Everything You Know About Counterinsurgency History Is (possibly) Wrong!

[Tom Odom]

...and once again we are back into this!
I fail to see how attempting to clearly state my case counts as "bludgeoning," or being consistent counts as a soap box. I would have thought it entirely normal that I should seek to argue against ideas I see as unhelpful or poorly presented.

Consistently on the soap box is a good description. And once again I will respond to the same labels until you go beyond mere labeling. This is a discussion board and discussion is based on full thoughts.

"Nouveau-COIN" is a set of ideas, and not necessarily people. I don't worship CvC. I merely suggest folks would benefit from the insights he gives, and revisit some of their ideas in that light. I am no more wedded to CvC than most Physicist are to Newton - and merely because of the subject matter, War....

If "Noveau-COIN" is a set of ideas, who then presents that set that you so often rail against? If no one, then against whom are you arguing?

As for the simple ideas that bother you,

"80% Political. 20% military" -

Actually fairly accurate depending on the war and the situation if applied with thinking.

"Can't kill or capture your way to success" -

True unless you are prepared to kill them all.

"COIN is armed social work" -

As a metaphor, not bad. Oversimplified and therefore used as a substitute for thought--rather like "war is war" in that regard.

"You out govern. You don't out fight."

Again fairly accurate depending on the conflict. Without addressing underlying causes and absent scorched earth tactics, the failure to adress reasons for a conflict extends it.

If these ideas are offered as a cautionary note in the interest of more study, I applaud their use. If they are simply bumper stickers, then I would agree with your concerns. But I do not agree there is a COIN cabal, mafia, or whatever that is determined to kill all other ideas regarding war in a broader sense. There was, however, a very real conventional school of thought that tried and succeeded in the main force to stamp out any consideration of COIN.

I consider "COIN" as what armies mostly do, which is why the "woolly thinking" is so dangerous. Insurgencies should be studied, but that is very different from creating a distinct field of military study, which holds "COIN" to be a distinct and unique military problem.

Again if you do not study COIN as a somewhat separate field, then those who would ignore it will do so by banning its study.

I grew up in an Army doing COIN and with a strong COIN tradition.

I also grew up in an Army doing COIN with a strong COIN tradition. But that Army's senior leaders did its best to ignore the tradition until forced to face its demands. Even as the Army was involved in COIN in central America in the 1980s, the institution maintained intellectual blinders to that fact and wore them fairly religiously until the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Even then many kept them on.

My grandfather did COIN Operations.

Good than he understood that it isn't simple. This is my third as a participant in one fashion or another. We do care what the populace thinks; we get our best information from them. That does not mean we bake cookies and send flowers to win their favor.

so none of them read Clausewitz either

The smartest guy in this realm I ever met is Paul Kagame. He has fought on both sides of the fence. He never mentioned CvC to me. Maybe he read CvC; he cared very much what the populace thought and he still does. He used all elements of persuasion to affect their thinking including lethal and non-lethal.

Tom