Quote Originally Posted by Tom Odom View Post
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.
Well I guess I cannot and should not attempt to alter your perception. If for no other reason than I can learn from it. Anyhoo.... with the my best soap box forward.....
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?
Well this may be me deferring to style rather than function. I don't have many problems with people. I have problems with ideas. I know a lot of smart and well intentioned guys, doing military thought and theory, but I don't agree with a great many of their ideas. Not just COIN either. I even go to at it, with Doug MacGregor once in a while.
As for the simple ideas that bother you,

"80% Political. 20% military" -
"Can't kill or capture your way to success" -
"COIN is armed social work" -
"You out govern. You don't out fight."
These may come from a perspective where the US/NATO military action is the cause of the insurgency. The insurgencies currently faced, resulted from the US/NATO overthrowing the Governments. What is more, the insurgencies sprang up, prior to the existence of the governments they currently oppose, so unless that is held to the fore, as explaining those statements, I cannot see them as truisms or insights into countering an insurgency.

They may ameliorate the feelings that poorly reasoned military action made a very big mess and now someone has to clear it up, but none of those statements is the basis for an historically valid approach to defeating an insurgency, or a sound basis for the conduct of irregular warfare.

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.
I have met very, very few practitioners who have ever read Clausewitz. If they are effective practitioners, they probably should not bother. Moreover I do not thing it necessary that most Officers should actually read CvC.

However, if you want to use military history as a guide to the present and the future, and teach lessons derived from military history, then he is pretty much essential.