Quote Originally Posted by Hawkwood View Post
...yet to prove we have the capability or will to build a state.
Maybe that gets closer to the central issue. Anthropologists use a concept in cultural evolution named "aggregation." (Marc, please fix this if I get it wrong.) Groups of various sizes combine their interests to form clan, tribe, nation - larger groups. The current insurgencies (separating the total "insurgency in Iraq from the wider one) represent just such aggregations of interest, i.e. pulling subgroups into the larger one. The brilliance of the strategy implemented by Petreus, Kilcullen, et. al. lies in disaggregating the larger groups.

The rub is what comes next.

"Nation Building" seems to imply there's a clean white sheet of paper to work with. That's never going to be the case.

Maybe we need to think in terms of "re-aggregating" the subgroups into a new larger group. Thinking that way would have to force us into thinking in terms of both process and end state that line up more naturally with the local culture. For example, preventing idiocies such as sending men in to search the women's quarters.

Looking at it this way, debate over which generation of war we face doesn't contribute much.