Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
I wouldn't be too hard on the Brits. The fact is, I can't really think of any example of effective military COIN.
So why say COIN? Thanks to incredibly sloppy thinking the word has lost any merit it may have ever once had.
Irregular Warfare works in exactly the same way as regular does. Defeating the enemy's armed wing denies him the ability to set forth policy using violence and returns to issue to politics and diplomacy. That is what force does. You use it against their force.
The problem with applying the military to COIN is that they tend to think of it as warfare; when in fact, COIN is just internal politics gone very bad.
If it's not Warfare then why is the US Army involved?
But that is not COIN.
At least not in Bob's World.
OK, so how in "Bob's World" are people using violence to set forth "political ideas" countered?