant problem.

Read the book. Argued with the author. 4GW is a forcing mechanism, that is very comfortable with poor history, and some evidence free statements.

1. OK. That makes sense.
2. That's not a problem....

Well if I were King, "Small Wars" would be "All Wars." - maybe it's a good thing I am not! :wry:
However, I find "small" useful, IF uniquely associated with irregular forces, and thus irregular...

So again the Governance stuff? Defence is good yard work, so is politics. Politics is the root cause of conflict. You can get "insurgencies" caused by any brand of politics that can be advanced by...

Well nor did the Irish in 1921, the Jews in Palestine in 1948, or Castro in Cuba. Again, not new. I see no evolution.


Concur and thank you for the link.


OK, so how does Irregular Warfare...

Well the "Political officers" are basically your CA guys, with a smattering of PSYOPS. In Colonial times they were the "Civil Commissioners."
My point is, the Tailban is absolutely no different from...

Moa (Tse-tung) formed highly codified and organised units, with strict operational regulations. He was also an adherent of Clausewitz, and saw conventional operations as the only way to achieve...

IIRC wasn't the US reason for supporting the insurgency, that if they did not, the insurgency would be defeated? - and would have been without massive external aid?

Concur. Simplistic and inaccurate. Essentially, if the "tribes" are on your side, "tribes" are not a problem.

Spot on. Exactly!

Armchair eh? Pretty good armchair from where I sit!

At the end of the day, I am still not clear on what the Strategic goal is. Seriously, what is it?

AQ could work out of Canada or Pakistan, so going after AQ is not really a goal.
Stable...

Seriously, you could not hire a worse hitman! More likely to hurt myself than anyone else these days, and not that skilled even back when it mattered! :)

This 'The Afghanistan Abyss' on SWJ Blog takes some time to make sense of.

So apparently the Pashtun opposition is a function of absolute numbers. The average man living in the village will...

I've held off comment on metrics because, while I believe you cannot improve what you cannot measure, choosing what to measure does to some extent define how you want to see the problem. Plus their...

All slightly depressing

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8177935.stm

Cordesman seems to have much the same concerns as many others, including me.

It amazes me that folks can't get this logic into their heads. I was at a UK pre-deployment A'Stan workshop last year and no one really wanted to talk about the elephant in the corner



You're...

Can't argue with much of that and it's another nail in the coffin of the supposed rational approach to strategic studies and political science. After 911 99% of the US population wanted vengeance....

Slow old and in the a very different time zone. Good information Eden. Thanks again.

OK, the use of the word border seems to be causing problems. Fact is we are not going to convince the Taliban that their military success is impossible, if they have freedom of action to move back...

I'm not a technophile, but GSR, LOROPS and UGS can certainly make huge strides in making sure that a significantly more of the traffic is interdicted. Making the border difficult for the bad guys is...