Hat tip to Br. Will who sent me this Tom Ricks post at Foreign Policy on how enemy-centric (i.e. “brtual”) counterinsurgency was effective in the past as opposed to the once and now future/current fad of “population-centric COIN” much ballyhooed in US army circles. Yours truly has made this point a number of times on this blog–see here and here for example. The takeaway from this is that US should NOT become like the Russians (or Sinhalese say in Sri Lanka) but should not get themselves into counterinsurgency. The reason being is I don’t think pop-centric works nor do I think (rightly) the US should ever take the brutal, horrific enemy-centric approach. Though it should be said “enemy-centric” is a little misleading as it generally means “everybody centric”–i.e. just destroy the whole land, anybody who gets in the way, everything.
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