by HUGH GUSTERSON
And yet, historically, counterinsurgency campaigns have almost always failed. This is especially so when the counterinsurgents are foreign troops fighting on the insurgents’ territory. The U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Vietnam failed. The Soviet counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan failed (as did the British one about a century earlier). The British counterinsurgency campaigns in Northern Ireland and Kenya failed. The white Rhodesians’ counterinsurgency campaign against black guerillas failed. And the French counterinsurgency campaign in Algeria failed–although that has not stopped the U.S. military from building their current doctrine around the theories of David Galula, one of the leaders of that failed campaign. A rare example of success is the recent Sri Lankan campaign against the Tamil Tigers, but success was achieved by a government on its own territory following a military strategy of exterminist ferocity. Surely the U.S. does not want to go down that path, does it?
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for more
via Counterpunch