I think that there is a difference between the nature of policing and the military rooted in the nature of legitimacy and emotions, specifically the emotion of fear.
But does the US government in fighting in Afghanistan really understand this too? See the discussion at CurrentIntelligence.net, where I posted “Differentiating Between Police and Military Action.” Find out what terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the DC sniper, and the Unabomber all have in common. Or more to the point, find out why the US government dealt with them differently than they did with the threat of Al Qaeda.
Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996. In 2016 though he suddenly found himself with a new gig at Payap University in northern Thailand where he is on the faculty of the Peace Studies Department. He has also been a guest professor in Germany, and Tanzania. In the past, his main interests have been international development and refugees in Thailand, Tanzania, and California. This reflects a former career in the Peace Corps (Thailand), and refugee camps (Thailand and Tanzania). His books include: Crime and Immigrant Youth (1999), Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan (2001), The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life Beneath of the Marketplace (2007), When Killing is a Crime (2007), and Schooling, Bureaucracy, and Childhood: Bureaucratizing the Child (2012). His hobby is trying to learn strange languages–and the mistakes that that implies. Tony is a prolific academic, you can read more of his work at academia.edu.or purchase one (or more!) of his books from Amazon.com.