Okay, let's start a new COIN rule...

Here's my proposed revision to the counterinsurgency field manual. I would like to say that one should not attempt to explain a counterinsurgency, a stability operation, and reconstruction program on just one Powerpoint slide. It brings back bad memories of this plan:



But I saw an article about a talk given by David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency strategist, which had this slide, and I nearly lost it:


But then I read the description of the slide from Sic Semper Tyrannis, which noted that this was not the be-all, end-all counterinsurgency/stability/governance plan. Whew. Rather, it simply demonstrates that Kilcullen "attempts in this mess to show how complicated this form of warfare may be".

That's putting it mildly.