Quote Originally Posted by Jedburgh
I really hate the pseudo-intellectual sound of "4GW Warfare". It's simply age-old guerrilla warfare for Christ's sake. And "operational IED's" my ass. It's just another type of ambush, which tactic has been used by irregular forces against organized military units since time immemorial. The tactical ambush has evolved as weapons evolved, from bows-and-arrows, to matchlocks, to automatic weapons and AP mines - the IED is simply another turn on a very old coin. No need to make it out to be more than it is.
I've always had that feeling about 4GW, especially when authors like to try to date its "start" as right around Mao's time. It goes back MUCH farther than that, and if anything I would see it more as a socio-political outgrowth of the much-discussed 3GW style of battle. Instead of finding physical weak points in the enemy's lines you're using different methods and weapons to find different weak points. It's just a wider take on warfare than perhaps we've seen in some time.

However, if you look back at the USMC Small Wars Manual and the actions that the army took in the Philippeans around the turn of the 19th-20th century, you see some of the same issues and awareness as we're "discovering" now. The Frontier Army between 1866 and 1891 had to deal with a hostile press, an enemy who could easily blend in with his more peaceful neighbors, and a combat strength that wasn't totally adequate to the task being asked of it. There was also a major "culture shock" for officers who'd just come out of the Civil War. In the end, only a handful really became skilled at Indian war, or what might be now called unconventional war or small wars. When you add the rampant corruption in the Indian Bureau, the folks who were handling what we might now call pacification and hearts and minds programs, the Army back then faced a pretty stacked deck. So I guess you could say that we've "been here before," just in a different time and somewhat different context. And those same officers, for the most part, later went on to the Philippeans.