BF2S Forums Counterinsurgency

Shocking wrote:

I don't have the time to read through the entire thing, I'll do so later but I just want to remark here that there's no notion whatsoever of the necessity of torture in FM 3-24 or any (modern) work on COIN that I've read. It's actually rejected.

I think that he's saying that field officers, working from the mindset of FM 3-24 have decided that torture was the best way about the business, and that torture is ingrained in the strategy of counterinsurgency despite it's omission and rejection from publications.

Cherry picks the history of counterinsurgency, draws all the wrong conclusions, ignores fundamental foundational concepts, and neglects to even mention objective end-state goals.

So, yeah.. it pretty much parallels counterinsurgency as understood by Washington, D.C.

If you're thinking in terms of countering an insurgency, you're already late to the game.
The name of the game is "indiginous allies" or "proxy fighters".

Iran plays that game brilliantly, with Hezbolla, and all the other Quds financed groups from Gaza to Riyadh.

rdx-fx wrote:

Cherry picks the history of counterinsurgency, draws all the wrong conclusions, ignores fundamental foundational concepts, and neglects to even mention objective end-state goals.

So, yeah.. it pretty much parallels counterinsurgency as understood by Washington, D.C.

If you're thinking in terms of countering an insurgency, you're already late to the game.
The name of the game is "indiginous allies" or "proxy fighters".

Iran plays that game brilliantly, with Hezbolla, and all the other Quds financed groups from Gaza to Riyadh.

yeah, it seems odd that the author (who is british) would neglect the malayan emergency in which british troops were involved, as well as northern ireland (in which there was also a counterterror/counterinsurgency campaign with arguable parallels)

For fun reading, look up Robert Baer, Bing West, Peter Tomsen, Richard J Heuer, or Stephen Tanner.