Thanks for clarifying your position, I never claimed to be quick on the uptake . Your comments here make sense, but your previous comment about ideology not being the boogey man is not entirely correct in my view, but then it again it depends upon what you mean by that statement. I think ideology can be a subversive tool in a UW campaign that undermines the credibility of the existing government, and therefore it needs to be what? Discredited, neutralized, challenged, whatever, but where I think we'll agree is that the government better have a better system/ideology/narrative, or the subversives using ideology will potentially gain a decisive edge.
Where I suspect we'll disagree is that a challenge to the State must be countered or the State is illegitimate. If the government can and is willing to reform and those reforms can effectively neutralize or co-opt the challengers that would be the ideal approach. As an occupying power rushing to establish a government that is seen as illegitimate by its people is almost guaranteed to be doomed to fail. We removed and then imposed governments upon the people(s) of Iraq and Afghanistan that conformed to our model of what a government should like, and even endorsed them in our minds with questionable elections. As it starts to come apart at seams we're standing by with bags of money and security forces to try to hold it together.
In short we created our own Catch 22, we're damned if we continue to support them, and we think we're damned (politically) if we pull support from them. I think most agree it is the policy wonks that need to get this right up front, and how much influence the military will have on these decisions now or in the future is debatable, but we're professionally obligated to voice an opinion on the matter.
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