Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
I suspect that AQI is more of an agent provacateur in the mold of the COMINTERN I mentioned above. I further suspect that a better role for the US would be to try to keep the agents provacateur out of the fracas as best we can while simultaneously doing what we can to allow the civil war to work itself out as non-violently as possible. I view this, by the way, as an alternative somewhere between Steve Metz' two choices. It is one that I think even Ed Luttwak might sanction. I say this because Luttwak has been known to say: "Just let them duke it out and to the winner goes the spoils" (my gisting, not his words).
I couldn't agree more about the long -term. The duking it out is happening and always will but we are the one outside influencer which may have the possibility of reducing the amount of collateral damage once it's all said and done.

This might be one reason for greater involvement of partner states being an important piece. The overall perceptions will always expand and contract to include/exclude anything which takes place in direct correlation with the perspective of the audience. Does this however really ever change the basic fact that in the end to the winner go the spoils.

Is the question really about how to win it so much as who should win it, and in relation to that; who should/does decide the winner