Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
A quick response.

I am beginning to think we are all missing the boat when it comes to COIN, or irregular warfare, with our two approaches: attrition and hearts and minds (by fixing local government). After recently reading the declassified version of Ambassador Lodge’s letter to the President regarding the Vietnam conflict posted elsewhere on the SWJ, I was moved by his comments that we need to focus our efforts more on organizing the Vietnamese society to resist the insurgency. Assuming that as an Ambassador he chose his words very carefully, I find it insightful that he focused on the society instead of the government. Let’s face it, there are some governments we can’t fix, they simply don’t have the desire to change, and we don’t have the carrots and sticks to make them change, so can we more effectively focus on empowering the society instead of a corrupt and / or ineffective government?
I had the opportunity to look at an article that Marc T is working and one section really struck me as pivotal. The paper dealt with framing a mission and extraoplated the key issues that had to be addressed by offering the critical questions that surface those issues. The section that really got me was on the relationship between needed social institutions and extant cultural institutions. Hopefully Marc will wrap it up soon and he will post some of it here.

Best

Tom