Posted by Bob,

I too believe that war is war, and that it must be executed in its extremes.

Where I differ from most is that I do not believe that COIN is war, but rather a civil emergency and should be addressed as such; perhaps with equal vigor, but with a very different focus. In COIN one is not defeating some other state to preserve one's own; one is repairing the failures of governance to preserve the populace in the longterm, while protecting them from immediate threats in the near term.
Bob, I understand where you're going with this, but I disagree. If we can agree on the nature of war as an armed dual, I don't even think all the entities need to be States. AQ is a non-state entity with political goals it is attempting to achieve through the use of force. An insurgent is opponent that is using force (it isn't an insurgency otherwise) to over throw the government (or form a separate state). The state is very much under threat of being overthrown by an internal threat in some cases, and attempting to define COIN as something other than war may lead to half efforts resulting in defeat.

Our support to a nation facing an insurgent threat is FID, not COIN, and I agree that FID is not war from our perspective. The nation we're helping can lose, but that doesn't threaten our nation (only our interests). However, the government in Afghanistan is clearly in a state of war fighting for its survival from internal and external threats. The character of the war is unconventional, whichs means using a conventional strategy will probably result in failure. It is largely political and psychological warfare, where violence is mostly messaging instead of taking and holding land, but it is still war, but the character is very different than what our conventional forces have studied.

I think "war is war" is useful for the reason that Dayuhan stated above. Once we recognize that we can develop an appropriate strategy. This type of war is total war, it involves the citizens, not just the belligerents, which is why in COIN the civilian populace is the center of gravity. How you influence that COG depends very much on the variables in each environment.

To win you have to get two things right, your strategy and your tactics. You can have the right strategy, but use the wrong tactics you'll fail. You can do everthing right right tactically, but if you have the wrong strategy you'll fail. If you have the right strategy and use the correct tactics you'll suceed.