Sometimes I think progressives and conservatives are speaking English through brains trained in different languages, and mistranslation leads to a lot of misunderstandings. Counterinsurgents can come in left- and right- variations, but they add a third kind of misunderstanding. Here’s Bing West, writing in Small Wars Journal, providing an example. West, whom I think is fair to call a right-counterinsurgent, argues that the basic problem with the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is that it fails to acknowledge that enemy-centric combat is the surest way to provide population security. In the course of doing so he makes this dubious point:

It appears our strategy is nation-building, with fighting and dismantling of the Taliban a secondary consideration. Thus, the number of enemy killed will not be counted, let alone used as a metric. This non-kinetic theory of counterinsurgency has persuaded the liberal community in America to support or at least not to vociferously oppose the war. But we have to maintain a balance between messages that gain domestic support and messages that direct battlefield operations.

There are several reasons why progressives "support or at least not… vociferously oppose" the Afghanistan war: long memories of 9/11; a sense that the war is in U.S. interests; a desire to support Barack Obama; etc. Likewise, there are several reasons that progressives do, in fact, oppose the Afghanistan war: a conviction that the 9/11-centric justification for the war has worn its course; a sense that the war is not in U.S. interests; a sense that the costs exceed the benefits; a desire not to let support for Barack Obama override progressive principles; etc.

But no one in the progressive community actively or passively backs the war because of "non-kinetic theor[ies] of counterinsurgency." I don’t even know what a non-kinetic theory of counterinsurgency is. All counterinsurgencies require violence (which is what "kinetic" means), which is why counterinsurgency is a subcategory of war. I have never met anyone in progressive circles who believes counterinsurgency does not require violence, and I spent the last four days at a progressive convention in which people debated whether Afghanistan merited U.S. involvement at all; at what cost; for what duration; for what purpose; and in what capacity. If West can produce the deluded progressive soul who suffers from the misimpression that counterinsurgency is a benign activity, progresives on all sides of the argument will quickly disillusion him or her.

I suspect West means something on the order of this: There’s an overlap between progressives and counterinsurgents in the sense that, broadly speaking, both speak of approaches to warfare that focus on emphasizing root-cause approaches to ending conflicts and the limits of violence toward that end. That’s, at least true, and that’s why both fall within the reality-based community. But no counterinsurgent I’ve ever met has ever argued that just because violence is insufficient in counterinsurgency that it’s unnecessary; and no progressive I’ve ever met has believed counterinsurgents to be doing so.

One interesting, if ironic, intellectual convergence: West’s real concerns are that McChrystal is placing what he sees as damaging and unnecessary restrictions on U.S. combat capabilities; is taking a concern with reducing civilian casualties way too far; and is downplaying the importance of killing the U.S.’s adversaries. Those three points have recently been made by Michael Cohen, a progressive with a predilection for the Grateful Dead and the Boston Red Sox among other unsavory crunchy tastes. There are some important differences: West and Cohen disagree that the Taliban are U.S. adversaries; Cohen wants a focus on al-Qaeda. Cohen’s post implicitly rejects the difference between enemy-centric counterinsurgencies, which are bloodbaths, and population-centric counterinsurgencies, which are violent slogs. West respects the difference and prefers the former. Outside of that, hippie and hun can shake hands.

*To be clear, I don’t believe in arguing by association. Just because certain people I like endorse a certain argument doesn’t validate that argument; and just because certain people I dislike endorse a different argument doesn’t invalidate that argument. The merits of an argument always matter most. I’m just noting an interesting convergence in this final graf as a way of challenging the point of West’s that I blockquoted. Counterinsurgency is neither inherently progressive nor inherently conservative, and anyone who makes an argument for it being either is committing a category error.