1. The United States of America
And Counterinsurgency

2. A Tradition of Forgetting
From the Stability Operations Field Manual 3-07:
“[F]rom our colonial roots, when Congress appointed military commissioners to negotiate peace treaties and land purchases with Native American tribes, to our contemporary experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, our most enduring tradition has been an inability or unwillingness to institutionalize the lessons of those experiences.”

3. Definitons
Warfare: a violent clash of interests between organized groups characterized by the use of force.
Revolution: An unplanned, spontaneous explosion of popular will to overthrow the government.
Coup d’etat: A small group of plotters replace state leaders with little involvement (and sometimes little support) from the populace.

4. Insurgency
Insurgency: An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.
Insurgencies are designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control.
Have also called these: small wars, low intensity conflicts, asymmetric war, hybrid war, irregular war, guerrilla war

5. Counterinsurgency
Counterinsurgency (COIN) is the sum of military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat an insurgency.
Political power is the central issue: both sides aim to get the people to accept its authority as legitimate.

6. Two Approaches
Enemy Centric
Population Centric

7. Begs a Few Questions… When is a civilian an insurgent? Information?
Lengths go to get it?
Warn the enemy?
Food & Supplies?
Actively supply
Search & Destroy
Family member participating?
Pick up a gun and participate when the regulars roll in

8. Who is Whom? How do you separate Insurgents from the Population?
Curfew
Concentration camps
Cordon operations
ID cards

9. State Building What level of democracy “allowed”? Elections?
Own constitution?
“Unacceptable” practices?

10. Do we promote democracy?
Order and Efficiency
Building infrastructure

11. Training Police/Army forces
Police, or Army?
Problems with recruits
Personal vendettas
Abuse
Corruption
How long a leash?
Future leadership

12. How is help doled out? NGOs Infrastructure
telephone, telegraph, schools, sanitation, hospitals
Roads
To what extent paving the way for dictatorship afterwards?

13. Factors of the Force that Matter:
WHO you send in
Racism
Paternalistic treatment
Abusive treatment
Preparation
Habits
Drinking
womanizing
Past experience
“You can never trust a nigger with a gun…These people are niggers in spite of the varnish of education and refinement. Down in their hearts they are just the same happy, idle irresponsible people we know of.”
-- W. T. Littleton Waller

14. What parts are as good as it gets, and which can we change?