Best we remember that France's history, interests and goals in this region are completely different than those of the US, and in many ways much more practical, I suspect.

We need to be careful about getting too excited about any tactical insights when not balanced against a context of strategy. Next thing you know we'll be publishing a manual derived from the lessons learned of colonial and containment suppression operations, celebrating its tactical brilliance as somehow adding up to a strategy, and attempting to apply it as "COIN" to what we have been trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. Crazy.