"Evidence" is needed in court; "perception" is needed in insurgency
AQ's may fight foreign militaries when they come into the region, but their fight is not "against foreign military intervention." It is your position on this point that is unsupported by evidence. Foreign militaries are a convenient target of opportunity to carry forward his larger agenda.Originally Posted by Dayuhan
His priorities have always been to take down the Saudi royals, and to humble the US in particular; and in general to break Western influence over the governments, and thereby the people, of the Middle East.
Conditions of insurgency have been sky high in most of the countries that bin Laden carries his message to for decades; but with the populaces held in check by the security forces of these despotic governments. This is what created the fertile fields of populaces for the seeds of bin Laden's message to take root in. If the people had been satisfied in their situation, then bin Laden's efforts would have had little effect. This is the nature of UW. You can't start a fire if the fuel is wet. A satisfied populace is like wet fuel, it just doesn't ignite very easy.
Galula talked about events much like the ones currently going on in across the Middle East in his first Chapter in the section on "Revolution, Plot, Insurgency."
"A revolution usually is an explosive upheaval - sudden, brief, spontaneous, unplanned (France, 1789; China, 1911; Russia, 1917;Hungary, 1956). It is an accident, which can be explained afterward but not predicted other than to note the existence of a revolutionary situation.
Ok, I would not call such events "accidents," but Galula wrote from the perspective of a man who had lived his entire life as a colonist or as a military officer dealing with insurgencies in his country's colonies. This colored his perceptions; but what he calls "existence of a revolutionary situation" in his example countries are what I call "conditions of insurgency." The fuel is stacked high and waiting for a spark. The "accident" is that event that suddenly ignites the fire of populace discontent without warning.
The fuel was and is tender dry and stacked high across the Middle East, and bin Laden has been conducting UW much like a state, but with the beneficial sanctuary that comes from being a non-state actor. With no state to be held at risk it allows a little guy to play on the big stage with the big guys.
But to your point, if one waits until they have "evidence" in this social science of human dynamics and perceptions, one is likely to get burned, as the first evidence is often a bright flash not unlike a match landing in a gasoline soaked pile of brush.
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