Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
Irregulars can control their loss rate by hiding in the population. Something the Luffwaffe - for exampe - couldn't do. Therefore, if you strategy is "kill more insurgents," your strategy is easily defeated.
Leaving the Luftwaffe out as an irrelevancy, the answer to your statement is that you have to weed them out with good intel; thus your strategy is not defeated; your job is simply made a lot harder harder and it will take longer. As we have seen...
Not sure why a Brigadier can't figure out that soldiers in Afghanistan can't kill insurgents who are hiding in Pakistan. I'm not that bright and it's obvious to me.
You're bright, so's he. How Pakistan is addressed and discussed is more subject to sensitivities in Commonwealth nations in general and in their Armed Forces in particular. You can safely bet large sums of money that any Coalition service member of any rank concerned with Afghanistan is painfully aware of that border and the R&R centers on the other side of it. They are also frustrated that they know where the nodes on the other side are but can do nothing except wait helplessly until the R&R is over and the bad guys head north and enter Afghanistan.