Robert M. Cassidy

Regular and Irregular Indigenous Forces for a Long Irregular War

The notion is that if the war with fleas isprotracted, the dog yields to exhaustionwithout ever having defeated his elusivefoes.The metaphor of lions and dogs ascounterinsurgents, and flies and fleas asinsurgents, remains germane in thiscentury. Coalition partners are fighting aperennial war against insurgents whocoalesce around ideas stemming from afundamentalist, interpretive Islamistideology of hate.The recruits for thisinsurgency are everywhere – in Asia,Africa, South America, and the peripheryof Europe.They also thrive amidstpopulations of the West as aliens whoaggregate near mosques, where theybecome potential proselytes of Islamistdogma. Our enemies in this perennialconflict are fighting as insurgents in Iraq,Afghanistan, the Levant, the Horn ofAfrica, and elsewhere.The war against Al-Qa’ida and other non-state armedgroups that serve the ideology of Islamistdogma is a global counterinsurgencywhere the insurgents – the metaphoricalflies and fleas – win if they do not lose.The metaphorical lions and dogs, thecounterinsurgents of the West and therest, lose if they do not win.