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Thread: Revising FM 3-24: What needs to change?

  1. #21
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Hi John, I got it now. I ordered you book Uncomfortable Wars Revisited actually it is a gift I am not supposed to know about So it all came back to me. Also the first line of the book is about General Gavin resigning in 1957 in protest over our lack of ability to fight such wars one of the reasons why I think he is one of the greatest Generals the Army has ever produced. I am planning a stealth operation to read the book a little ahead of schedule

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    Default Ra

    Oil revenues in Iraq are being shared by means of the budget if not by an oil distribution law.

    Actually, the FM assumes (as the symposium writers all seem to agree) that insurgency is a 3 sided argument: 1. HN, 2. US (we called that the Intervening Power in the SWORD MODEL), and 3. the insurgents (and their external supporters). Indeed, the FM's approach is readily adaptable to a multisided war as seen in Petraeus' strategy.

    Cheers

    JohnT

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    Default Gian, your point that the doctrine needs to be

    debated as was the active defense between 76 and 82 is spot on. That is a critique I can easily sign on to.

    Biddle says, "The predominantly Shiite Maliki government has consistently resisted U.S. pressure to compromise with its Sunni rivals. And in spite of more than three years of trying , the United States has not yet produced an Iraqi security force that can consistently defend the interests of all Iraqis." (p. 349) DeBaathification law, oil revenue sharing in the budget, return of the Sunnis to the government, 15 of 18 benchmarks being achieved at an adequate rate, operations in Basra and Sadr city. All of this is not taken into account by Biddle - probably written befor it became apparent. Of couse there is room for debate on the interpretation but the stark view Biddle presents is dated and does not take account of new info.

    My critique of Kalyvas is not that he correctly discusses the population centric approach/theory that is the heart of the FM and a number of its antecedants including Galula and Thompson but rather that he interprets them as enemy centric. "These earlier works conceptualized insurgencies as revolutionary movements based on mass mobilization ... and devised methods of response that integrated specific military and political strategies - with heavy emphasis on the former.... On the military front, the goal is to identify and eliminate key local insurgents while establishing effective population control...." (p. 351) The first sentence misinterprets Thompson by overemphasizing actions specifically directed against subversion vice legitimacy, clear and strong political aims, and unity of effort. The second sentence overemphasizes the FM's focus on "force" applied to the enemy rather than its pop centric focus.

    Got to run an errand - more later. Your critque states correctly the FM's prime emphasis, Kalyvas' doesn't.

    Cheers

    JohnT

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    [O]minously, both the Pentagon and GAO reports note potential problems with the so-called Sons of Iraq program. Most Sunni Arab groups whose members have been brought into the program have yet to reconcile their differences with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, the GAO report notes. The Pentagon said the program faces the challenge of combating infiltration by extremist groups and concluded that the Iraqi government cannot currently manage the effort.


    Nearly two years into the program, however, the U.S. is gradually handing over responsibility for the Sons of Iraq to the Shiite-led government. By January, the military hopes to turn the entire program over to the Iraqis.

    But the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been reluctant to absorb large numbers of armed Sunnis into the Shiite-dominated security forces. American officials fear that many of the U.S.-backed fighters may turn their guns on the government unless jobs can be found for them.


    there is concern that the government in Baghdad will continue to face questions of legitimacy from the Sunni community and even that some tribal leaders may return to insurgent activities.

    [/UR"There is a very real fear that if the newer groups do not do well in the elections, they will take things into their own hands and not respect the provincial councils," said Ottaway.

    Our friend the aardvark:

    Dissolving the Sons of Iraq... ?

    The UAE newspaper al-Khaleej today reports that Prime Minister Maliki is forming a committee to study how to go about dissolving the "Sons of Iraq". According to al-Khaleej, military and political figures around the Maliki regime have been complaining about his silence with regard to the Awakenings, which they allegedly call "American militias." Now that the exceptional circumstances surrounding their formation has passed, these government and military figures reportedly believe, the time has come to break them up and correct what they believe was a strategic mistake by the Americans to support militias full of brutal killers and unreconstructed sectarians.

