Genocide is a bit much. Scorched Earth has worked for thousands of years.

We do need to stop doing this stuff. It’s a criminal waste of our warrior manpower.

No nations war stock – people – is unlimited. Bravery is part genes, part thede.

Guerrilla warfare presupposes the effectiveness of ‘human shields.’ This says everything about how an insurgency is defeated, and why defeating one never looks remotely pretty. America has to stop doing this stuff. It can’t possibly care enough about winning to do what is necessary.

COIN doesn’t work. Hey I drank the Kool-Aide at the time, but as advertised it doesn’t work. Certainly not the social science aspects. Sure Exum at CNAS/Abu Muqawama got himself a milblog HuffPo boost into first CNAS and then CFR. But it doesn’t work.

COIN as advertised was BULLSHIT – entirely justified – by Petreaus et al to snow job Progs into thinking there was a humane war for Iraq. With lots of social science, which is of course more important.

NO. What happened was we unleashed [quietly] our Shia clients or at least didn’t reign them in, and the pressure of between them and the crazies of Al-Qaeda bought about the Sunni Awakening. Then we and the Sunni’s hunted them down, while Shia ethnic cleansing continued unabated.

The Surge was a surge in Killing. Given cover by Dr. Petraeus’s magic brand of horseshit. Which again was justified. YES COIN can work in a city, IF you control it block by block. And kill the insurgents, or pay off their non-insane pals. That’s ancient. It also helps to have an insurgency so repulsively sadistic it turns it’s own people [Sunni] against it. And have some fancy dead Frenchman and an exotic Australian Officer along. Galula was prominent. And a live Officer named Nagl.

Want real French COIN? Roger Trinquierer. Want real French COIN? 12% of the males in the Algiers Casbah went missing forever.

hell want real Algerian COIN? It just happened.

The Philippines and Peru had some on again/off again success with it. By Filipinos and Peruvians.

COIN was a huge flop in Astan…because you see we couldn’t quite motivate the Afghans to the necessary levels of killing, indeed by that time the Kool Aide was so popular we probably hampered them. Then there’s Pakistan next door, which should have cancelled the entire approach.

COIN if applied by police Depts would work, if they understood the caveats. If they say got real about certain aspects of it. I’d love to see it applied to say MS-13 and the rest of these shits. but it works best if the target group is THE OTHER.

BTW the link has SWAT raid tactics…NO. COIN is constubalary in nature.

SWAT raid tactics aren’t COIN. It’s raids, which piss people off.

COIN can work in a city. If you own it, and grind them down block by block.

For a region or country – see Sri Lanka. Not PC. But it worked. And the LTTE was considered the best gurreilla force EVER.

It’s not my problem.

MSNBC was quite instrumental in this regard.

They couldn’t figure out crying wolf story is quite valid lesson…and now it’s too late.

!!!