Studies on radicalization & comments

[Dayuhan]

First Afghanistan: There was an alliance of northern tribes in insurgency against the illegitimate Taliban government that was installed and supported by Pakistan. We went into that mix to get revenge against AQ and to wrest control of Afghanistan away from the Taliban with out, I assume, fully appreciating the role of Pakistan in their regime. The follow-on insurgency we are dealing with in Afghanistan now has nothing to do with GWOT, and has everything to do with the current Karzai regime that draws its legitimacy from the West/US; and the Taliban insurgency to challenge that; along with a general popular resistance against the western military presence in their country.

Largely agree, though "revenge against AQ" could also be stated as "disruption of State support for AQ and resulting safe haven". I'd also question whether the current conflict qualifies as "insurgency". An insurgency requires a government, and I'm not sure anybody other than us recognizes the Karzai assemblage as that.

In Iraq there was no insurgency and no connection to GWOT. They just happened to be governed by a guy who pissed us off. The insurgency there was purely a response to our invasion.

Agreed, though to an extent the "insurgency", especially in the early stages, could be viewed as less a resistance to a Government than as armed competition to fill the vacuum left by Saddam's removal.

This is the great irony, the two places we have sent our military to "defeat terrorism" in fact, have very little to do with the root cause of the political factors that gave rise to AQ and also that motivate many nationalist insurgents across the middle east (from places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Algeria) to engage the West in acts of Terrorism.

I personally believe that the purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to draw the US into punching the tar baby and initiating military actions that could be dragged into wars of attrition. That was not a response to US actions or policies, but a carefully calculated proactive gambit aiming to simultaneously reinforce the narrative of Western aggression against Muslims (a narrative that was at the time becoming rather weak) and engage the US in a military action that would exploit our rather notorious unwillingness to maintain expensive and unpleasant long term actions. If I'm right, we gave AQ an abundance of what they wanted.

This is the critical strategic point that we must address. The West supports a handful of the most oppressive regimes in the world across the Middle East, and it is the insurgent populaces of those countries that attack us; along with the relatives of those populaces who have migrated to western countries.

Where and when in this conflict have we been attacked by an insurgent populace resisting a Western-supported regime? AQ is not a populace, nor does it represent a populace. They have never managed to draw enough support from any populace anywhere to initiate an insurgency, though they have managed to successfully exploit insurgencies that they did not initiate.

Yemen is the latest poster child for this. An oppressive despot being promised US aid to oppress and suppress the insurgent segment of his populace that dares to stand up to his autocratic rule all in the name of "GWOT" and because he is an ally. We can only expect more attacks on the west from this policy. We should be cracking down on the government of Yemen, not the populace of Yemen. Once we change our policies and refocus our military efforts accordingly the populaces of places like Yemen will find they don't need what AQ is selling; and they will also have little reason to feel that they must attack the US to be able to get out from under oppressive regimes at home.

Have we the capacity to transform the Yemeni government into something functional? I suspect not. We could withdraw support and allow that government to collapse, but the immediate outcome would likely resemble what we see on the other side of the strait, which would benefit neither us nor the populace. My opinion of the Yemeni government is no higher than yours, but we've a rather limited list of options for action, and any or all of them could work out badly.