We need less Chemo and Surgery and more "Voom."

[Bob's World]

History's a big place, and you can pick something out of it to support practically any point you want to make.

I think the comments in the previous posts about the decline of empires are dangerously oversimplified and of debatable relevance to issues between the US and AQ, and more generally between the US and the Islamist terrorist fringe.

I think you're overrating the extent to which AQ specifically and Islamist terrorism in general derives from an insurgency dynamic, meaning conflict between governments and the citizens of the countries those governments govern. I think the relationship you're claiming needs a great deal more supporting evidence than you're providing.

I think the model you propose has real relevance to questions of insurgency, but I think, again, that you overrate the connection between AQ and insurgency, and exaggerate the extent to which AQ is a reaction to specifically American actions. The issues you cite can help understand populace/government relations in the Middle East, but I think you overrate the extent to which these conflicts are about us or require our involvement.

There is real risk in this construct: if we adopt the idea that AQ exists because we "broke" Muslim governments and put them out of touch with their people, some bright person is likely to conclude that we can disable AQ by "fixing" Muslim governments and making them accountable to their people. I can imagine no worse strategy.

These are all fair concerns. But I would offer a few thoughts to consider:

1. "Simple" and "Simplistic" share the same root word, but are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to understanding some situation. In between the two lay some of our favorite stomping grounds of "complicated," "complex," and "confused." You are very right that "simplistic" solutions do not offer much, unless through pure happenstance they fall upon the right approach. But simple is genius. Simple is so very incredibly difficult to get to yet so very easy to apply. So often we reject simple solutions because we fear they are so, well, "simple," that they could not possibly have merit. So we instead embrace confused, complex and complicated approaches, because if anything is so hard it must be worthwhile, and if I am not producing the results I intended, that is to be expected, after all, this is "complex."

My goal for years has been to get to "simple." The problem is that once once starts to get close to simple one tends to get farther and farther from the comfortably confused, complex, complicated place where most everyone else is happily mucking around. Thus the quote from Einstein I keep at the bottom of my posts. Einstein was the grand master of simple.

2. As to AQ, I don't overrate AQ, but certainly our approach to AQ over the past decade-plus holds them in very high esteem. After all, if everything we have so carefully crafted (from our image of ourselves to our goals for the governance of the Middle East, etc) are all falling about our ankles, it must be some very important, very powerful enemy that is causing that to happen. Right? Wrong.

No, I think AQ is largely a joke, but a very dangerous one who will have the last laugh if we do not stop chasing them in such a complex, complicated, confused manner from pillar to post around the country, with Intel leading our strategy, and military leading our foreign policy, and no nation's sovereignty more important than our own fear of this little band of opportunists.

We need to strike 80% of the organizations currently on the "terrorist" list off, not add more to. We need to analyze why some group loosely associated with AQ is not part of AQ so the we can address them wisely, not why they are AQ so that we can address them simplistically.

It is convenient to our egos, and those of the many out of touch regimes around the Middle East, if in fact AQ is Pied Piper, and that they have indeed brain washed good people to do bad things with their radical, Islamist ideology. But the Pied Piper is a fairly tale, and so is the idea that ideology causes terrorism and insurgency. Governments cause these conditions and they manifest deep withing broad segments of any given populace. Governments are the arctic winds blowing down from the north, and insurgent populaces are like large masses of ice that form and break away from the pack to cause trouble. Our COIN and CT approaches go after that aspect of such masses that floats above the surface, and largely ignores the reality that any effort designed to simply shave ice off of the top or to press the entire mass through brute force beneath the surface, out of sight and mind, is a fool's errand. It can produce temporary effects that look like success, but that are very temporary and symptomatic in nature, and that require constant energy to sustain. So the typically fail, unless the warm waters of good governance work to melt and blend that entire mass into the larger sea.

AQ does not make icebergs, but they work to leverage the destructive energy within and across a sea of such icebergs of popular discontent.

As to Muslim governments being broken, no, we did not "break" them any more than a rich, entitled man "breaks" his children when he allows them to act out with massive unearned wealth with few rules and little consequence for bad behavior. We have manipulated the governance of the region for our own purposes and our actions have indeed allowed many regimes of the region to act with growing impunity toward their own populaces. Those governments did this of their own free will, they need to own their problems and address them. Most seek to simply bribe or suppress such problems back into submission. This is a new era and I don't think such approaches will work. Those Republicans who yearn for the forced, artificial stability of the final years of the Cold War are idiots, or rather "intelligent fools." Likewise those who think we can "fix" this through regime change, nation building, US values and US-brand democratic governance.

We did not break this and we cannot fix this. We are, however, the major player in the mix. It is easy for these governments, and for organizations such as AQ to blame the US. This is human nature, just like the US blames AQ and ideology. We can, however, form a more helpful perspective and be willing to accept that change is happening and that many of these systems will find solutions that work for them that do not necessarily make us happy. It is not about us. We must learn when to simply let people sort things out for themselves, and how to better set red-lines for all parties that work to minimize the violence of change, and how to better mediate from neutral positions, rather than mandate from biased positions we take so often.

So, yes, simple is hard. But it is my goal. But what I offer may not be quite to simple yet, I assure you, it is not simplistic.