Quote Originally Posted by TROUFION View Post
WM- I dont think, particularly with the readership here on SWC, that you'd have to mention that. No analogy is perfect. But to represent the idea of chaotic multi-party conflict it works. Ideologies aside. chaos is chaos.
I do no think that we cannot leave the ideologies out of the picture. They tend to be the things that produce much of the chaos. In fact, when ideologies dominate, as seemed to be the case for much of the Spanish Civil War and now seems to be the case in many discussions about military action in Southwest Asia and GWOT in general, the possibilities for rational discussion and logical argument contract rather severely.

On a constructive note, how does one explain the rather painless transition of Spain from a dictatorship under Franco to the modern democratixc state it currently represents, particularly in light of the Iberian Peninsula's history of violent change? What lessons might be learned and applied in SWA, if any?