Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post
Norfolk:

This is an important point to make and i think it is spot-on. The last couple of sentences are especially relevant to the American Army today. I would add a dimension to your points that there has been sort of a cottage industry made around Coin by some serving officers who had written about it prior to 9/11 but had been banished to the sidelines by the "conventional minded" army. But once Afghanistan and Iraq presented themselves with the need for counterinsurgency operations these invididuals dusted of their wares and said here we are; we are your new experts, embrace us and we shall show you the way. This personalized/professional hyper-interest in Coin has reinforced the point you make above about the American army and its fetish to sometimes overthink things and make things more complicated than they actually are.

While no names are mentioned, are some of those experts also advocates of 4GW theory? The following is my rather jaded take on some imaginary COIN guru's thought processes. Any resemblance to thinking by any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

"Since our current struggle is an example of 4GW and 4GW is a higher number than what we used to do (3GW), it must be more advanced and, therefore, harder. Besides, if it isn't harder to do than what we've done in the past, we can't justify asking for a a bigger hunk of resources to do it, can we?"