I believe I said it is "the path to defeat" not "it is defeat." That may seem a nuance to some, but it is the nuance of COIN engagement that separates success from failure.
As to my views on warfighting, they are pretty much in line with everyone else. Where I differ is that I do not believe that insurgency is best countered through warfare; and should not be considered as such.
Certainly insurgency as we define it is a violent challenge to the existing government, but even though a segment of the populace feels compelled to resort to violence as their best option for driving political change, it does not mean that the best course for the government is to in turn wage warfare against its own populace.
Violence is a choice by the insurgent, it is not the insurgency. The insurgent is the overt actor, but he too is not the insurgency. By casting insurgency in the light of warfare one drives themselves to an approach that inevitably becomes one of meeting violence with greater violence, and defeating the insurgent rather than addressing the insurgency.
Insurgency is , more accurately I believe, a political challenge to the government by illegal means. The majority of successful insurgencies are actually non-violent; though often a movement may have attempted a violent approach and when counterinsurgent operations are successful against them, come back with a non-violent approach and achieved the ends that violence could not.
Governments do not do themselves a service by casting themselves in the role of victim, and by setting out to wage war against those members of their populace who feel compelled to challenge them in such ways. Better to see insurgency as a civil emergency, that granted is often quite violent, and then being pragmatic and honest in assessing what failures on the part of government have led to this situation.
Often one finds that institutional and cultural biases have led to the insurgent segment of the society being treated with a disrespect that limits their ability to fully participate in legitimate society, so they resort to illegitimate means to act out against this situation.
Other times governments feel no need to give the populace legal venues to affect change of governance, leaving them no choice but to take illegal approaches when they come to believe that change is required. (Many of the gulf oil states do not tax their populace, and the ruling class joke that while a populace may complain about "taxation without representation," that where there is no taxation, no representation is therefore required. This is a joke that is wearing thin in many of these populaces IMO).
Other times the rule of law as applied to either all or just some segment of a society is not perceived as just and fair in its application.
Many times the populace does not recognize the power or process that produced or sustains their government in power over them.
One or many, or all of these causal conditions are in play when segments of a society feel compelled to act out illegally, and either peacefully or violently, to produce political change. All of these factors are within the power of the government to address; but once one has declared war on their own populace it is difficult to make these changes without feeling like one is somehow "losing" or "appeasing" the enemy. A society loses when it allows itself to devolve into such violence, and meeting the reasonable demands of the people is not appeasement, it is the primary function of government.
So, no, I do not have odd views on warfare. What I find odd is that so many are so quick to cast all violence as warfare. This simply is not the case. Just all populace violence is not insurgency, sometimes it is motivated by profit or power in a small group; or the actions of some isolated sect that is as out of touch with the society they emerge from as they are with the government they challenge. Dumping all of these distinct situations into one bucket and applying a universal solution of "warfare" is as illogical as it is ineffective.
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