Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars

Abstract

Cassidy examines the salient lessons from Vietnam and earlier US counterinsurgency operations for insight into counter-guerilla actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He admonishes those who permitted the lessons learned from Vietnam, the Philippines, the Banana wars, and the Indian campaigns to be forgotten, as he highlights the lessons for counterinsurgency operations. He concludes that preoccupation with winning the big wars causes to treat the experiences as aberrations.