Quote Originally Posted by skiguy View Post
Yeah, like educating the general public what COIN is.
I think the Iraq situation is a classic example of this enduring conundrum with counterinsurgency: for a government (or ruling authority) to admit that it faces a serious insurgency, it has to admit that it made major policy errors. The natural tendency is to postpone such an admission as long as possible. But this gives the insurgents time to coalesce. I believe the situation in Iraq had reached a psychological "set" by late 2003 or early 2004. If we had admitted our errors and undertake the "surge" in the late summer of 2003, it might have made a difference.