Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
To be a proper army, you have to have to ability to defeat both Insurgents and Combined Arms Formations, in any terrain and amongst a population[Emphasis added by WM]. That gives you the capability to do all else. Being good at one should enhance the other. Good is good.
Last time I looked at planning and executing this kind of stuff from a High or Mid intensity perspective, a significant part of any operational planning included civilian population control. Admittedly that planning primarily focussed on displaced persons/refugees, but it nonetheless had strong protection and law enforcement (AKA anti-looting) aspects applied to the non-combatants who might happen to be "inconvenienced" by one's planned mil ops. While that planning was set against a backdrop of Western Europe, is it really that much different from what we are trying to accomplishment in the current operating environments? I, for one, do not think so.