I will never argue that a purely military option cannot effectively suppress an insurgency. Merely that it cannot not resolve one. It is not the decisive element of COIN.
As to our recent incursions into the governance of others, Afghanistan and Iraq. True in both cases we usurped the legitimate authorities of both countries to take them out of power in favor of forms of governance more palletable to the Government of the United States. (One can argue from whence those two governments drew their legitimacy, but I would merely counter that making such arguments to justify replacing those questionable sources of legitimacy with ones own, is an argument that could be made in the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks, but not today).
But then we immediately took the position that we were invaders, but as liberators and not occupiers, and that govenrance was in the hands of those respective nations. This immediately puts us back into the FID role, regardless of how embryonic and incapbable those fledgling governments may well be. To see it any other way is to discount the legitimacy and sovereignty of those very governments and admit that the porpaganda against the US is correct and that they are in fact puppet regimes. BL, we can't have it both ways.
No one said this is easy. So long as we choose to set out to implement control-based policies born of the Cold War, we will find ourselves in these sticky, conflicted messes. Which brings me right back to the national leadership and policy types. The onus must be placed on them to change the strategy within our own capitals, before we set out to force others to change the strategies within theirs.
Which brings us back to good old Carl. COIN is a symptom of civil governance within a state gone bad, it is politics, it is conflict, but it is not war. It is internal discontent expressed by a populace to its own government in the only manner available when legitimate means of expression are either missing or inadequate to the task.
Afghanistan has a means of legitimate recourse (i.e., the results are recognized and accepted by the populace); it is called a Loya Jirga. What scares people about the Loya Jirga is that it cannot not be controlled by either the Preident nor the constitution of Afghanistan (thus why the legitimacy is so powerful), so in the end it appears we value control over stability. My strategic 2 pennies worth is that the US Populace should DEMAND that the US President push Mr. Karzai very hard to conduct a Loya Jirga as the quid pro quo for providing additional forces to support his COIN effort here.
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