As the movers have packed my tv, I find myself surfing the net a little more, and came across a SEP 08 article from Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes. "Must Counterinsurgency Wars Fail?" http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5893 Not sure if the article has popped on the site yet or not.

Pipes is a Middle East scholar, and Islamist critic (accurate description?). He is not a military man, but he argues that COIN can be won, citing US turnaround in Iraq, British experience in Ireland, and Malaya to name a few. He disputes the argument that COIN will always be lengthy and unwinable. Basis for his argument comes from his reading of an Israeli IDF Officer COIN paper that he links in the article. I have not read it yet, but plan to this week.

Victory over insurgencies is possible, Amidror argues, but it does not come easily. Unlike the emphasis on size of forces and arsenals in traditional wars, he postulates four conditions of a mostly political nature required to defeat insurgencies. Two of them concern the state, where the national leadership must:

o Understand and accept the political and public relations challenge involved in battling insurgents.
o Appreciate the vital role of intelligence, invest in it, and require the military to use it effectively.

Another two conditions concern counterterrorist operations, which must:

o Isolate terrorists from the non-terrorist civilian population.
o Control and isolate the territories where terrorists live and fight.
Different perspective of the defense debate from a social scientist. Interesting read.