This is premised on the widely held, and wholly flawed, belief that one resolves an insurgency by defeating the insurgent de jour...
Best I can tell this is the final point the author was working to share:
"As the broadest common fundamental for winning, our object should be to so arrange our movement and placement of force that, on the one hand, if we win an engagement we will not only defeat our enemy, but we will confound him as to his future action, his line of retreat and his supplies; on the other hand, if we lose an engagement, we will have a safe line of withdrawal and a valid probability of recuperating our strength.
The statement offered immediately above is neither Clausewitzian nor Jominian. It applies to military contests irrespective of the amount of force symmetry and is valid for all contenders."
Just one more guy who can't see the insurgency for the insurgent, IMHO.
I will continue to hold to my position that:
1. Throughout history such an approach as never achieved more than a temporary suppression of the violence, often coming back stronger than ever; and
2. That the one thing that has truly changed in the past 20 years is the speed and availability of information, that has largely rendered ineffective the tactics used to achieve such temporary suppressions of the problem in the past, and that now, more than ever, the counterinsurgency must be focused on understanding and addressing the underlying root causes of the conflict.
3. So, absolutely deal with the insurgent, but never forget that he is a member of the very populace who's support you are working to regain, and that at best his defeat will be a supporting effort to your larger counterinsurgency campaign.
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