It should not surprise anyone that many of the tactics developed for what we have been calling "COIN" operations overseas in the support of the COIN efforts of other nations apply domestically for us as well. After all, much of insurgency is simply an illegal political challenge to governance by a populace that feels it has few effective legal options to address their concerns.

Certainly this is true for revolutionary insurgency, where the objective is political in nature and rising from some (or multiple) populaces in a state to force changes the the government has proven unwilling to take on. That form of insurgency is largely a civil emergency, and the best COIN is largely a matter of the government demonstrating that it believes those populaces are important and listening to their reasonable concerns.

Resistance insurgency is another matter. Resistance is much more a continuation of war, where the government and the military have surrendered or been defeated and only the populace is still left in the fight against that foreign power. Separatist insurgencies tend to appear more of a blend, being like war at times, and like civil emergencies at other times.

Good COIN when faced with revolution is good governance. Good COIN when one wants to enforce the effects of their invasion and occupation is good warfare. Our problem is that we face blends of revolutionary, resistance and separatist insurgencies and apply a once size fits all approach.

Like many of those Colonial powers who wrote the books we derive so much of our doctrine and operational designs from, we cannot see ourselves in the same light as seen by the affected populace. The revolution in Afghanistan moved into full swing shortly after we codified the Northern Alliance under Karzai and their Constitution and dedicated ourselves to enforcing that US solution onto that country. The resistance is what we engage though, within the largely apolitical populace who simply want us to leave them to their own self-determined designs.

Senior leaders talk about how it is a "rural insurgency" rather than a "urban insurgency." True, and equally immaterial. Until we can appreciate what types of insurgency are war and what types are internal emergencies that can only be resolved through internal solutions, we will begin to make some headway. True headway, and not just the false headway that comes from the military suppression or monetary bribes of some people.

In many ways the entire "war on terrorism" is a very real resistance to the virtual occupation of the Middle East with the policies and governments we have created, supported and protected over the years to first wage a Cold War, and then sustained past the expiration date because those autocratic regimes liked the set up and so did we. Too bad no one asked the people. Wait, bin Laden did. So, now there are many nationalist revolutions in various stages bumping along, coupled with an overarching perception of resistance against what is perceived as excessive and inappropriate Western influence.

Step one is to better understand the problem. Like those before us we have a hard time seeing the downside of our actions as perceived by those they affect. We need to get better at that.