Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
I never contended that the genie was going back in the bottle.
I didn't mean to suggest that you had. I wished to point out that our antagonists in today's small wars have access to infinitely greater resources and capabilities than those in the small wars of old, which might limit the value of the lessons to be learned from those conflicts. It's also worth noting that many of the methods used in early small wars such as the Philippine-American War (not an insurrection) or the wars against the native Americans would today be regarded as illegal, politically unacceptable, and in some cases genocidal, and would hardly be applicable to today's conflicts.

I'm not saying these conflicts do not deserve study, but any lessons deduced need to be taken with several grains of salt.