Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Slap,

While your theory is largely sound IMO, I would caution that getting the narrative right is incredibly important in such operations.

"Target" is a word that is much over used and carries horrible baggage in terms of narrative. No one draws much comfort from learning that the 500 year-old church in the middle of their town is a "protected target." All they hear is "target."

Similarly, if you come to my village and tell me that my people are the "target" of your campaign, you have put yourself in a credibility hole you may never dig your way out of.

The populace is "the source of all strength and power" in any state; and as such they are prize that is being competed for, and they are the strategic COG of any insurgency. He who gains the support of the populace wins in this grand game of tug of war.

If I come to your village I want talk about targeting anything but the food


As for the COG I still believe it is the Insurgent Infrastructure as long as that is there the Insurgency can come back and often does as some of your posts have pointed out. This is also why the Strategy of nation building/modernizing/globalization/pop centric may have a Fatal Flaw in it.

You may be doing nothing more then modernizing the Insurgents Capabilities while he does nothing but remain dormant and reemerge at a better time with better capabilities. I have seen gang ops run out of broken down houses and state of the art convenience stores, the difference one had better capabilities than the other. the similarities the same criminal infrastructure still existed.

Your Populace based vs Population Centric would deal with this (I think) and is a better way to go IMO. Incidentally I have seen something similar used in LE with remarkably results but I didn't have the propaganda machine to promote it. Plus it was really invented by a 50 year old grandmother with about a 10th grade education so none of the egg heads were interested in something like that. After all COIN and Crime Prevention are the PHd Levels, the fact that it is waged and won by kinder gardeners escapes them