    The move to break up the Awakenings now is also, according to al-Khaleej, tied to a secret deal with the Islamic Party of Tareq al-Hashemi (which as part of the IAF has finally announced its return to the Maliki government ). Maliki, reportedly, would move to weaken the Awakenings ahead of provincial and Parliamentary elections, breaking up their power and barring them from forming political parties (using the "no parties with militias" as the legal pretext, perhaps). This could put the Maliki government in sharp conflict with the Americans, the story concludes.

    How much weight to put on this? Since the entire story rests on unidentified sources, I'm inclined to view it as an accurate reflection of what some people are talking about and would like to see happen but not necessarily what's actually going to happen (though one of the comments in an earlier thread here suggests that those stories are, at the least, widely circulating). The intense dislike and distrust of the Awakenings among Maliki's circle has been widely reported, as has been the intense political competition between the Awakenings and the Islamic Party and the recent controversies about whether the US is beginning to shut down its support for the Awakenings. Count this as one more data point in a rapidly developing story, which could go in a number of different directions depending on how it's handled.


    Washington Post say attacks are up in one Sunni enclave because of Central government not sharing $$$$.

    The Awakening fighters are growing increasingly frustrated that Iraq's Shiite-led central government has been slow to integrate them into the Iraqi police and military services. U.S. officers say the fighters appear to be breaking into factions.

    Roadside bombs have suddenly become more prevalent in Adhamiyah. The U.S. military said 21 bombs were found in the area in the last 25 days of April, compared with three or four in all of March. Platoon leaders on patrol at Awakening checkpoints at the end of April sought information about the origins of fresh graffiti in support of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

    "It's escalating," said a checkpoint leader who gave his name as Abu Ahmad. "Some of the Awakening are chanting for al-Qaeda and using slogans for al-Qaeda. I think the district will pay the price because of these problems."


    It may be a blind squirrel situation, but it's still an important nut.

    The last article is extremely relevant. What do you do if: attacks are up in your AO because people are angry at the central government, but the sheik is on board and the area has already been cleared and is being held. In fact, it's already walled off. (
    (American forces have completed construction of a concrete wall around the Baghdad district of Adhamiya despite protests from the Iraqi prime minister and local residents who claim that they are now at the mercy of militants.)) Isn't that exactly the type of situation where the local commander will turn to the FM for guidance?

    Actually, now that I've done a little more research I see that Adhamiya used to be Gian Gentile's AO. I'll send him a PM. I hope he'll comment.
    Last edited by Rank amateur; 07-11-2008 at 09:46 PM.
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    Default Ra

    Interesting stuff. Bottom line is that truth is elusive. My sense is that things are generally better but there will be setbacks. Based on what I have seen of him, I am inclined to think that GEN Petraeus is fully capable of accepting reality and reporting it the way it is.

    Cheers

    JohnT

    PS For some reason the title line doesn't like all caps!

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    According to all models of FID/COIN that I've seen, the SOI need to be incorporated into a holistic security solution or the elements of future civil war, so direly predicted elsewhere, might well be the result. This really is the graduate level of warfare.

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    Default Gian, to continue:

    On page 352, Kalyvas says, "It is possible, therefore, to characterize it as a guide to 'benevolent occupation'...." this in relation to US interventions in Iraq and Vietnam. But the FM is not just a product of Vietnam and Iraq; it is also a product of El Salvador and the research that produced the SWORD MODEL (which addressed 43 post WWII insurgencies utilizing some fairly sophisticated quantitative methodology). (This is found in the FM's unacknowledged debt to FM 100-20 of 1990, as well as other sources.) the point is that neither Vietnam nor El Savador can honestly be considered as occupations.

