Please, Not Another U.S.-Style ‘Counterinsurgency’

Rep. Seth Moulton’s letter (Dec. 21) challenges your editorial “Biden’s Rising Tension With Israel” (Dec. 15), which noted the simple fact that Israel’s troops in Gaza are suffering more casualties to “satisfy the U.S. President’s demands on how to fight in Gaza.” In other words, the Israelis have been asked to fight with much less air power and artillery, and also to advance faster, to end the war sooner. The two requirements aren’t additive: To move faster with less firepower multiplies casualties.

Mr. Moulton writes, “A basic principle of counterinsurgency warfare is that you must work assiduously to distinguish terrorists from innocent civilians who must be won over, lest someday they become terrorists as well. Anyone who misunderstands this principle risks winning battles but losing the war.” This invocation of the peculiar and utterly discredited U.S. practice of “counterinsurgency warfare” is passing strange, for that failed doctrine was the root cause of the enormously costly American defeats in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.