Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
Unless of course they take over and become the new oppressive regime... which they will do if they can.
Most of those even evolve over time, as the USSR, China, Cambodia and Vietnam to name a few show. Currently being an average citizen in a country that was "lost" to communism in the post WWII upheaval is often a better deal than being an average citizen in one of the many buffer states where the US implemented the control measures of a long containment strategy that has nurtured the rise of the majority of the states that top the "least free" list.

Ideology is over sold and over played. Bad ideologies may be just the ticket to carry an insurgency to success. That is the role of ideology, to take a position that the state either cannot or will not co-opt, that speaks to the target populace and motivates them to join and stay the course. Good ideologies can work for that too; but the good ones tend to endure into the peace while the bad ones all seem to evolve over time to more sustainable models.

But my point was that the populace no longer needs a bad ideology as their best option to move against the government, they moved on their own. So the issue now is what waits for them after the victory parade? The US does our own national interests a disservice when we cling to friends or foes alike after situations evolve, or in this case revolve. We need to stand ready to work with what ever or whomever emerges; we need to be prepared to use influence or even reasonable force where necessary to protect populaces from the government as well as from the insurgent; and we need to have an open offer of support on the table to help new groups organize and get their feet on the ground as they take on the overwhelming task of governance. But that does not mean latching onto new despots to replace old ones as we too often do; or forcing a made in America solution up the backside of these emerging populaces.

As an aside I flipped by Fox news yesterday and the anchor was talking about Libya and how "Qaddafi is willing to murder his populace to stay in office" as they debated the option of a no-fly zone. I could not help but think "How is this different from Mr. Karzai and his willingness to murder his populace to stay in office, or our commitment to help murder his populace to keep him in office? This is what state's do in COIN when they see it as war by the people against the state, they wage war back and murder the populace that dares to challenge their flawed governance, even if or particularly if they have offered the populace few to no less violent options to express their discontent.

COIN is governance rising to civil emergency by a government in its role of serving and protecting the entire populace. No more, no less. COIN is continuous and most often innocuous and prophylactic in nature. It only becomes reactive as the proactive measures begin to fall short. It only becomes war only when the government has totally failed and is desperately seeking to simply crush those who dare to defy their rule.

I don't know how we do "neutral intervention" to facilitate the best possible self-determination (ass assessed from the perspective of the recipient populace). We've never done it before.