Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
You've hit on the biggest intellectual challenge in COIN. I wrote about it a little in the Mil Review Article, and highlighted the I MEF G2 quotes about how Anbar was lost as late as November 2006, when six months later the place was largely pacified.
WOW! While aware of most of what was written, that was the single most useful document I have read in a very long while on COIN. It is well written, utterly coherent, explanation of how and why. Simple, shop floor, useable stuff. My main take aways from this are;

A.) IO is actually transmitting and supporting intent, that is demonstrated by action. I can think of many better terms for this than IO

B.) Suppression/attrition and terrain denial are very much COIN tools. Eg: it is about people and places.

C.) Major Smith is a soldier trained in conventional combined arms warfare, who has considerable expertise in the practice of COIN. Assuming he is a normal guy (though gifted writer) it seems it is not to hard to create an officer who can do both.

I see this article featuring in my footnotes for some time to come!