Thanks for the patterns of conflict of brief. I read the biography on Boyd a little over a year ago, and only wish I had read it sooner. I still wonder how such a profound thinker came out of the seat of fighter jet, but the answer was in his bio, he applied the principles of physics to war and sociology.

I understand the the concept behind your argument that we must win on the moral level, but remain sceptical that removing our Strykers and Armor will put us on the moral high ground. Regrettably I have to over simplify your arguments to keep this short. The question I asked before remains unanswered, how do we win the moral battle in Iraq?

Using Boyd's three forms of conflict, I think it is safe to say we won the maneuver fight, and we're now waging a war of attrition and a war on the moral front. The war of attrition doesn't need explanation, it may or may not be decisive.

The moral war is extremely challenging on at least three different levels: the moral war with the homefront, a moral war with the global audience, and most importantly a moral war with the Iraqi people (or more accurately peoples/tribes).

I won't belabor our challenges for gaining the moral high ground on the home front and with the global audience when the alleged reasons we went to war didn't bear any fruit yet. This is an extremely difficult obstacle to surmount, and the only mitigating factor may simply be time.

Winning the moral war with the Iraqi people is just as, or more, challenging outside of Kurdistan, as winning the moral war on the home and global fronts. We destroyed the Iraqi government and put a band aid in its place, and then we wonder why they can't respond to a crisis that is much more significant in scale than Huriccane Katrina? That is why I argue that OIF isn't a true counterinsurgency; furthermore, if this is true, then it is probable that strictly counterinsurgency strategies will probably fail to get us to the endstate we desire. Regime change requires a doctrine that is separate from counterinsurgency, even if many (if not most) of the lessons from previous counterinsurgencies are relevant.

Winning the moral war with Iraqi people will be extremely challenging when we attempt to establish a political system that flies in the face of their culture and history. Radical changes probably requires radical supporting actions like Mao and Lenin implemented. Obviously we don't want to go down that route. To compound the matters you have several different ethnic groups that do not trust one another, almost as bad as the Democrats and Republicans.

In the end I agree with the concept of winning on the moral level, but I think we better find other viable options in the meantime until we figure out how to achieve this concept on the ground.

On a happy note, I believe that if we stick with it we'll triumph, because our enemy is his own worst enemy. While we're struggling to define and obtain the moral high ground, our enemy doesn't even understand the concept. In time the Iraqi people will see this, and we'll have a cascading success.