Quote Originally Posted by Jedburgh View Post
The problem is that the fight we face in Iraq isn't a just a COIN fight. As others have mentioned on this board (I believe Bill Moore has put it very well a few times), in Iraq we have elements of COIN, terrorism, civil war/sectarian fighting, inter & intra militia warfare, and plain old fashioned brutal criminal gangs - all of this as we attempt to help the Iraqis forge a new democratic state in a country which has no history of such a thing.

Success is not impossible. But it's damn hard when you don't know what the hell you're doing.

What I keep trumpeting is the idea that there will be NO "stand alone" COIN operations any more. Insurgency which is "nested" in complex conflicts are the norm. And that's why I keep slamming the 3-24 version: to a large extent, it still treats COIN like a stand alone, state-to-state activity.

(And I should be writing that in the other window on my computer where I'm drafting an article entitled "Counterinsurgency in American Strategy.")