The Next Chapter in the Idiot’s Guide to a Successful Counterinsurgency Campaign

While the class may officially be over, we have a backlog of great pictures and student-written posts that we will be looking to share over the next few weeks.  For instance, here is a post, written by one of the students, for the assignment "write a chapter for the book The Idiot's Guide to a Successful Counterinsurgency Campaign."

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Image from http://www.idiotsguides.com/ 

Chapter 3: 
Get a Map

Here’s a hint: if you want to conquer your enemies and win your campaign, you need to know the lay of the land.

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This is helpful in any battle-like situation, from being able to hide the remote in the couch when someone tries to steal it to running after your dog when he escapes.  This is especially useful, however, on the battlefield.  The ability to know, and use, the land(scape) has won and lost wars.

Using the land won the war, the Revolutionary War, for the Americans.  The fighting style that the Americans used, guerrilla warfare, depended largely on usage of the forests, and Americans made sure to have battles in areas they knew they could defend and escape from (Boot Ch 14).  The British never bothered trying.

Image from Wikipedia

You can see in the picture that the Americans are dressed closer in forest-like colors and the British are wearing their traditional redcoats.  Which one will show up better in the woods?  Redcoats.

An army that did not use the lay of the land to their advantage was the Boer Army.  The had a land crisscrossed by railroads and made of farmland.  They could have taken over the trains and made sure the farmlands were of no use to the British and harvested and stored food for themselves.  Yes, it would have meant tough times, but instead they let the British do all of that for them.  Kuddos to you, Britain.  You succeeded where the Boers did not, and on their land.

Image from http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/thefgmforum/threads/the-boer-war.241/ 

They look ready to defend their land against the British Army.  They almost got close.

  

Using the land to your advantage can turn the tide for an army.  In the case of the American Revolution, it helped the rebels.  In the case of the Boers, it did not help quite as much.

Hopefully this will help you mount your own successful counterinsurgency Campaign.  Remember: use the terrain to help you and to hurt your enemies.  The lay of the land makes all the difference in battle.

Bibliography

• “What Made American Victory Possible.”. Digital History. Digital History, 2016. Web. 5 July 2016.
• Boot, Max. 2013. Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Liveright Publishing.
• Trumbull, John. Surrender of General Burgoyne. 1822. United States National Rotunda. Wikipedia. Web. 5 July 2016.
• “The Second Boer War.” The Boer Wars’. N.p. 1 September 2014. Web. 5 July 2016.
• “American Revolutionary War.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 4 July 2016. Web. 5 July 2016.
• Idiot’s Guide Logo. Idiotsguide.com. Web. 5 July 2016.
• Life Image. The Few Good Men. Web. 5 July 2016.