The point is that conquering, invading, liberating the problem is the same at the end, pacification and stabilization.
How tough should we get, razing villages, towns, taking hostages, shooting without trial.
These methods have never worked in the past look at the partisan war in the the East.
The Soviet Union were never able to pacify Afghanistan with there huge arsenal and no one to hold them back, in fact the harder they tried the more radical the Afghanistan's became
The only way to win an insurgency is to show the population that there best future lies with you, what is needed are programs such as job creation. As the bible said the devil finds work for idle hands
any other methods just prolongs the conflict.
As for the Vietnam war American would say it lasted 10 years ask the Vietnamese it lasted thousands, first they fought against the Chinese who had colonised them for over a thousand years, then the French for a hundred then the Japanese, then the French then the Americans then Chinese and Cambodians.
That region was always in a state of war.
In fact the OSS forerunner of the CIA at the time warned the American State Department about getting involved in that tar baby.
Tony