Woah...been away from this thread a while, and come back and see I have a little cleaning up to do!
My comments about "one-eyed man" in no way intended to disparrage Frank Hoffman. More my frustration with how blind our collective policy/security/intelligence community has been to seek out a true understanding of the challenges that face us today. For me the lightbulbs really started going on when I came to a series of revelations:
1. The only thing truly new in the world today is the rate and availability of information. This does not change the nature of warfare, nor does it change our Ends as a nation. It does, however, in very very significant ways render ineffective many of the time proven tactics of COIN, and empower new tactics for Insurgency and UW. Fascinating stuff, but there are no "Easy Button" solutions that are so attractive for some reason with certain communities.
2. That insurgency happens when government fails. A couple of key thoughts to go with this is that that failure is not one of effectiveness, but is subjective, often intangible, often mere perception, and often wholly irrational to that "failed" government; but always always to be assessed from the perspective of the affected populace. Said another way: "Populaces don't fail governments, its governments that fail populaces." This means that any good COIN (or FID) program must be rooted in ensuring that the govenrment knows the problem is their fault and that focus of efforts will be on understanding where the are falling short and addressing those specific issues. Period.
The criticality of Legitimacy. This is probably the number one issue the US needs to grasp and address. GWOT is largely a function of a wide number of populaces, primarily Muslim and in the Middle East, perceiving that the US is a major source of legitimacy of the poor governments ruling over them, and that they cannot effect change through legitimate means at home until the break that source of external legitimacy. This condition was created through our Cold War engagement, and now we must work equally hard to extricate ourselves from that perception without abandoning the nations and populaces (screw the individual leaders, we owe them nothing) who we have built these relationships with.
This list could go on (I've been learning a lot these past several years), but when I say its time to get on board with IW not because we all need to be good corporate men (those who know me are laughing hard at the thought of me ever being that), but that it is happening, and God help us if we let the same guys who designed GWOT design IW! Stop arguing (and back to my hero Gen Grant) either start skinning, or hold a leg for the guy who has the knife!
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