Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
You live in a simplistic world, Robert...

In the American Colonies versus Britain, you left out the bit about the costs of the French and Indian war from which the Colonies greatly benefited and for which they promised to help pay -- then reneged on raising taxes. Add to that a series of provocations by groups of people who were NOT in accord with mainstream Colonial thinking and half dozen or more other things (not least French activities before during and after...) and that conflict wasn't nearly as simple as you infer. You tend to cherry pick your history and ignore things that are inconvenient

Same is true of Viet Nam. That was far more complex than your statements imply -- as was the Chinese example. For example, you ignore the impact of the death of FDR on the acceptance of the French as de-facto rulers of Indo China and you ignore the fact that American support for the southern half was very low key until the Brothers Kennedy decided to use Viet Nam to stimulate the US economy. There were a a lot of wrongs in Viet Nam but not all were US or western wrongs. Not by a long shot.

Bob's World is nice and simple.

The real world is filled with a lot of gray and half tones -- most of which are ignored only at some peril. The good news is that you're smart enough to realize that with statements like this:You acknowledge the existence of human fallibility but your prescriptions and descriptions usually fail to account for it.

That sort of ambiguates your message...
The universe, however, is indescribably complex.

So you're right, simple was my goal. None of the shades of grey or half-tones have been ignored, they have all been factored in or by-passed where they are true, but immaterial to understanding the essence of the problem.

No one said the American colonist's causation or motivation was rationale, just that they perceived it to be so. I think it is quite typical for the counterinsurgent to see the insurgents Causation as completely irrational. But that does not change the perception of the counterinsurgent. This is one reason that most counterinsurgencies go violent rather than being resolved at the subversion level, because the government is too focused on the facts and the law rather than the very powerful perceptions of injustice, disrespect or their very illegitimacy in the eyes of their populace. History shows that this is both common, and folly for the counterinsurgent.

My work has been focused on rendering the facts of dozens of insurgencies, studying the writings of dozens of theorists and historians, my own experiences throughout my life; to include 4 years focused on Asia, and now in Afghanistan to get to exactly what you accurately call "simple."

Genius is simple. That is my goal (and a difficult one as I am not exactly equipped for genius, so for me it is a hard, circuitous journey and not just a casual glance leading to that "Eureka!" moment.

In my opinion too many people spend too much time mucking around in the "facts" (and arguing about the 100's of different nuances of what those facts are), rather than looking past the fact to find the essence behind; to see how those facts interact in common patterns and trends.

That is why I put the Latin on my signature. To know the facts is education. To understand how the facts interact and what they mean and to be able to draw inferences from them is wisdom. Many men seek knowledge, but Solomon asked for wisdom.

Besides, "simple" is far more difficult to achieve than "complex."

Or, as I have told action officers who bring me insanely complex solutions to insanely complex problems: "Don't complify; simplicate."

So yeah, I'm trying to simplicate this hairball.