COIN-Another shiny theory bites the dust

COIN is Counter Insurgency Doctrine and was how we were going to make the 21st Century safe for democracy.  It had a lot of cheerleaders, chief among them David Petraeus.  It has been so successful that the Taliban has long closed shop and started taking sociology courses at Kabul U, not.

We were tipped off that it is not working by an article in Antiwar.com blog by Kelly Vlahos.  Actually, the Neutralist has always thought it snake oil, but too many of our national big shots bought into to it.  Kelly discusses and links to a Fred Kaplan interview at Small Wars Journal.

Just how damaged is the COIN doctrine.  According to Kaplan, it has met its Waterloo in Afghanistan.

Fred says, "The US tends to get into these kinds of wars, deliberately or otherwise, once every generation, but the previous instance had proved so dreadful that, immediately afterward, the generals ignore, or toss away, every lesson learned from it - so we spend the first few years of the next war screwing it up."

The quote goes on, but for the Neutralist, the words "the generals ignore, or toss away, every lesson learned from it - so we spend the first few years of the next war screwing it up" say it all.

We either break the pattern of history, that is the eternal recurrence of "these kinds of wars" or we get into another one that will be no more successful.  Unless, as we get near to the centennary of WWI and the beginning of a century of intervention, we change to a Neutralist Ethos, we shall repeat the stupidity.

Economically, this probably cannot go on anyway, but it would be smarter to recognize the situation and adapt to reality instead of trying to stay the dumb course.