This is a diagram of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Overall, that represents an approximate 12 per cent increase in Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Interior forces trained and equipped for counterinsurgency operations in the last five months.

To be sure, in the early 1960 s, members of President John F. Kennedy s administration intellectualized war and debated the merits of strategies, including counterinsurgency. But there can be no comparison to the cerebral mud wrestling that played out in Washington over Iraq.

Those who argue that the surge (and its close companion, new and improved counterinsurgency ) overcame Iraq s sectarian fault line suggest that Iraq s ongoing political problems are the result of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki s poor governance. If only he were more democratically minded, or would reach out to the Sunni community perhaps offering another ministerial portfolio suicide bombings of Shia religious festivals by Sunni extremist would end.

Vietnam differed from Korea and Malaya, where containment and counterinsurgency prevailed, because the communists could outflank allied forces in South Vietnam by using neutral territory in Cambodia and Laos. Like the PLO presence in Lebanon until 1982, this strategy plunged hapless host countries into civil war and provoked invasions by stronger powers, in turn spurring more extremist movements the Khmer Rouge, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.