Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post

Usually where we avoided this problem and achieved great results it has been some place where political sensitivities drove extremely constrained parameters for any military involvement (El Salvador, Columbia, the Philippines). Where we have not constrained our actions, we have acted unconstrained, and that has often as not gotten messy.
I don't necessairly disagree, except our two current problems, IZ and AFG, had no functioning military to advise in the first place when we started. I do agree the conventional force has made a slow transition from COIN to "by, with, and through".

I get kind of disturbed with the "We did El Salvador, Colombia, and Philippines with a few SF" drum mainly because they had longstanding, functional governments and militaries that were suited for advisory efforts. None of the three cases featured significant external sanctuary or external support.

I don't think this is what you meant, but I just want to compare apples to apples.