The problem with counterinsugency warfare for the US is that to a degree the situation involves an inability to leverage the great American advantages: brute-force produced by overwhelming economic size and wealth, married to technological innovation and skilled personnel -- to produce a decisive and rapid victory. The ideal American preference would always be for industrial warfare, which the present world simply does not lend itself to.

In part this is curious, American experience in counterinsurgency long pre-dates Vietnam -- the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Indian Wars back to colonial times.

Even the American Revolutionary War, in South Carolina and in the south generally, cannot be understood fully without examining it through the prism of insurgency/counterinsurgency: if you could go back in time and explain "oil spot" to Cornwallis, and he'd bought that instead of trying to play whack-a-mole with Greene, the British could have maybe held SC.

Americans can do counterinsurgency: we won in the Philippines, and you can argue we "won" the insurgency side of Vietnam; but we have to want to. We have to have a military that wants to employ such a doctrine, and a public willing to invest the time it requires. How we accomplish the latter in the TV media age, where everybody expects instant, un-messy, casualty free results without any ambiguity is probably the major question we have to answer.

Oops, this comment really goes with the last post. Sorry !