My point is that the commander doesn't know what he doesn't know. The job of the staff is not to merely validate and inform what the commander cares about, particularly when those types of operations aren't being particularly effective.

And one can try to make an intellectual separation (many do) between "COIN" and "CT"; but that is kind of like the difference between rifles and bullets; or farts and bad smells. Most men who we slap the "terrorist" brand on are waging an insurgency in their home country. When they take those acts of terrorism to attack the populace or government of a totally separate country, one has to do the causal analysis to ask the question "why."

I realize the answer to the question "why" has been packaged up and handed to us up front by a bunch of politicians; but (to link this to other threads on Operational Design) when you are given a mission you have a duty to analyze the problem handed to you as well as the specific solution set you are asked to employ. And sometimes the answer is you go back to the boss and tell him he has it wrong, he's asked you to do the wrong thing, and here is why. Maybe he tells you "interesting, but just do what I told you in the first place," but at least you will have done your duty.

Why are most of the 9/11 "terrorists" Saudis? Why are most "foreign fighters / terrorists" Saudis? Is there an ideological component? Sure. Is there a leadership/influence component? Sure. But to my way of thinking there is some extreme arrogance when one's unassailable assumption is that those who attack you do it for a hate of your country that is greater than their love for their own country.

CT is a cop out. It places the entire blame on those who dare to attack the establishment and simply seeks to eradicate them. COIN (as currently practiced by the US) is a little bit better in that it recognizes that the countries many of these men come from have problems that need to be addressed. I just hope it’s not another 8 years before we make the next causal link as to how the nature of Western foreign policy over the past 2-300 years (colonialism followed by coldwarism) have combined to rob people of their culture, their dignity, and their right to self-determination; and united and empowered by the modern tools of this information age they are rising up and pushing back. Pushing back against governments at home that draws their legitimacy from others rather than themselves. Pushing back against the external powers has in fact provided the legitimacy for those same governments. Western foreign policy is dangerously obsolete and out of touch with the times we live in; and sending the military out to suppress those who dare to complain is a losing game that virtually every fallen empire has chosen to play. The British Empire is just one of many that were disassembled one military "victory" at a time. They too likely had Intel guys who could tell them all about "the threat," but very little about what really threatened them...