Insurgency may be warfare, but COIN is not. COIN is dealing with a civil emergency. Right now we are ordering our soldiers to apply courageous restraint, and to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. We have given them the orders, and have given them some suggestions cooked up at higher level hq as to how to implement those orders, but we have not given them new tools designed for what they were told to do.
Now, we too can debate the orders, but that will not change the orders or the fact that the soldiers need better tools to execute them.
All of those who insist on calling FID "COIN"; and those who insist on approaching COIN as warfare are, IMO, sadly off the mark. We are not a bunch of Colonial masters out to simply beat down the locals and keep our puppet governance in power, and keep the profits flowing; yet we continue to dig up the tactics of that era and discuss them as valid for the mission we face today. They aren't. And that is before you factor in the effects of the current advances in information technologies that render a whole other segment of oldschool COIN obsolete. Pop-Centric tactics are better, but they are tactics all the same and still require a strategy to shape their employment. Surging additional troops is good logistices, but also requires a strategy to drive the employment of those resources.
So, question is, if this operation was being conducted in Frankfurt (or London, or Kansas City?) instead of Kandahar would you want your soldiers to have effective non-lethal weapons? Is this somehow different because we are in someone elses country?
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