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You're right, we are definitely coming at this from similar perspectives. I look forward to finding some of those old pieces and working through them.

Sorry, yes. I've worked through it a few times in various threads here on the topic. Have also incorporated into at least one paper.

In a nutshell, many efforts at describing insurgency seem...

Look how calming of an effect our clearly expressed intent to leave Iraq and focus on Afghanistan has had on the broad, resistance base of that insurgency?

Herein lies one irony of our COIN...

As I was reviewing some Reconciliation and Reintegration (why can we not just say "forgive and forget"?) documents, it struck me that we really have is an insurgency within an insurgency here in...

Reed,

Your knowledge of what occurred is right on. The slide, however is right also. Recognize that it is a generalization and not an absolute, and intended to get a US tactical audience to...

I'll be in good company though. A whole lot of what is considered military gospel today was dusty, unread and unpublished notes back when the author was alive.

But as I say, the one thing that is...

A messy business to be sure. I p-o'd(ok, this happens semi-often, so I forget which ones) some senior officers when I stated that our soldiers were out on the ground giving us an "A+" effort to...

Wait a second...square this with your standard closing tag line!

(Though I completely agree with your assessment of the sanctuary statement and thoughts of the Taliban).

Wilf, for a man as smart and grounded in CvC as you are, I have to admit I find it very interesting your total fixation on the military aspect of warfare. The military aspect is important,...

Every operation is "tactical" if assessed by the nature of the task. A B-29 togglling off a nuclear bomb over hiroshima is a "tactical task" But the over all nature of the operation was pure...

Dr. King and Mr. Ghandi. But these were leader's so savvy that they realized that all operations needed to remain non-violent and focus on the strategic end.

I guess we can go with the US phase...

Mao named the three phases of Insurgency:

“strategic defensive,” “strategic stalemate,” and “strategic offensive.”

We then renamed these phases U.S. doctrine calls them “latent and incipient,”...

We Americans are strange cats though....Generals (though never Admirals I like to remind my Navy brothers) become Presidents, and Presidents think they are Generals. War is politics and politics is...

This is one of those important nuances that can make the difference between a successful or failed COIN.

I think there is a difference between a political group and pre-violent insurgency.

The...

This is one area where WILF and I take very different perspectives. I take WILF's position to be that insurgency begins when the violence begins, as does the military mission, with both also ending...

This is also how I describe the role of SOF, which goes to why the conventional forces often misunderstand us as well.

I don't know how many times I heard a Flag officer at PACOM or PACFLT say...