Insurgency in the 21st Century

[Mark O'Neill]

I'll need to go re-look Dave's essay. I never thought of it as an attempt at theory creation.

Funny, maybe I read it wrong, but that is how it always struck me. How else can you propose counters such a disaggregation (or any other approaches) as a strategy if you have not established a theoretical understanding of the phenomenon you are trying to defeat?


It seems to me that if you have not made a theoretical construct to quantify and understand the problem you are trying to counter then you are essentially plucking ideas out of your backside in the hope that one might work. I know that David does not work like that, I believe that his 'countering global insurgency' essay was based on a developed theoretical construct that he believed / possibly still believes, accounted for the phenomena he was proposing a counter for.

of course.. I could be mistaken - it is after midnight on Friday night here.... I need to get a life....