Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: None, Counterinsurgency Training Center Kabul, language: English, abstract: Five historical vignettes from the history of counterinsurgency that look at the paradox of strategy and learning in a conflict environment. These vignettes were used to support initial training in counterinsurgency and attempt to lay the framework for thinking in less "lethal" terms when thinking, planning and designing counterinsurgency operations. Present U.S. military actions are inconsistent with that fundamental of counterinsurgency which establishes winning popular allegiance as the ultimate goal. While conceptually recognizing the total problem in our literature, Americans appear to draw back from its complexity in practice and gravitate toward a faulty premise for its resolution—military destruction…