Ahead of his Time (aka The Old, Old Story)

Where have you heard this before:

The increasingly frequent adoption of gang-terrorism as a mode of attaining political ends in the modern world should perhaps cause us to overhaul our methods of colonial defense … The Irish, and now the Palestinian rebellion … have shown that regular armiesw are ill adapted to cope with gang warfare, which carries on its activities by the intimidation of private citizens. The only way yet discovered to cope with terrorism is more terrorism [i.e., counter-terrorism] … Will this soon become an inevitable development in the British Empire also – Navy, Army, Air Force, and – anti-gangster services [i.e., counter-terrorism units] [?].

Glubb Pasha, British Commander of the Arab Legion, as quoted by Benny Morris in The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews 50-51 (I. B. Tauris 2003) (all brackets are from the book).

Afterthought: Wait a minute, who you callin’ “ahead of his time”? Isn’t this the kind of thing the Spanish did to Napoleon in the Peninsular War?

Response: Well, um, ah—okay, yes it is. But it is a lesson that conventional military bureaucracies don’t seem to learn quickly or well. Or, even after they learn it, they forget it. Until they get a chance to learn it again.