Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Taiko

Good post. For me, 90% of you are saying reflects my often repeated opinions here. Particularly

  • From a Clausewitzian perspective war is war. Its very essence is a violent clash of two opposing wills. For Clausewitz, why we fight is more important than how we fight.
  • One of the roles of theory is to provide a common language that policy-makers, military professionals, and civilian academics can use in order to better communicate their understanding of the phenomena they are dealing with.
  • At no stage in developing this understanding of the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan did I need to specifically refer to a specific style of warfare. To be quite honest, I believe that the phrase 'military operations' does not need an adjective to describe how we should conduct the war in Afghanistan at the general level.

On the last point, describing the nature of the conflict, is only necessary for purposes of how modern militaries understand war, and not how war actually is. People get upset when you say "War is War."

Again that is useful.

Have you read this
get upset
Aside from the most likely reason which may be that many like myself don't really know better(Don't know what we don't know) Thus the benefit in those such as are on this forum sharing the experience in efforts to correct said ignorance.

Still at least for myself the issue with the generality of the the statement is that it leaves me perplexed when I look around at the various conflicts throughout the globe and how in each respectively it probably seems very warlike yet might not be defined as such in many minds.

- If a one tribe out of forty has chosen to actively engage in combat against a given party yet the others are also interacting with both that tribe and the opposed party whose at war and whose SFA or FID or just plain politikin

- Is the mexican government at war with La Familia and others or is it simply LE

Are the FARC and the gov of Columbia at war or is the gov practicing CT/CN/LE

Are the battles the Pakistani Army are engaged in right now War or something else does that determination effect whether ISAF is at war or FID/SFA in regards to direct action.

- Many other examples come to mind which at first blush tend to reinforce the commonality your statement implies but in the same they also seem to be far more or less than war; context depending.

Finally if one accepts that a given action is war than don't you necessarily have to determine what comes between War and Peace and at which point or under which circumstances that is?

Oh heck Now I've confused myself
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