COIN v. academic activist reformist regionalist Arabists

Interesting debate going on between COIN (counterinsurgency) people (CNAS, Nagl, Small Wars Journal, Kilcullen, military folk) and the Bacevich (professor BU, ex military) type crowd - the academic-activist- regionalist/Arabist-advocates for nonmilitary reform.

Michael Cohen (State dept...academic...writer) writes about it here and here. (I found this on Abu Muqawama's blog - he is kind of in the middle of this - ex military, COIN strategist, works at CNAS, but also has understanding of the region, working on PhD on Hizbullah.)

Like myself, I think the latter category (academic reformist activists from first paragraph) feels that the COIN industry is taking over the region! I know this is an exaggeration and totally dramatic, but I think it's kind of funny to put out there.

I mean check me out: I bought Kilcullen's Accidental Guerrilla and went to his talk the other night at the Willard on it and read Small Wars Journal. I also respect Kilcullen and Patraeus for playing a role in ending the civil war in Iraq.

They seem to me to be military humanitarians - COIN strategy being first and foremost about protecting the population. And these COIN folks only want to wage these COIN wars when they have to - no one is looking toward COIN to solve problems, but when you need it (Iraq, Afghanistan) you need it. I say the following as someone who wants to go work at State and /or USAID (looking to work on a PRT and do capacity building and governance work and eventually public diplomacy): No USAID worker is going to defeat the militant extremist Taliban/ AQI (maybe in the long run with economic, political and social development), they might coax the moderates out of the battles but not the extremists.

But I do understand/agree with what Professor Bacevich is saying:
"If counterinsurgency is useful chiefly for digging ourselves out of holes we shouldn’t be in, then why not simply avoid the holes? Why play al-Qaeda’s game? Why persist in waging the Long War when that war makes no sense?"