COIN comes home to assist policing

[wm]

OK, I'll just run a quick test on this.

An insurgency is armed rebellion against the state. Yes/No?
An insurgency is war, in that it uses violence for political gain. Yes/No?

Is countering these activities the primary mission of a police officer. Yes/No?
Is defending the state the primary mission of a police officer. Yes/No?

I am not saying that some perspectives from Police Work are not incredibly valuable to Soldiers fighting against armed rebellions, but I see clear blue everything between COIN and Policing.

Seems to me that one can see COIN operations in two different lights: preemptive COIN and reactive COIN.

Preemptive COIN stops an insurgency before it starts (sort of like preventive maintenance). What Bob's World described in his post wrt the Civil Rights Act would fall in this category I think.

Reactive COIN is what happens after the insurgency has broken out and one seeks to return things to a preinsurrection status quo aka peacefulness (restorative maintenance--what your mechanic does after your car breaks down on the highway, if you wish). What Wilf is seeking to describe with his questions above falls into the second category. What the coalition is doing in IZ and AF is reactive COIN as well.

A third consideration applies whether one is engaged in reactive or preemptive COIN. That is what we might call Limitation COIN. Limitation COIN strives to ensure that the actions taken to restore the status quo do not fan the fames and broaden the insurgency instead. It also must ensure that the efforts to forestall/preempt the insurrection do not produce new sources of dissatisfaction that foment more/different dissent in the populace. I suspect that this part of COIN is what Nagl had in mind when he called on us to produce soldier diplomats.