The subject of counter insurgency is getting to be quite the de rigueur topic.

Part of the discussions in Washington and elsewhere center on whether the United States should be fighting the Taliban, a constellation of indigenous Pushtun groups, or just al-Qaeda, a transnational terrorist groups whose leaders live and operate among the Pushtuns.

The Obama administration has concluded that the two movements are linked.

Therefore, the thinking goes, to defeat al-Qaeda requires a counter insurgency, or COIN, campaign designed to neutralize the Taliban's effects among the Afghanis, particularly in southern Afghanistan. 

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of American forces in Afghanistan, thinks of COIN as an argument between the Taliban and the Afghan government that is backed by the United States.

In the middle of this argument is the Afghan population. It will decide who wins the argument.

"How is everything going here?" asked SFC Brian Schrank as he, an interpreter and several of his soldiers walked up on and stopped at a small shop on the lip of Route 4.

The shop was comprised of a blue Conex box a small display of snacks and soft drinks covered by a thatched roof held in place by bamboo stakes.

Comprised of only two lanes, Route 4 is the major thoroughfare between Spin Boldak, a relatively safe area, and Kandahar, an area where the Taliban have been active.

"It is good, it is good," said the shopkeeper through the interpreter.

In the background, three small and barefooted children dressed in colorful outfits watched the discussion.

As is this country's tradition, there was no woman in sight.

Schrank listened and nodded his head.  He asked if business was good; if the man and his family were safe; if the Taliban had been by.

The shopkeeper replied that all was well and that he had not seen or heard from the Taliban.

Schrank gave the man a poster that lists a number for the man and his customers to call should they encounter the Taliban.  He emphasized that the Americans were there to protect him and his family.

"We are trying to show that we are concerned for them," said Schrank as he and the rest of 3^rd Platoon, B Troop, 8^th Squadron, 1^st Cavalry Regiment headed back to their Strykers.

This action went on for most of the day, and it exemplifies what the thrust of COIN is at the population level.

In other words, it is the application of "soft power," a concept straight out of McChrystal's playbook, which states up front:  "Protecting the people is the mission.  The conflict will not be won by destroying the enemy."

Easier said than done.

In the middle of this struggle to protect the Afghan population and win their hearts and minds appears an Army Times article entitled "Stryker Soldiers Say Commanders Failed Them" by Sean Naylor.

The article takes a hard look at 5^th Brigade, 2^nd Infantry Division's 1^st Battalion, 17^th Infantry Regiment and the loses it has sustained while operating in the Arghandab River Valley.

The new Regional Command (RC) South commander, British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter has since pulled 1st Battalion, 17^th Infantry Regiment out of the valley and replaced it with elements of the 82^nd Airborne Division.

The effects of Carter's decision to reassign the Stryker brigade's assets to protecting the highways and conducting COIN missions off the roads remain to be seen.

Specifically, Naylor's article details the apparent disconnection between what brigade commander Col. Harry Tunnel thinks is the correct application of McChrystal's guidance concerning COIN and what the perceived intent of the policy is.

Early on, Tunnell said he would pursue a counter-guerrilla campaign, a policy that some believed ran counter to McChrystal's population-centric COIN strategy.

Are the two approaches at odds?

No, I don't think so, and a lesson from history is instructive here.

During the war in Vietnam, the United Stated initiated a counter insurgency program known as the Phoenix Project. 

The objective of the project was to find and kill Viet Cong (VC) operatives in South Vietnam.  Like the Taliban, the VC lived and worked among the civilian population.

To accomplish this mission, the military's use of deadly force broke the back of the VC insurgency, which in turn allowed the counter insurgency efforts to progress.

In other words, kill the bad guys first and then help the population.

This is all well documented in Lewis Sorley's recent book, "A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam."

Or as Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine who served in Vietnam, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

"War is not complicated.  You have to separate the guerilla forces from the populations and kill them until they no longer want to continue."

This, I believe, is central to Tunnell's point of waging a counter-guerrilla campaign.

Noting that the Taliban he faced were hard core and well organized, Tunnell said in the article:

"The enemy informs how you gain access to the population.  You cannot ignore it.  We were taking horrible casualties trying to gain access to the population, and we knew that we needed to get to the population, and so if we didn't conduct the types of operations that we're conducting throughout the brigade's area ... we wouldn't be able to get to the population. So you can't separate the two."

His comments make good sense; they are in line with the hard lessons of history.

As counter insurgency operations have demonstrated repeatedly - much like the Phoenix project in Vietnam illustrated - the use of force is endemic if winning the hearts and minds of the indigenous population is the key.

While there will be differences of opinion about how the war here in Afghanistan should be found, one truism remains.

War is a hard business complete with hard decisions and harder consequences. 

This we must live with.  And if we cannot live with this, then the alternative is to bring our soldiers home.

EDITOR'S NOTE: J.M. Simpson is a history instructor at Pierce College.