While interesting to debate, do we really need to define insurgency to develop a successful strategy to counter one?

The danger of a definition, especially one that doesn't fit the situation you're dealing with, is that our American planners are prone to fall back on a doctrinal answer book to look for cues on what their courses of action will be. It precludes a detailed non-bias examination of the present security challenge by pre-disposing the planners to see it as a "classical" insurgency, then they fall back on the wrong set of solutions.

There are unique factors in every insurgency, or conflict, due to personalties, social factors, political factors, economic factors, and the list goes on and on. Sometimes our search for clear cut definitions reminds me of senior officers sitting around trying to explain why Clausewitz was all knowing and seeing, and then attempt to drive a square peg into a round hole in an attempt to demonstrate their point by using Clausewitz to explain a modern day security problem. The nature of a conflict is unique to itself, even if it may have many factors in common with similiar conflicts.

Does a security problem really a definition for us to address it? Why?

I'm not arguing that this type of discussion doesn't have value, but is it germane to solving the problem at hand in Iraq?