I am indeed intrigued with where this is going.

In the mid-80s, I was CSA's LIC guy. (I hate the term LIC). Your old running partner, Max Mainwaring and one of his active duty counterparts came up to DC to explain small wars in LA. It wasn't you, but I can't remember who came along.

To his credit, GEN Thurman asked us the question, "What if the central front is a distraction, and the real action is in the developing world? And if it is, are we prepared to meet it?" Well, of course, that's exactly where we thought the action was and we didn't think we were prepared to meet it, although the light 10k divisions were supposed to have some sort of LIC METL.

Even better, we were asked to nominate places for new CSA to visit upon assuming his position. Tradition was to visit our European allies, but we proposed LATAM instead. I believe that GEN Vuono's first overseas visit was Honduras, but I don't know cuz I was fired by that time.

Guess my point is, that there have always been back burner actions to keep COIN in the view of the senior leadership. In fact, we did more in El Sal than folks tend to remember. Those who claim that we forgot/ditched COIN after VN have selective memories.