Troufion: I think its a stretch to say the AF has admitted defeat. Even the hardcore airpower folks don't say that. As for your Darfur example, I did not say we wouldn't be involved somewhere, I just said America wouldn't go for an [I]extended[I] COIN campaign. I specifically chose this word to account for what I do see us getting into.

Tom Odom discusses this with his reference to the continuing "long war." Darfur would also be an example. Darfur, however, is more of a humanitarian effort at this point. I wonder what public opinion would be in 3 years (after a withdrawal, substantial or total, from Iraq) if the President proposed overthrowing the Sudanese government to accomplish Darfur relief? That would approach the scale of Iraq.

The continuing "long war" is also different than Iraq because of its scale in individual locations. We don't hear much about HOA or the PI because our forces are small there. Someone (Max Boot,maybe?) recently wrote something about how keeping our engagements small helped maintain public support simply because the public was basically unaware. Maybe there is something to this.

Tom: I wholeheartedly agree with you. We cannot completely toss COIN out the window or attempt to solve it with kinetic solutions. I firmly believe that the AF can offer alot in a COIN environment in non-kinetic ways. We obviously need more focus on this, but by the same token we (i.e. AF) cannot foresake our own mission of air superiority and that requires money, lots of it. Many of my AF bretheren focus on China as a rationale for ignoring COIN and focusing on kinetic solutions. I however, am not so sure that a war with China wouldn't involve conventional-style tactics and COIN-style tactics. Their "total war" concept, combined with recent military buildup and satellite tests, would seem to support this.