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

[Bob's World]

Where exactly do we "make it a major goal to actively protect and preserve the problem as is"? Did we "protect and preserve" the status quo in any of the Arab Spring rebellions? If not there, then where? An allegation like that needs to be specific.

Why limit ourselves to the Arab Spring countries?

We did this in Vietnam.
We do this in Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Isarel in varying degrees currently.

We agree to disagree on our understanding of this dynamic. I personally am fine with that. I find your interpretations of a very subjective field of human endeavor to be cripplingly literal. One need not agree with another's position to understand that positon. At times I feel that the only positions you can understand are the ones you agree with. I'm not sure what to do with that.

[Dayuhan]

Why limit ourselves to the Arab Spring countries?

Trying to stay reasonably current, and within geographic context.

We did this in Vietnam.

Yes we did, and in many other places during the Cold War. That's past, and cannot be changed.

We do this in Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Isarel in varying degrees currently.

Yemen, perhaps to some extent. We didn't make any particular effort to preserve Saleh, in fact I think there was a fair bit of machination aimed at getting him out. I'm not sure in any event that it's reasonable to talk about "insurgency" in Yemen, it's more a chaos of clan, ethnic and sectarian conflict. Certainly there's no coherent insurgent movement representing a coherent set of popular demands. Any party, external or internal, trying to mediate in Yemen is in for one massive headache.

In Afghanistan I tend to agree, but that's an inevitable consequence of regime change and nation-building, a strategy I've disagreed with from the start. We were always going to be to some extent invested in whatever we installed there, and we were never going to install a structurally viable government. That meant we painted ourselves into a corner where no matter what we did we'd be supporting and sustaining a dysfunctional government, because we were bound to be invested in a government we produced and the political culture has not re-evolved (since the devolution of the civil war) to a point where it can sustain functional governance.

I don't think we've been trying all hat hard to "preserve and protect the status quo" in the Southern Philippines. Our entry was largely intended to disrupt the status quo of a bandit-cum-terror group operating more or less freely under a government that could have suppressed it, but didn't because too much money was being made from it. There's been quite continuous pressure to alter the status quo... that pressure has often been based on what I feel is a mistaken assessment of the status quo, and I'm not sure where it will lead, but it has been there.

In Saudi Arabia our position on the status quo is of course quite irrelevant. We couldn't change it if we wanted to, and the government doesn't need our help to sustain it. There's nothing we can say or do that's going to change the way the Saudi government relates to its populace, and trying to push our way into that equation (where nobody, including the populace, wants us involved) is going to be counterproductive at best.

We agree to disagree on our understanding of this dynamic. I personally am fine with that. I find your interpretations of a very subjective field of human endeavor to be cripplingly literal. One need not agree with another's position to understand that positon. At times I feel that the only positions you can understand are the ones you agree with. I'm not sure what to do with that.

How can anyone understand your position if you won't explain it? You declare that it is so, if challenged you repeat that it is so, and if challenged again you say those doing the challenging just don't get it and are some how blind or deluded. I don't think the questions I've asked are all that unreasonable or that undeserving of answers.

If we come over the horizon telling the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or the Gulf States that we're going to work with them to resolve their differences with their populaces, how can we reasonably expect any answer other than "piss off"? hat do we do when we get that very predictable answer?

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Dayuhan

It's difficult to address causes that are rooted in history; we haven't got a time machine. There's always the temptation to look at the legacy of past meddling, decide that meddling was a mistake, and try to correct it with more meddling.

This is perhaps the most insightful comment I have seen in weeks in the SWJ Council. We too often fool ourselves into thinking "we" can address underlying issues, and in the process of doing so waste billions of dollars and spill way too much blood. In the end the underlying causes remain. We need to return a strategy based on common sense, not one based on false hope.