A lot of the antibodies against COIN and our incredibly lame COIN doctrine is due to the illogic of those who promoted it, which was little more than a thin guise for promoting themselves. People are starting to realize that

"You can't shoot your way to victory, " "you have to win over the population," "we have to build their economy and build schools" are little more than empty rhetoric. Worse it is rhetoric not tied to any strategic end, and lieu of a strategy we confuse our COIN doctrine and its social engineering tactics as strategy. Thus the debate over pursuing a COIN or CT strategy is idiotic since neither are anymore than an assortment of tactics. Finally a paper that puts it all in strategic perspective by Colin Gray. It is only 16 pages, I highly recommend reading it.

http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/pdf/pri...17-32_gray.pdf

Concept Failure?
COIN, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Theory


COIN is neither a concept nor can it be a strategy. Instead, it is simply an acronymic descriptor of a basket of diverse activities intended to counter an insurgency.
COIN debate would benefit if the debaters took a refresher course in the basics of strategy. Many fallacies and inadequate arguments about COIN in Afghanistan, for instance, are avoidable if their proponents were willing to seek and were able to receive help from theory.
There are no such historical phenomena as guerrilla wars. To define a war according to a tactical style is about as foolish as definition according to weaponry.
(he listed using tank warfare as an example)

Counterinsurgency is not a subject that has integrity in and of itself. Because war is a political, and only instrumentally a military, phenomenon, we must be careful lest we ambush ourselves by a conceptual confusion
that inflates COIN to the status of an idea and activity that purportedly has standalone, context-free merit.
To be blunt, the most effective strategy to counter an insurgency may be one that makes little use of COIN tactics. It will depend upon the circumstance (context).
Such winning can be understood to mean that the victorious side largely dictates the terms that it prefers for an armistice and then a peace settlement, and is in a position to police and enforce a postwar order that in the main reflects its values and choices. History tells us that it can be as hard, if not harder, to make peace than it is to make war successfully.
Population-centric COIN will not succeed if the politics are weak, but neither is it likely to succeed if the insurgents can retreat to repair, rally, and recover in a cross-border sanctuary.
The principal and driving issues for the United States with respect to counterinsurgency are when to do it and when not, and how to attempt to do it strategically. Policy and strategy choices are literally critical and determinative.
IMO this turns the lame argument that COIN is the way of the future, insurgencies have always been present and likely will continue to be for the next few decades, but that hardly means it is in our interest to get engaged anymore than it is to conduct state on state warfare.

Tactical errors or setbacks enforced by a clever enemy should be corrected or offset tactically and need not menace the integrity of policy and strategy. COIN may not be rocket science or quantum theory, but no one has ever argued that it is easy.
If success in COIN requires prior, or at least temporally parallel, success in nationbuilding, it is foredoomed to failure. Nations cannot be built. Most especially they cannot be built by well-meaning but culturally arrogant
foreign social scientists, no matter how well intentioned and methodologically sophisticated. A nation (or community) is best defined
as a people who think of themselves as one. Nations build themselves by and through historical experience. Cultural understanding is always useful and its absence can be a lethal weakness, but some lack of comprehension is
usual in war.
The issue is not whether Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else either needs to be, or should be “improved.” Instead, the issue is whether or not the job is feasible. Even if it would be well worth doing, if it is mission impossible or highly improbable at sustainable cost to us, then it ought not to be attempted. This is Strategy 101.