Why I decided to press on this project:

First of all sometimes a certain article "resonates" with an audience because it touches that audience as a group and as individuals.

Clearly Kilcullen's 28 touched a very large audience because he offered insights that could be understood and applied at the small unit level. Much of what was previously published on COIN fell in 2 camps: the war story/history that can be very enlightening but requires the reader to dig a bit or b., the pollitical science, sociology, anthropology brain twisting theory ridden writing that just does not prompt a sergeant, a captain, or any other soldier to say, "I really enjoyed reading that because I understood it as the author was speaking to me, not at me, or worse, down to me."

Kilcullen touched RTK enough that he worked through each point and offered his own thoughts, followed by JC on the blog. When I took the two and combined them, the sum became greater than the total of the two. Others who contributed seemed to sense the same thing.

Secondly how you react to any of the discussed points, hopefully will be in the same vein. That what you take away is based on what we put before you and how you interpreted it. Kilcullen's stated goal was COIN principles at the company-level. In using his 28 articles as a framework, I deliberately dropped the "company-level" limitation. My goal--and I believe the goal of everyone who offered a thought including Dave Kilcullen--was to get you to think on how these principles might affect you at whatever level you apply them.

Best,

Tom