with also some SF experience and as one who served as (non SF) advisor to two foreign Armies, I do not disagree with much you say and I do very much agree that Warrior is a bad term for the reasons you state and more, I still have some questions on your comments in this thread.
Given that I disagree with Wilf that the wars of the next 20 years for the US will only be like those of the last 20...
That will be true only if we allow that to happen -- we certainly need to be prepared for COIN support and FID but we should also avoid it if at all possible -- and we can do that if we wish -- one question is why would we not want avoid such warfare if at all possible?Impact, yes, I agree -- but have those impacts truly affected anything?How did that effort in Algeria work out for Brother Galula and the French?I genuinely respect your considerable service in the COIN environment, but I find David Galula's views more persuasive, as best illustrated in his work "The Pacification of Algeria."
I ask that not to be snide or snarky but as a very serious question. Recall that the French had the same advantages in Algeria that the British had in Malaya; they were the government, there was no host nation to deal with -- we will always in any FID situation have the problem of dealing with the host nation and quite probably, also dealing with a coalition. Thus I question whether either Malaya or Algeria provides and guidelines we'd really want to follow. We did after all follow French guidelines in Viet Nam and we know where that got us.
As an aside, I'll point out that the Algerians were not like the Viet Namese as the French discovered, the Viet Namese were not like the Malays as we discovered -- and hopefully, we will realize that the Afghans are not like the Iraqis.
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