    Dropping back a page, Kalyvas asserts that, "In some cases, the 'correct' application of violence is enough to defeat the insurgency and consolidate state control (think Sendero Luminoso in Peru....)" I worked with the Peruvians and watched the whole course of the SL war from Southcom and Leavenworth and Kalyvas' interpretation is really simplistic. the best short analysis is found in Chapter 7 of the book I did with Max Manwaring, Uncomortable Wars Revisited, U of OK Press, 2006 which is a comparative analysis of Peru and El Sal and addresses the COIN strategies along with those of the insurgents.

    So, my dismissal of Kalyvas, as you can see, is hardly cavalier

    Cheers

    JohnT

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    Found this pdf file by a Captain French that applies the SWORD method to the current Afghan conflict.

    http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/Our%20Seven...fghanistan.pdf

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    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    My reading of the doctrine - 3-24 and its predecessors - does not presume any sort of inevitability.
    I suspect I was presenting my ideas badly, John . The "inevitability" I was referring to is in an underlying assumption that the economy drives the society and that "consciousness" is, at its root, the result of the labour process. The Marxist form of this is from the preface to A Contriobution to the Critique of Political economy (emphasis added).

    In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
    This is the "inevitability" that I see underlying both Brown's work and, also, Barnett's - the assumption that the economy or "mode of production" is driving the requirements that lead to situations were a COIN fight s "inevitable". In the doctrine itself, I believe that a filtered version of this assumption shows up in the assumptions about how infrastructure and economic reconstruction will be pursued.

    Now, I'm certainly not trying to say that a certain amount of economic determinism isn't useful - it is, at least in terms of basic population level sustenance. What I am trying to say is that the basic assumption of "inevitability" is axiomatic and underlies the doctrine.

    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    My understanding of insurgency is that it is far more complex and that while it may seek to achieve incorporation into the global economy on favorable terms, it also may have nothing to do with the global economy or even reject it entirely.
    Agreed on insurgencies per se. Certainly as a general phenomenon, insurgencies tend to be related to social grievances, many of which are somewhat related to economic aspects. Actually, Algeria is a really good example of one that had little to do with "economics" per se; it was much more ideologically (or possibly "pathologically"! at the start) driven. I wasn't so much addressing insurgencies as I was the specific COIN doctrine.

    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    One could argue that AQ, as a global insurgency, wants to turn the entire global order on its head starting with religious freedom/diversity, moving to a political endstate (or series thereof), and finishing off with adapting modern technology to 7th Century Islamic polities.
    I certainly wouldn't argue with that interpretation . As the Great Philosopher Stan once quipped "They're a buncha wackos!".

    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    If I am correct, then Brown really has little to say that is useful - which was my start point based on her inability/unwillingness to determine the facts of what she is wrting about and her lack of understanding of concepts, starting with military doctrine. (She seems to think it is some kind of quasi religious dogma whereas, an old Military Review article captures it best in its title, "Doctrine Not Dogma.")

    I guess I really didn't like her piece very much - must be pretty obvious.
    Naw !!! Honestly, I didn't really like her piece either, for many of the same reasons - I find her piece to be as predictable as one of David Price's.
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
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    Default Hey Marc

    I never thought you could just dismiss Marx's analysis out of hand, although I do think that the Marxists never advanced it much beyond old Karl himself, You really couldn't understand El salvador without a copy of The Communist Manifesto in your ruck and Das Kapital in your office.

    On your last 2 points LOLOL!!!! (I really did when you cited old philospher Stan)

    Cheers

    JohnT

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    All great points and well articulated.

    Rank Am; thanks for posting these articles, i had not seen some of them. I did not "own" Adimiyah while I was but the Ameriyah. Still I had a sense of Adamiyah becauae of its largely sunni nature and a senior goi person I worked closely with was from the area.

    John T: I appreciate your most articulate responses to my question and my initial responses to your earlier posts. I will read them carefully today and hopefully get back to you soon on them. As with many other folks, one has to ration blogging on the weekends.

    gian

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    AM has an excellent post on what I was discussing.

