Watching a History Channel doco I recorded ages ago on Caesar in Gaul. The capacity of Caesar to play off tribes and ruthlessly apply force should be taught at military colleges. Also to generate a sustain a Roman Army far from home on a campaign of annihilation and subjugation.
Reading everyone's take on Afghanistan - a complete disaster of counter insurgency's making - one cannot watch this & Caesar's determination to simply annihilate his way through Gaul, even when his Legions operated with extended supply lines into modern Benelux countries 
Caesar like any Roman commander, would have been conscious that his Roman expeditionary army was in a very exposed AO. Caesar would have had no time for the counter insurgency/'winning hearts and minds' approach other than in Tacitus's make a desert and call it peace sense
Julius Caesar on "Leadership By Example" - it was Caesar's practice (followed by, inter alia, Wellington) to place himself as the commanding General at the weakest point of the Roman line and act as a human rallying point. Caesar being Caesar, it worked. #SPQR
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