terbay,

Probably not what you want to hear/read, but I think you're making some false assumptions. First off the U.S. military has special operations forces and some of the units within SOF are uniquely organized and trained to conduct counterterrorism operations. I think you would be hard pressed to make a case that our General Purpose Forces are conducting counterterrorism operations (don't use counterterrorism and counterinsurgency interchangeably). For the most part GPF is and has been conducting counterinsurgency, stability operations, and foreign internal defense. If you are making a case that our conventional warfighting skills are atrophying because of our current focus, I suspect you are correct, but you need to accurately label it, and it isn't CT.

Second, how did you come to the conclusion that the Israeli's lost (they didn't) to Lebanese Hezbollah? IMO there were no clear winners, but Israel did achieve its military objectives which included establishing a buffer zone, forcing LH to withdraw from the area, and effecting a cease fire. LH waged a savvy media campaign, so you can make a case they won "some" aspects of the conflict in that regard, but it was hybrid conflict that continues to this day, just at a much lower level of intensity.

For historic examples, we're watching it in the making.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...3171d04daef.41

Top US military officer General Martin Dempsey, who met Aquino on Monday in Manila, said that he spoke about expanding cooperation with the former US colony beyond recent efforts focused on fighting Islamic insurgents.

The Philippines "has been inward-focused on its internal terrorism and insurgent issues for some time -- for decades really -- and so have a very limited capability to project power or to influence activities around it," said Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We think that they need some of that, particularly in maritime security," Dempsey told reporters in Washington.
The Philippines is having a tiff with China over some disputed territorial waters, but the Philippines hasn't done much to develop its conventional military capabilities, so now it has no military deterrent, and talk is cheap when it isn't backed up with capability. Counterinsurgent forces are no match for a conventional military threat (obviously).

One of the reasons the U.S. doesn't face a serious conventional threat is because deter them with our superior conventional capability, but if we were to let that superior status lapse there is no reason to believe that another nation won't fill that power vacuum.

There are no easy answers, since we're superior conventionally our adversaries will seek asymmetric/unconventional means to attack our interests, so in the end we need both unconventional and conventional warfighting skills. The concept of hybrid warfare is useful to allow people to visualize that future fights (like past fights) will involve both conventional and unconventional aspects, often simultaneously. The challenge we're faced with is developing and maintaining a balance of capabilities that will enable us to meet future threats. We tend to bias towards the conventional threat because it is seen as the greatest threat, but over time with the growing parity of lethal technology between state and non-state actors, that may no longer prove to be a correct assumption.