A 'Digger' writes The Rise and Fall of Western COIN

[Bill Moore]

Here you go again twisting statements to make them fit into your model

1. Saddam, being a grand master of SOIN, there was no such thing as AQI until we took him out and attempted to replace him with an even more illegitimate, and far less effective, government of our choosing and design. Hell, I even know the American contractor, now an MG in the AF reserve I believe, who wrote their constitution for them.

I wrote,

The war in Afghanistan was tied to fighting to the al-Qaeda network, so in my view the intent was legitimate, but in practice fighting al-Qaeda became a side show at best.

Was Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before we invaded?

As for Iraq, an AQ franchise was was in Kurdistan, it was Ansar al-Islam (AAI) before we invaded, but it was not in Iraq proper. They actually benefited from our no fly zone, because Saddam would have killed them off.

2. If we put the guy "on the rug" does that mean we are then sentenced to forever working to keep him on the rug, and that if we ever stop we are then pulling the rug out from under him?? When did it stop being a fundamental right of a population to remove a leader who they believe must go? It's still right there in the US Declaration of Independence last time I checked.

I think you're confusing your law education with foreign policy and national interests. I don't disagree with you on this, but there are other factors that shape these decisions.

3. Every society has a degree of low level corruption that is normal in the context of their respective cultures. We need to stop judging cultures different than our own as being "wrong." Worse, we will do stupid things, like turn traditional Afghan patronage into a massive centralized Ponzi scheme in the name of "centralized government," and then pour Billions of development and security dollars into that Ponzi scheme, and then have the gall to wag our fingers at the Afghan government for being corrupt when we made the whole thing and then funded it!

A government and its employees stealing from its people has nothing to do with cultural norms. Those are organizational norms, and when they are the norm then government is not serving its people. What is low level corruption? Is a police officer roughing up your relatives to get protection money, the face of government, acceptable corruption? Are government executives who take large percentage of aid or profits a minor level of corruption that strengthens the relationship between the government and its people? This myth was started by businessmen to justify how they do business in these countries. I guess pedophiles are O.K. in SE Asia, because it is normal for families to sell their children to human traffickers to have sex with Euro Trash males in their 40s and 50s? Hey it is their culture, no harm. Ask the pedophiles and that is what they'll tell you.

[Bob's World]

You wrote about AQI,

It depends, if we allowed AQI to take over Iraq it certainly wouldn't have reduced terrorism? Allowing Maliki and the Shia to dominate basically made Iraq a proxy state to Iran, so in the end allowing AQI to win would have undermined our interest, and promoting mob rule by imposing democracy to facilitate a Shia take over did undermine our interests.

That is what I responded to in regards to Iraq. We brought AQ to Iraq when we invaded. You add that we also facilitated AQ to gain an earlier toe hold with our no-fly zone. Perhaps, I'll take your word on that.

We argue "interests" to rationalize all manner of activities, like taking down the Taliban government rather than simply punishing it and leaving it in power. We then end up engaged in generation-long campaign that is absolutely counter to our interests.

Many think the US income tax is stealing. People know when their government is operating outside the cultural norms of their society. in some areas people can vote in new government. in other areas they must resort to revolution. These things are self-leveling. When we intrude to skew the results to be what we think is best for us we disrupt their governance. You would not want China to spend a Billion to get their candidate elected as our president. You'd feel that what they did legally and for their interests was a very illegitimate thing indeed. Other people in other countries feel the same way when we label their revolutionary movements as terrorists, and then conduct operations to ensure that our candidate stays in office.

We have lost our way, one step, one decision at a time over the past 70 years. it happens. We just need to shoot a new azimuth and get back on course. We also need to recognize that some approaches to securing and advancing interests that used to work reasonably well are no longer feasible in the current environment. Our archaic and flawed understanding of what insurgency is, why it happens and how to best resolve it is also a major contributor to many of our current challenges. It is why all of our great tactical actions do not produce intended strategic results. We remain drawn along by our own inertia though.