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Goes back to the philosophy of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). The functional purpose of the military is to kill people and break things.

So this Commandant’s reign was during Clinton’s. Who’d a thunk?

Funny, but I just finished an observation on that point in a thread on the closing of a US embassy in Yemen.

My observation is that killing people and smashing things is a method, not the objective.

The main objective in warfare is to impose your nation's will upon its enemy and to frustrate said enemy's desire to impose its will upon your nation.

Kill people and smash things if need be but not necessarily kill people and smash things.

Read Chapter 3 of Sun Tzu, preferably the Huang translation or the treatment by Gen Tao Hanzhang (PLA) as translated by Yuan Shibing, but the Griffith translation and the Cleary translation also make my point sufficiently well for this discussion and they are easier to find.

The Urban Warrior experiments during 1997-1999 were conducted to address the problems of Military Operation in Urban Terrain to include the issues of the Three Block War. Urban Warrior demonstrated that there were no technological short cuts in urban fighting. The clear lesson was that you had to train in urban areas to be prepared to fight in urban areas (no brainer except our urban training facilities, with few exceptions, in 1998 were “villages”). The end result was a training program for Marine Battalions that ultimately prepared them for the battles in Falluja and later in Ramadi. The three block war concept has led to intense task organization of Marine units to include emphasis on Information Warfare, Psychological Operations (Army supported), Civil Affairs, and even Public Affairs. The “combined-arms” teams that come out of the Mojave Viper training preparations are as prepared as time will allow for both kinetic and non-kinetic operations. This approach helped “turn-the-tide” in Al Anbar. It is being adapted as rapidly as possible to conditions in Afghanistan. We are learning organizations who can find ways to win in all three blocks simultaneously if necessary and so ordered. Kurlak’s vision was NOT simplistic and the Marines and soldiers will not refuse it as “not their job” and will win if they are supported by their military and civilian leadership.

The "three block war" is terminology used in counterinsurgency(COIN) similar to clear-hold-build or kinetic-nonkinetic.

Who knows everything there is to know and more about counterinsurgency and its current role in US Military strategy?

The COINdinistas

Although Nagl is listed #2 to Petraeus, since he was the teacher, he is really #1.

If you want to read the nuts and bolts of COIN, follow those links to Small Wars and Abu Muqawama