    Are the SoI SOL?.

    Yes, more SoIs have been integrated, but not nearly enough. And every step appears to require twisting Maliki’s arm to the breaking point. With Maliki's newfound (over)confidence in the capabilities of the ISF, moreover, he is growing less amenable to this kind of tactical pressure every day. There is a genuine possibility that the prime minister will basically tell the “thugs,” “criminals,” and “terrorists” in the SoI to go screw themselves.

    According to doctrine "breathing space" is supposed to lead to reconciliation. In Iraq, the opposite is happening. The less violence there is, the more incentive Maliki has to tell his oppenents to "screw themselves."

    Paetreus would have more leverage over Maliki if Maliki still needed us to restrain Sadr, but

    a) Maliki snookered us into taking care of that problem for him according to Maliki's timeline.

    b) According to doctrine - and correct me if I'm wrong - you can't go wrong by clearing and holding, but as we've seen by clearing and holding Sadr City we lost political leverage.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    What is strategic failure with respect to Iraq?

    Follow on question; Is our objective political reconciliation? If so or if not, why?
    Since we stayed to promote democracy and avoid civil war, I think most people would consider a civil war or the end of democracy a strategic failure.

    I've admitted before that I have no idea what our objective in Iraq is.
    Last edited by Rank amateur; 07-12-2008 at 08:49 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
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    Hi RA,

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    According to doctrine "breathing space" is supposed to lead to reconciliation. In Iraq, the opposite is happening. The less violence there is, the more incentive Maliki has to tell his oppenents to "screw themselves."
    Hmmm, I think the underlying meaning is that the "breathing space leads to a reconciliation, not "reconciliation" per se. As an example, the "breathing space" between the 2nd and 3rd Punic Wars led to "a" reconciliation .

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    Paetreus would have more leverage over Maliki if Maliki still needed us to restrain Sadr, but

    a) Maliki snookered us into taking care of that problem for him according to Maliki's timeline.

    b) According to doctrine - and correct me if I'm wrong - you can't go wrong by clearing and holding, but as we've seen by clearing and holding Sadr City we lost political leverage.
    Okay, this will probably get me flamed, but here goes....

    If you don't want "the natives" to decide for themselves, then just declare Iraq to be under the legal jurisdiction of the US as an administered territory. If you are serious about building Iraq as a self-determining nation state, then live with the consequences of that choice, one of which will be the power brokers there manipulating the snot out of you. State building has consequences, and one of those consequences is a reduction in US power to tell "the natives" what to do - it's called "sovereignty".

    Seriously, RA, I do not mean to take a dump over you, and I am truly sorry if you take it that way (which I hope you won't because it certainly isn't personal!). I just think that the idea that you can create a nation that does whatever it is told is ridiculous and that you have to expect to be manipulated.

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default I have to agree with Marc, R. A.

    You said:
    ...According to doctrine - and correct me if I'm wrong - you can't go wrong by clearing and holding, but as we've seen by clearing and holding Sadr City we lost political leverage.
    Doctrine is a only a guide. It is designed for an ideal situation, too rigid adherence will get you killed. Situations are rarely ideal; that is particularly true in the ME. You can go quite wrong by clearing and holding terrain (or positions in all senses of that word) that you don't need to hold or that will invite more problems than said holding solves. Getting tied down holding things is, contrary to some theorists ideas, an invitation to inflexibility and stasis. It is sometimes necessary, usually not.

    Like any other operational or tactical effort, "clearing and holding" is a time / place / population sensitive matter and, as I've frequently said before, any idea of 'controlling' a population should be discarded -- it is just not going to happen lacking G. Khan like efforts -- and we're are not going to do that. Nor should we.

    Iraqis are going to do what they are going to do, they'll do it on their timetable and not ours and a lot of people need to accept that as reality -- possibly including some in high places and some with enhanced reputations from wandering about in the Blogosphere and reading goat entrails.

