Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
I guessed as much. (That's why I didn't dig up the precise quote.)
Prescient .

However, in getting to that, you forgot this exchange:
Stability is not the key activity...
"Of (sic) course it's not. It's not even an activity -- it's a goal. operations of VARIOUS types are conducted to attain that goal."

That's really the issue, is it not?
I have a theory as to why that is strategically irrelevant. If I'm ever able to articulate it, I'd be honored if you would attack it.
The whole Viet Nam war was strategically irrelevant so I'm likely to agree with you rather than attack your theory.
People are people. You can make people put their guns down...
No you can't -- you can make them hide them and use them rarely but enough will cheat that you'll always have a problem.
... It happens all the time.
It does? Name me a place where it's been truly successful.
The crazy ones might not, but we have more bullets than they have crazy people. The trick is to make sure that the angry people don't follow the crazy ones.
Shoot too many crazy ones who are cousins of angry ones in the ME and wathc what happens.
Making them put down their guns is the first step. Then you give them a decade or three to work out their anger because like you said before, as long as there is shooting, the number of angry people is going to grow.
What if you do not have three decades or even one?
In a nutshell, I think that if you map out what we consider acceptable and what all the various parties in Iraq consider acceptable there is no place where all the parties overlap: no solution that is acceptable to everyone.
Well, of course not. That's always true of any situation from Iraq to social security to where my wife and I went for dinner to who the nominees for Prez will be. The key point is that the solution is acceptable to most and is flexible enough to minimally irk those who object. Will we get there? Don't know, I think probably so but it isn't over yet.
Again, I hope to articulate this more coherently in the future.
Looking forward to it.
As I understand the theory, you force the population to choose sides. What happens if they choose the bad guys is left unsaid, but fairly obvious.
That's the trouble with theories. It never seems to occur to the theorists that people have choices and may not adhere to either side. I'd submit they generally will not. It is absolutely stupid to force people to 'be with us or against us.' That's true internationally and locally. If it was wrong for W. to say that to the world, why would it be right to say it a nation full of people? Dumbb -- with two 'b's.

It's wrong in an insurgency -- as I said, most of the population will just want both sides to go away and leave them alone. The goal should be to make the other side go away so you can go away and leave the folks happily alone. Any other course is doomed to failure at worst and to have massive problems at best.

As an aside, re: your other comment:
"Ron, apparently we rounded up a bunch of Arabs after 911 without warrants, so I guess you can say that domestically we have perceived the need to control certain elements of the population and have done so."
You do realize we and most of the world have locked people up under those circumstances for centuries -- and will almost certainly continue to do so. I think it's a human, protect the organism thing...

I'd also suggest that, per your weapon and population control idea -- we probably got a few that needed getting, almost certainly got a bunch that did not need to be gotten -- and missed a bunch we should have gotten.

Theories and Gurus sorta stumble when reality crunches.