We need less Chemo and Surgery and more "Voom."

[Dayuhan]

But the other hard fact is that many populace groups in many countries across the greater Middle East have high conditions of insurgency and are either suppressed currently from acting out, or are actively acting out. This is the energy source that gives AQ significance.

Is that really "the energy source that gives AQ significance"? I'm not at all convinced that it is. A statement like that requires supporting arguments, it can't simply be proclaimed as revealed truth.

I just read this on another thread, it seemed worth re-quoting here:

Al-Shabaab presents its mission in cosmic terms, invoking a civilisational conflict between the forces of Islam and non-Islam. This is coupled with attempts to develop an ‘ummah consciousness’ in potential recruits, encouraging them to identify with Muslim causes worldwide. Typically, the suffering of Muslims around the world is juxtaposed with the ease of life in the West. The central tenet of this messaging is that faith necessitates action, and Muslims need to recalibrate their priorities by placing the liberation of Muslim lands ahead of esoteric matters of faith.

I think the same might well be said of AQ. It might be said as well that AQ established this template.

I see no evidence to suggest that AQ draws its primary impetus from populaces angry at their own governments. AQ and its predecessor organizations have drawn their primary support base from Muslim resentment toward infidel occupation of Muslim lands, first the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and subsequently the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. AQ has tried very hard to muster sentiment against Muslim rulers of Muslim countries, but they've generally failed pretty miserably. The only narrative that's ever really worked for them is "expel the infidel from the land of the faithful", which is why they rapidly fade into irrelevance when there's no infidel to expel. Paradoxically that situation makes them more dangerous, as they're likely to try to provoke an incursion that will restore their relevance, but ultimately I think the best way to starve AQ is to stop occupying Muslim countries and deprive them of that core narrative.

US governance affects people all over the world. AQ is leveraging that fact to recruit members of insurgent populaces to join their ranks as foreign fighters and as terrorist operatives. AQ is also leveraging that fact to gain influence among such insurgent populaces and the insurgent groups that emerge from such populaces as part of their UW campaign.

Again, I don't think these people are driven by the "insurgent populace" model at all. They aren't trying to strike a blow against their own government. They see themselves not joining an insurgency (in which they fight their government) but a war pitting the devout against the infidel worldwide, a war in which they travel to the battlefields of the day. The assumption that the core dynamic driving AQ is between governments and their own populaces is very questionable and requires supporting evidence to be accepted.

Better we act as mediator to bring the parties to the table to work these things out without the avoidable chaos that is Syria today, or Libya last year.

That sounds to me like an absolutely disastrous prospect. I don't think we have any credibility at all as mediator among other governments or between governments and their populaces. No mediator can be effective unless all parties to the dispute accept the mediator and desire mediation, and that's not likely to happen with us in the picture. Better to mind our own business than to try to impose ourselves in a role we cannot play and where we are not welcome.

We need a new approach to foreign policy that allows us to build and wield influence without relying so heavily on regime change, nation building or overly broad programs of targeted killing.

Agreed, but I don't see us doing that by messing in the internal affairs of other countries, even if we convince ourselves that we're messing on behalf of "the people".

But if one can't see that suppressed insurgent populaces and a US policy perceived as keeping the status quo in place as a major aspect of the energy source powering this, then one is not likely to get past programs designed to simply "defeat, disrupt, or deny" the symptoms of the problem.

Seems to me that the US policies that have most fed this are polices aimed at altering the status quo, not at sustaining it... supporting the mujahedin against the Soviets in Afghanistan, regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Not that I think we should be sustaining the status quo, but in most of the Muslim world the status quo doesn't rely on our sustenance anyway. Trying to change the status quo in ways that we think the populace will like is just going to work us deeper into the scheisse.