    Westerners have tried to manipulate the ME for over a thousand years -- with virtually no success unless they used brutality and then the ME just waited them out. That isn't going to change. Kipling said it well with these two:

    "Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old."

    "Now it is not good for the Christian's health To hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And it weareth the Christian down. And the end of the fight is a tombstone white With the name of the late deceased-- And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who tried to hustle the East.
    "

    To my other question; "Is our objective political reconciliation? If so or if not, why?" You replied
    Since we stayed to promote democracy and avoid civil war, I think most people would consider a civil war or the end of democracy a strategic failure.
    Most might do so if they only read the media and listened to politicians, both categories of which are relatively clueless. Even some self appointed experts who have become Bloggers fascinate me with their take on things. In any event, your answer raises another question; Is that why we stayed or is that why we said we stayed?

    My guess is that it's the latter. While a democracy would be nice as would lack of a civil war, my belief is that the former was and is never much more than a mild hope and the latter is likely inevitable to some degree at some time and probably sooner rather than later. I'd also submit that, other than to be nice guys, both those issues are really of small importance to the US; thus I don't believe that a lack of democracy or a major sectarian schism up to civil war level will adversely affect the US strategically -- though there would be obvious PR problems.
    I've admitted before that I have no idea what our objective in Iraq is.
    Nor do I in totality but I'm pretty well convinced that a lot of self appointed knowledgeable people (other than self appointed me, of course ) are either not as clued as they'd like to think or are not paying attention to reality -- or to the very significant differences between ME and western thinking processes and perceptions.

    To attempt to judge the politics in Iraq by what is seen or said (particularly in English -- but even in published or transcribed Arabic) is to be deluded; it's what goes on behind the scenes and under the table that will make determinations and those things will only leak out slowly -- or be revealed when the Iraqis (and others -- including us) want to reveal them.

    Marc gets it, as he says:
    "...If you are serious about building Iraq as a self-determining nation state, then live with the consequences of that choice, one of which will be the power brokers there manipulating the snot out of you. State building has consequences, and one of those consequences is a reduction in US power to tell "the natives" what to do - it's called "sovereignty".
    I could be wrong but I believe that statement is not only quite accurate; I believe that it was absorbed early on and up-front by the decision makers, plural, in DC -- regardless of all the political theater and rhetoric. We made an early decision to let Iraq be sovereign; it is and we've known that for five years. They'll do what they want and we'll play along and nudge where we can. That's cool (even if Congress is too dense to understand that).
    Last edited by Ken White; 07-12-2008 at 10:25 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
    I just think that the idea that you can create a nation that does whatever it is told is ridiculous and that you have to expect to be manipulated.

    Marc
    but that's not what I'm saying. Let me stick to simple basics. Insurgency is an attempt to achieve political goals through violence. Insurgents know they can't win militarily but they keep their recruitment rate high by making the population angry at the government. They keep their loss rate low by hiding in the population. By recruiting more then they lose, they survive a long time and if they're violent long enough, they figure people will give them what they want.


    To effectively counter an insurgency - and this is somewhat metaphorical, but literally true in a simple insurgency - you build a wall around the population. The insurgents can no longer hide among the people, making them easy to kill. To make sure that people don't sneak out of the wall and join the insurgency, you pacify people with job creation/hearts and minds etc inside the wall.

    In Iraq - as the Washington Post article states, and as AM reiterates - the more walls we build around the Sunnis, the less incentive the Shi'ite government has to make life inside the walled Sunni enclaves livable. Therefore, a new insurgency erupts inside the walls. (Precisely because we don't control how the Iraqi government spends their money.)

    In other words, as the political scientists point out, because the goals of the government and the counter insurgent aren't aligned we can - under certain circumstances - get a new insurgency: insurgency 2.0.

    We need to better understand those circumstances. The manual needs more game theory.

    Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.

    Put another way, every time we create an inkspot, Maliki will change his strategy. Iran, the Sunnis and the Kurds will also change their strategy. One, or more of those people may decide to turn to violence. Therefore more clearing and holding could be - under certain circumstances that are difficult to comprehend, but that can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy - be counterproductive.

    Just like we need help from anthropologists, we need help from game theorists.
    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
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    Hi RA,

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    In other words, as the political scientists point out, because the goals of the government and the counter insurgent aren't aligned we can - under certain circumstances - get a new insurgency: insurgency 2.0.
    Pretty often you would get new "insurgencies". But I honestly don't see why you would expect anything else . Maliki is exercising the sovereignty inherent in his position, and the MNF doesn't have sovereignty in Iraq - nor are they under Maliki's command and/or control. In game theoretic terms, this is a multi-player version of the Prisoner's Dilemma with one player (the MNF) having a de facto "get out of jail free" card.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    Therefore more clearing and holding could be - under certain circumstances that are difficult to comprehend, but that can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy - be counterproductive.
    I don't see why you characterize them as "difficult to comprehend". Really, they stem from the structures imposed on Iraq. If a confederate system had been constructed - the tri-partite split - you would have had a different set of structures and different forms of insurgencies.

    I think you do have a very valid point when you note that the government and the counter-insurgents (by which I assume you mean the MNF) goal are different. But I certainly don't find this surprising - it's totally predictable from the way the initial Phase IV was (mis-)handled. In the post-Westphalian construction of the state, a model that was an assumption of the architects of the invasion, such a conflict is inevitable since the MNF does not hold sovereignty.
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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default If...

    Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
    ...if they're violent long enough, they figure people will give them what they want.
    IF...
    ...you build a wall around the population. The insurgents can no longer hide among the people, making them easy to kill. To make sure that people don't sneak out of the wall and join the insurgency, you pacify people with job creation/hearts and minds etc inside the wall.
    Is that permissable in today's world? Even if it is, who can afford the troops and construction effort to do that in a nation of 26M bods?
    In Iraq - as the Washington Post article states, and as AM reiterates
    Er, uh, well, knowledgeable sources. Sort of...
    ... the more walls we build around the Sunnis, the less incentive the Shi'ite government has to make life inside the walled Sunni enclaves livable. Therefore, a new insurgency erupts inside the walls.
    Possible but certainly not a given among westerners, almost assuredly not a given in the ME where things do not operate on western standards of reward and thought processes do not tend to short termism.
    ...(Precisely because we don't control how the Iraqi government spends their money.) In other words, as the political scientists point out, because the goals of the government and the counter insurgent aren't aligned we can - under certain circumstances - get a new insurgency: insurgency 2.0. (emphasis added / kw)
    Your solution to the problem highlighted is? Under certain circumstances the sky can be green.
    Put another way, every time we create an inkspot, Maliki will change his strategy. Iran, the Sunnis and the Kurds will also change their strategy. One, or more of those people may decide to turn to violence.
    Well, yeah; all sides change their 'strategy' or techniques to counter opponenets, always have and always will. That is a violent part of the world...
    ...Therefore more clearing and holding could be - under certain circumstances that are difficult to comprehend, but that can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy - be counterproductive.
    Is it me or did you just do a 180 degree turn?

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    Default Commentary on the Review Symposium

    I've attached an extensive commentary on the Review Symposium that I have sent to Perspectives on Politics. Most of the ideas in it I tested earlier in this forum. Thanks to Marc T for his suggestions.

    Cheers

    JohnT
    Attached Files Attached Files

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    Default BZ, John

    Very well done.

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    Default As we say out here

    on Rancho La Espada, miles de gracias.

    Marc T's other suggestion (I won't tell you exactly what he suggested to fix the essay ) was that I do a summary article on the SWORD Model. It is begun and I'll send it to Dave when done.

    Cheers

    JohnT

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