Lost Lessons of Counterinsurgency

[Cavguy]

I'll take a stab at this to test my knowledge, and y'all can critique if I'm off a bit.

Well said. Absolutely dead on. Don't you wished someone had taken 5 minutes at the career course to explain that to you prior to 2003?

The theory behind it is that the insurgent uses the population for everything - intel, support, medical, recruiting, etc. (Trinquier best covers this). So to "defeat" him we have to deny him access to his resources. We talk about "separating the insurgents from the populace", but how?

One of the historically effective ways is by various levels of population control. The more severe the problem, the more severe the measures needed. Bottom line is that by controlling where and how the population interact, you reduce the ability of the insurgent to organize and contribute. As with all measures, it only works at the appropriate time and level. The basics are ID cards and vehicle registration. The harsher methods include relocation and food rationing. What should be used depends on the situation.

It may be an impolitic term, but it accurately describes what must be done to (as Mike says) stop the bleeding so there is space to treat the wound, which takes longer.

[William F. Owen]

Excellent stuff. Always been a mystery to me why the US Army has refused to study Vietnam in detail.

I love how these days we say "complex war fighting" as if Vietnam was "simple." - and note, in Vietnam, you had to be good at COIN and War fighting at the time, on the same day, in the same AO.

A lot more can be gained from looking at the US in RVN than ever could looking at the UK in Malaya.