Warning Update: Iraq’s Sunni Insurgency Begins as ISIS Loses Ground in Mosul

And yet to plan for exactly that to occur never seems to make it to the plan.

Joe - I disagree. COIN has been successful before - but it has been a while since it was a US led one. One can not ignore the central issue here of a Shia government and no sharing of power or wealth... and if you are going to ignore it - you are going to be fighting a different insurgency as soon as you have captured terrain and have to hold it. If one does not see the government of Iraq is coming to a resolve on the issue - and not looking past a short term of capturing terrain -- easy to lose a campaign by snatching defeat from jaws of victory when your ASRs are too dangerous to move on and the forces are no longer able to concentrate because of it. to wage war- you have to be able to do it conventionally - while running COIN in your rear area and waging UW to your forward front and the deep rear of your enemy.

LTC Eric Udouj - from my experience in my two tours, first during Desert Storm in a conventional type offensive and then in Mosul conducting COIN operations in 2004-2005, I have nothing but disdain for COIN operations. I don't believe you can vet individuals and maintain a rear area under the conditions present there. Also, your strategy would require two different types of troops. From my experience I do not believe you can use the same troops to fight the enemy and then act as trainers/social workers. I was present on FOB Marez when suicide bombers walked in and bombed our DFAC. In 2009 I was told I would be returning to Iraq to train Iraqis and function as a "Combat Social Worker"! I can tell you that neither myself nor any soldier I served with in actual combat is ever equipped for COIN or working with those you have fought. . Does your idea come from personal experience?

The problem with conducting COIN in what you are looking at - is conducting it as a foreign power fighting it and there is not the same as the nation itself fighting it where it is occurring. Your focus is that the US is the core - and such ended up with protecting US forces as the core...... and no tin protecting the local population in a way that the Iraqi Army must now either do -- or find itself mired in war forever. Experience and history added together - seeing both what does and does not work. But COIN as is in our FM is only a few columns in the whole - being the Russians have theirs and the Chinese have theirs and even the Indians have theirs. But we fixate on terrain... and took too long to fixate on the population..

LTC Eric Udouj - And even saying all that - what works there wont work in Afghanistan - need a new plan and planners...

And vis versa..