The David Kilcullen Collection (merged thread)

[MikeF]

A King without a Crown- the forlorn hope of winning hearts and minds.

In night comes day and the day comes to light, and I sing to my God in praise that it will be allright. Songs that I've been feeling.

- Matisyahu

Before we proceed, I would ask that someone/anyone provide a moment or a case study when a third party actor successfully persuaded a guerrilla to lay down his arms and embrace a foreign interventionist world view through peace, love, and fate.

The easy ones:

Ghandi- nope
MLK- nope
Malcom X- nope

Or as David Kilcullen explains (p. 4),

The second to act with respect for local people, putting the well-being of noncombatant civilians ahead of any other consideration, even- in fact, especially, ahead of killing the enemy. Convincing threatened populations that we are the winning side.

Wow, from my experience, this shows a deep lack of understanding of the populace. So, provide me at least one example of when these truths collectively persuaded an entire populace to lay down their arms.

I'm just asking for one instance, just one, and as much as you would like to assume, Dr. Nagl's version of the Malaya Emergency is not it. A lot of killing subsided beore his proposed lessons learned.

The only one that I can consider involves the old testament, trumpets blaring on a fortification, and a direct intervention by God.

Otherwise, in Schmedlap's terms, I'm gonna start drinking the bong water. I'll put this in the most simplest terms- If we stopped Mississippi from burning, if we protected the blacks there from being lynched, would that have stopped the civil rights movement? Nope.

Now that I gave you an analogy that you can understand, then answer the question,

Why?