Wow is this ever a bad piece from David Fidler. It’s aller NOTHIN with COIN, doncha get it…

Under COIN doctrine, counterinsurgents must include, and coordinate application of, all elements of national power. There are no “half measures” in COIN…

OK just stop your piece right there and start again. There are nothing but half measures in counterinsurgency. Or, more precisely, nothing but partial measures. Did you see lots of agronomists running through Iraq during the surge? Did we get 20-25 counterinsurgents per 1000 residents across Iraq back then? If memory serves, the five surge brigades were the top level of what was available, not the top level of what was necessary. And — let’s see, Condoleezza Rice threatened to conscript diplomats because there were never enough of them in Iraq, and the interagency process never worked the way anyone wanted and on and on and on. Doctrinally, you could find a lot of problem with the surge, and yet that hasn’t stopped counterinsurgents for rightly viewing it as contributing to a significant reduction of violence across Iraq.

FM 3-24 is an impressive document. But some writers and analysts are treating it like a goddamn tablet from Mt. Sinai. Iraq actually teaches that it’s easier to do counterinsurgency without a total national mobilization of resources than FM 3-24 suggests.

You got anything else?

[A] shift towards counterterrorism erodes the rationale for the “civilian uplift” that is deploying civilians to improve governance, the rule of law, economic development, agricultural production, education, women’s rights, and the daily lives of Afghans. A counterterrorism-oriented approach supports neither extensive stability operations nor vigorous nation-building efforts, as the skeptics of the COIN strategy in Afghanistan have made clear. A shift away from a COIN strategy would undercut the rationale for the on-going training and deployment of hundreds of new civilian personnel for stability operations in Afghanistan.

Oh no! We shouldn’t interrupt any bureaucratic momentum for something as minute as a strategy change! There is a dangerous tendency in policy circles to defer to the inertial force of a war, as if war is the natural state of things and not an emergency. If you tell me that you have a shellfish allergy while I’m cooking a paella, well, that sucks and you should have told me sooner, but I would be supremely unjustified in force-feeding you something that could send you to the hospital.

I favor a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan because every other option appears worse. But there is an increasing blitheness surrounding COIN advocates and we all need to cut this crap out.