Marc, you made a great point about today's enemy being tomorrow's ally. That immediately prompted me to think about WWII, where we as a nation (or coalition) demonized the Japanese and Germans (not without good reason), yet in a very short time span after the war we seemed to embrace them as strong allies against communism. Does that mean government generated fear can be turned on and off almost as quickly as a light switch? We used fear to mobilize our population to fight, but then what emotion or logic did we use to turn that fear off and generate the support to spend a substantial amount of money to rebuild those countries? Was it that communism was seen as a greater fear; thus the lesser of two evils? Or were the Germans and Japanese simply seen as defeated and we're a compassionate and forgiving people? Let's face it, the Germans and Japanese behavior during WWII was much more evil than anything AQ has done to date, yet it was very quickly forgotten (or perhaps not well understood).

The military in a counterinsurgency has always used fear, it is the stick in carrots and sticks. It can consist of curfews, turning off electric power to certain troubled areas, etc., but in general our form of coercion is very gentle compared to the likes of Saddam and Stalin and Hitler, thus much less effective.

Another way to use fear, as discussed in the article is convince the afflicted population that if the enemy wins, this is the life style that you and your family will be forced to endure. You would think that even our I/O forces could paint a picture for the audience, since they can borrow AQ's own propaganda, but show it in a different light. I know I'm using western logic, but I think in many cases, especially Iraq, we would be the considered the lesser fear, or evil, if we could effectively convey this message. I think that is happening anyway, despite our inept I/O work.

In general terms I think in a counterinsurgency we need to focus on exploiting existing fears that the population is experiencing to mobilize them to support our efforts. It is shocking that we failed to do this in Afghanistan, when not too many years ago the people there lived under a brutal Taliban regime. Are we really that inept, or is there something else going on there we're missing?