Posted by Wilf

The idea that military force cannot defeat the insurgency is rubbish. It's just in this case it's politically pointless, because the cost cannot match the benefit.
Posted by Ken

The problem is thus lack of political will, not a failure of force. Applying minimal force -- up to your (and the COIN crowd's) probable level -- will doom us to a never ending conflict in which the opposition will ultimately gain the advantage due to western emotional exhaustion.

Turning the other cheek got us where we are...
Easy -- stop interfering with other nations, develop that missing long term view and when attacked, repel the attack rapidly, forcefully, effectively with the right tools for the job and don't get stuck on stupid and expensive (in all aspects) long term building projects while fighting people you don't need to fight.
I agree with Wilf to a point, but there is a large degree of asymmetry in our current western way of conducting political warfare compared to our foes. Insurgency is political warfare at the tactical level (conventional warfare is also waged for political purposes, but the political aspects are generally waged at the strategic level, military force compells State leaders to negotiate).

The communists, the taliban, and others are successful with their use of force because they direct it against the people to the degree necessary to force them to organize politically under their party (dissenters either keep quiet or have a short life). On the other hand, we come in with our western ideas of economic development, free markets, and democracy. In short we're pushing more chaos on top of chaos in a post conflict situation, under the "assumption" that the people will embrace this, when what they're looking for at this point is some degree of security and predictability, not blue dye on their finger. The other side is doing a better job of providing this. If we're going to meddle in other people's affairs, then we need to slow the train down, apply the appropriate level force to suppress the will of the people to fight us, force a form of political organization upon them (the closer to their accepted norms the easier it will be), and then, and only then, if we can afford to be altruistic we can gradually "encourage" them to evolve towards democracy and more effective economic models. I agree with Wilf, insurgencies can be defeated or perhaps more accurately suppressed, but probably not by western forces using our current doctrine. We're too impatient and prolong the conflict by pushing democracy too quickly.

To Ken's points I agree 100%. We have other options (or at least we did before we articulated to the world we were going to spread democracy and free markets) for detering attacks, and we can respond to attacks with overwhelming force when appropriate. We don't have to default to occupation and nation building in every case. Other options generally have a greater chance of success (regardless if that success is short lived or not, because realistically that is the best we can hope for in many cases). Furthermore, in the long run they are less cruel than the current norm of protracted conflict.

In some situations it is in our interests to engage in protracted conflicts, but there seems to be this thought that our nation's strategy requires us to rebuild Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and a handfull of other countries in our image because that is the only way we can win, which IMO is simply a day dream, and a very dangerous one.