More killing. Less good deeds

[pjmunson]

War is War. Read Clausewitz or Thucydides. Irregular Warfare against an insurgent, rebel, criminal, partisan or separatist relies on same basic dynamics of any war. In order to win, you have to break the enemies will to endure.[*]Breaking his will should be done by making him fear for his life or freedom.

I have read Clauzewitz and Thucydides and a few others. Clausewitz talks about absolute wars, limited wars, and wars among the people and acknowledges that the dynamic of war changes with its level of intensity and killing/destruction of the enemy or his will cannot always be fully achieved in limited wars. Many would argue that the crux of an asymmetric war (see Mack's "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars") is that they are fighting an unlimited war while we are fighting a limited one. In any case, as your ability to find, fix, and destroy the enemy is limited by internal and external restraints, the value of the political element rises. Even if we get much better at targeting insurgents, we won't be able to kill them completely out of business if we are making insurgents as quickly as we kill them due to ignoring the political element. I don't think this is an anti-Clausewitzian view. War is war in that the brutal nature of war and the elements that factor into it are unchanging. However, the way that war is used to attain one's political ends and the value of the various factors in that war change with the type of war being fought. I also like Delbruck's extension of Clausewitz's thoughts on limited versus absolute war being wars of exhaustion or annihilation. We cannot annihilate the Taliban in the same way that we could annihilate a conventional foe that came out to play.