Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
My point was that both our culture and theirs must be taken into account in any discussion of what constitutes a loss.
Completely with you on this.

Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
The successes increased when we started getting...more concerned about getting into their heads -- attacking their will...
I'm not sure I would describe it that way (as "attacking their will") but it doesn't matter; what you previously elaborated after that, I mean the disruption of networks, turning people against one another by sowing discord and so forth makes a lot of sense to me.

When I read Robb's book, it struck me that in spite of his obvious sophistication about the strengths of adaptive parallel networks, he seemed to not see (or chose not to discuss?) their weaknesses. I thought, gee this guy is such a technowonk, you'd think that metaphors of viruses, trojans, worms and spyware--the things in the IT world that exploit the vulnerabilities of such networks--would have occurred to Robb quite obviously. It seems to me that what you advanced is (metaphorically) exactly that...figuring out what the military equivalents are to such network disrupters when confronting such an enemy (if you'll forgive the singular noun here).

Be that as it may, it seems to me that actually you share my skepticism whether any observed correlation between whatever we label a tactical success and whatever we label a negotiation implies any causal relation between the two. Your skepticism seems deeper, however, in the specific case of the ME: You think any such correlation (whether it exists or not) is simply irrelevant to strategy. Would that be a fair assessment? If so, I can appreciate your view.