Hearts & Minds.

This is coolbert:

Within the historical context and as noted by Edward Luttwak various empires, autocratic and dictatorial regimes using brute force to suppress insurrection the norm. That counter-insurgency paradigm from the Vietnam era - - "hearts and minds" not even hardly seen as an option or even being remotely relevant.

Thanks to Noah Shachtman and as seen at the Isegoria.net Internet web site.

"How Technology Almost Lost the War"

Those historical examples "various empires, autocratic and dictatorial regimes" that usage of brute force to defeat insurgency to include but not even limited to:

1. Ottoman.

"the threat of escalating punishments, all the way to mass executions. That is how the Ottoman Empire could control entire provinces with a few feared janissaries and a squadron or two of cavalry. The Turks . . . went to the village chiefs and town notables instead, to demand their [insurgents] surrender, or else."

For details see the Massacre on Chios!!

2. Roman.

"the Romans knew how to combine sticks and carrots to obtain obedience and suppress insurgencies. . . .  It was done by killing all who dared to resist in arms — it made good combat practice for the legions — by selling into slavery any who were captured in battle, by leveling towns that held out under siege instead of promptly surrendering, and by readily accepting as peaceful subjects and future citizens all who submitted to Roman rule."

For details see the Siege of Uxellodunum.

3. Vietnamese Communist.

"the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were skilled in using terror to secure their pervasive territorial control and very ready to use any amount of violence against civilians, from countless individual assassinations to mass executions . . . Vietnamese . . . were compelled to collaborate actively or passively by the threat of the violence so liberally used."

4. German WW2.

"Terrible reprisals to deter any form of resistance were standard operating procedure for the German armed forces in the Second World War, and very effective they were in containing resistance with very few troops."

For details see the Lidice Massacre.  

5. Syrian.

"The Hama massacre . . . occurred in February 1982, when the Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies, under the orders of the country's then-dictator, Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood against al-Assad's government."

"Initial diplomatic reports from Western countries stated that 1,000 were killed. Subsequent estimates vary, with the lower estimates claiming that at least 10,000 Syrian citizens were killed, while others put the number at 20,000 or 40,000"

During the Malaysian Counter-Insurgency "hearts and minds" efforts only initiated AFTER draconian, harsh and unremitting methods applied to the civilian population. Those means and methods however NOT including mass slaughter! Sir Gerald Templar was NOT a Julius Caesar and we should be glad for it too!

coolbert.