Quote Originally Posted by typos-R-us
...I started this because I cannot find any place or time in history where H&M has worked as a counter-insurgancy strategy. It's easy to see why the theory gained acceptance, since the Guerrilla MUST win the hearts and minds of the population to swim in the sea, so to speak. So to deny that sea by fighting for hearts and minds seems logical.

I question it's effectivness....
No single COIN theory or method is effective in stand-alone mode. Every insurgency is unique in its own context, while at the same time, there are very many fundamental principles of insurgency and COIN that are shared across the spectrum.

The difficulty of COIN is in applying the tried and true principles in the appropriate context. Methods that were effective in other COIN efforts cannot be applied in a cookie cutter manner in Iraq - but there are certainly methods that should be emulated, and modified appropriately for the Iraqi context.

As referred to in a recent thread, there is a good RAND study that discusses the Hearts & Minds vs Cost/Benefit theories of COIN, and does a pretty decent job of putting them in context. I recommend giving it a read.

However, hearts and minds or carrot and stick, there is no context in today's world where you can just kill people until the violence ends. To use the statement Lack of Moral Courage to describe our refusal to initiate Nazi-style retaliatory killings to demoralize the guerrillas is repulsive. It would take a complete lack of morals to implement such a policy, and, as tequila stated, I want no part of a military or a nation that follows such a path.