Quote Originally Posted by Cliff View Post
You assume UBL actually cares what the people think . . . Not all systems are constrained - again, restraint assumes a rational actor, and as pvebber has pointed out, people are not always rational.
Cliff,

I do not assume anything. I say that ALL power systems have political restraints to worry about. I think that I can state as a fact (not an assumption) that Islamists, like UBL, derive their power from the obedience of the faithful and that therefore they have to worry about the political restraint not to act in an unislamic manner (like indiscriminately attacking Muslims). Whether UBL is rational enough to take this restraint into acount or not is a totally different matter. Restraint does NOT assume a rational actor. A rational strategist will take restraints and constraints into account and have a good chance to be successful. A strategist that is not rational will probably not take restraints into account and will probably be unsuccessful. In Iraq, Al Zarqawi did not take restraints into account, attacked Muslims indiscriminately, and suffered the consequences. Iraqi Sunnis turned against him and the Jordanian intelligence services did whatever they could to help the Americans find him.

Quote Originally Posted by Cliff View Post
You assume that the strategist and the politician are different. Again, this is not the case in our system. Politicians are the strategists. Our system intentionally separates the military from the other levers of national power, unifying them only within civilians that control the executive branch. This means that strategy is ultimately decided by politicians and their close advisors. This does mean, however, that our strategists have to adhere to political restrictions - because they are usually running for re-election.
Politicians decide about stategy, but they are not strategists. I think it would be an insult to General Petraeus' doctrinal and strategic efforts to say that the American strategy in Iraq after 2007 was developed by politicians. Because strategists develop strategy and politicians decide about strategy, it is necessary to organize an open and fruitful discourse between politicians and strategists. Examples of good discourses are Powell-Bush Sr and Petraeus-Bush Jr. There is plenty of literature about bad discourses. I've got two excellent examples if you're interested.