Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
Entropy thanks for posting.This is a Strategic paper. It is a key part of SBW (Slapout Based Warfare) and I was shocked to something like this in print. The people are not the COG !!!! It is the land with the people and how they interact with it. IMHO this is a war winning paper.(Emphasis added Ron H)


Norfolk: remember my paper about Strategy....Seize Terrain That has Political Value!!!!!
But Slap we gonna have to go at it on this one.
I'm gonna read the book and get some points to debate on but I'll start out with this. Focus on capturing physical terrain such as land or even infrastructure is effective but not the COG. Reason being it simply provides job security for the armed force by creating a requirement to maintain that control. The people on the other hand own the land, the jobs, the causes, basically any factor which contributes to the end result of any given operations.

If you can define a way in which terrain (other than people) guarantees a particular action works both in gaining against the enemy and gaining buyin from the people long term even after your gone then I might be persuaded.

From what I can see though if your first focus isn't on the people and how to get them involved in the process thus leading to more informed and effective knowledge of what needs to be secured/destroyed/embraced/or just plain left alone; then your SWAG's tend to be be a lot more wild guesses and a lot less informed moves.