Search:

Brainwashed, no. Angry, yes, and angry young men will always be with us. You cannot prevent anger by giving everyone what they want and treating everyone as they wish to be treated, because the way...

What if a man has a hundred wives... 90 are happy, 6 are mildly irritated, three hate his guts, and one shoots him in the head. On the basis of the numbers you might say he's not doing a bad job,...

Bulimic to a degree, and I wish it were wrong. But as you wrote in response to BW...



This is exactly what I'm talking about. When we decided to undertake this radical transformative...

If we invade a foreign country, conquer it, toss out a government we don't like, put in a government we do like, and declare that this government is now the government (because we say it is) and...

This is true, but it raises further questions, and one must point out that the parallel with Marie A. or King G. is of limited applicability: we do not face an insurgent populace in our own country...

I certainly wouldn't want to be associated with the views of Ralph Peters, or to a lesser extent those of Maj Coughlin, who I would say have turned to blindness at the other end of the ideological...

I don't dispute this, but I think you're systematically overestimating the degree of American influence in these environments, and focusing excessively on the assumption that participation in this...

Agreed; no "pied piper" is going to generate the depth and breadth of resentment and hostility needed to initiate or sustain an insurgency. Generating enough to sustain a terrorist movement that...

I didn't say that... but some of the mistakes made in Afghanistan have certainly made success (which was never going to easy) far more remote and failure far more likely.



I'm not sure that...

Is it possible for us to ensure the legitimacy of someone else's government?



In this case I would have to say that the "insurgency" does not trace back to "governance that lacks legitimacy...

I pretty much agree, and certainly in Afghanistan I think the system of shura and jirga would have made the strongest basis for a new government. It seems to me that in both Iraq and Afghanistan our...

There are certainly strong metrics to suggest that current strategy is misguided... though the relationship between "GWOT" strategy and our economic issues is pretty tenuous. I'm not convinced that...

No, really? Ah hadn't noticed... :D

Yes, I know we keep coming back to it, but it's an issue at the core of how we're trying to handle the current mess, and I'm not quite willing to let it go.
...

I can't see any of these as the acts of an insurgent populace. A few highly radicalized individuals, yes, but that's not the same thing.

Certainly one could cite attacks on US forces in Iraq...

Largely agree, though "revenge against AQ" could also be stated as "disruption of State support for AQ and resulting safe haven". I'd also question whether the current conflict qualifies as...

Certainly if an insurgency is driven by resistance to Western-supported despotism one would be right to revisit the policy of supporting despots. We found ourselves in that position with a...

In some environments yes, in others perhaps less so. In this case we're not talking about mass radicalization of a populace, but of disaffected individuals. Looking back at recent history we can...