Do working men rebel? A call for papers.

[MikeF]

My inner math geekiness gets excited when I see quantitative analysis that is derived from good data sets. I wrote too much initially.

Here's the bottom line:

COL Felter and some academics found a negative correlation in Iraq and the Phillipines between employment and violence. Over time, as employment increased, violence increased.

This is counter-intuitive to what we now think. GEN Charialli and the 1st CAV had "success" in Sadr City in 04/05 by getting the young men off the streets and employed. GEN Patraeus told us in 07 that money is a weapon. The academics analysis suggest otherwise. The real answer is probably sometimes, it depends.

What they need now is for practisioners to confirm/deny their hypothesis with anecdotal evidence. After that, they can start using econometrics and qualitative work to ask why it works in some areas and why it does not work in others (as Rex and Marc are suggesting).

So the question is

In your experience, did the level of violence increase/decrease as we flooded an AO with money and the men were employed?

Marc- I refuse to watch Glee .

Mike

[marct]

Mike, just so you don't have to get the data later, it would be a really, REALLY, good idea to get any anecdotal evidence discretely located in both space and time (e.g. "Tikrit, Aug 2006" vs "Iraq"). That will let you start working out the local cultural variables that give rise to the negative correlation. BTW, I find it perfectly intuitive - then again, I live in a government town !

[Schmedlap]

More work = more violence? That seems neither intuitive nor counterintuitive to me. There is a reason that we refer to certain shootings as "going postal" rather than "going unemployed." Lots of people hate their jobs.

I would assert that a welfare state that functions well (by "well" I mean that it efficiently churns out the welfare benefits) stands a good chance of experiencing very little violence because people are getting a large part of their income for little more than filling out paperwork and demonstrating need and/or helplessness, real or faked.

I would also assert that a relatively wealthy society with a non-existent welfare apparatus could quite easily turn violent if a large portion of the population is poor (low income and/or few assets) because the sense of inequality and rejection, merited or not, will rile people up or make them prone to being riled up by agitators.

I think there are a lot of other factors besides income. Are people upset? Do they blame the gov't? Do they feel threatened (by an ethnic group gaining power, an ideology gaining power, laws changing significantly, etc)? You can have a high-paying job, be angry about something unrelated to income/assets, and blame the gov't. Consider how many rich comfortable people hate(d) GW Bush and were willing to cough up cash to defeat him and, when that failed in '04, were willing to cough up cash to defeat McCain simply because he was successfully portrayed as Bush II. Grievances can come from anywhere. While they are often real or legitimate, they need not be.

[Cavguy]

I'm inclined to agree with your thesis. Jobs never really seemed to dampen the insurgency in my limited experiences. Security did, combined with legitimate local government.

Kind of confirms Moyar's thesis that the real problem is in grievance against the govt/system .... which is a problem of leadership.

And means we're in deep doo-doo in Afghanistan.

[tequila]

I would assert that a welfare state that functions well (by "well" I mean that it efficiently churns out the welfare benefits) stands a good chance of experiencing very little violence because people are getting a large part of their income for little more than filling out paperwork and demonstrating need and/or helplessness, real or faked.

I'd flip your analysis on its head. A welfare state that functions efficiently already assumes several major social stabilizers are in place: (1) commands enough resources to distribute (2) has data and control over enough population to distribute welfare goods (3) has the bureaucratic mechanisms and social players to both extract and distribute such goods.

Kind of confirms Moyar's thesis that the real problem is in grievance against the govt/system .... which is a problem of leadership.

I don't think that's leadership. That's politics.

[MikeF]

There is a reason that we refer to certain shootings as "going postal" rather than "going unemployed." Lots of people hate their jobs.

Very good point.

Cavguy said:

And means we're in deep doo-doo in Afghanistan.

Not necessarily. All this analysis is showing is that throwing money at the problem doesn't work. Rex's example of Palestine-Israel is probably the best case in point. I always scratched my head when guys boast over how much CERP/Reconstruction money they spent during their tour. My point was so what? What is the effect or return on investment?

That's the benefit of what some scholars are now doing. They're using available data to test our assumptions and COIN strategies to find out what works and what doesn't work and why.

Here's some things that do work, and it partially goes back to the saying "time heals all wounds."

1. Conflict Resolution. The marraige counselor of small wars- neutral mediator attempts to help competing factions resolve differences. If no resolution is found, then groups may have to be seperated (Bosnia/Serbia).

2. Forgiveness. I listened to a discussion on NPR about how Rwandans opened up a public forum for former fighters to apologize for atrocities. Apparently, it's working.

3. Increase of violence by the host nation/COIN to establish control. This works in the short term as we know from Iraq (Population control measures, lowered targeting criteria, curfews, food/service restrictions, etc), but the long-term effectiveness is in doubt if not coupled with other measures.

4. Micro-Financing. Initially started by Mohammed Yunnis on the village level and taken globally with internet sites like Ashoka.org, these organizations attempt to fundamentally change societies through vetted, targeted development.

Mike

[Fuchs]

COL Felter and some academics found a negative correlation in Iraq and the Phillipines between employment and violence. Over time, as employment increased, violence increased.

This is counter-intuitive to what we now think. GEN Charialli and the 1st CAV had "success" in Sadr City in 04/05 by getting the young men off the streets and employed. GEN Patraeus told us in 07 that money is a weapon. The academics analysis suggest otherwise. The real answer is probably sometimes, it depends.

A statistician would likely call it simply "empirically unrelated".

[Meh]

Surely whether working men rebel is primarily related to whether they're getting laid. Now that is scientific fact. There's no real evidence for it; but it is scientific fact.

[Adam L]

Surely whether working men rebel is primarily related to whether they're getting laid. Now that is scientific fact. There's no real evidence for it; but it is scientific fact.

That is entirely true. I don't know if we men would do much of anything without the sexual motivation. That is with the obvious exclusion of violent acts which we will commit to get laid, or because we are not getting laid. Perhaps we should initiate sex-centric counter insurgency operations. I'm trying to reverse engineer an operational acronym. So far I have: Sex Centric Human Tactical Optimized Orgasm Program, or "SCHTOOP."

I remember a few years ago when CNN was covering how the most popular pharmaceuticals in Iraq were Prozac and Viagra. Perhaps we missed something.

Adam L

[jcustis]

That is entirely true. I don't know if we men would do much of anything without the sexual motivation. That is with the obvious exclusion of violent acts which we will commit to get laid, or because we are not getting laid. Perhaps we should initiate sex-centric counter insurgency operations. I'm trying to reverse engineer an operational acronym. So far I have: Sex Centric Human Tactical Optimized Orgasm Program, or "SCHTOOP."

I remember a few years ago when CNN was covering how the most popular pharmaceuticals in Iraq were Prozac and Viagra. Perhaps we missed something.

Adam L

It's interesting that this point comes up. I had a conversation with a special operations civil affairs soldier who was supporting a NSW team. He told the tale of doing well at one key leader engagement with a small sheik because they spent several hours talking about nothing but porn, sex, and the shiek's exploits.

[slapout9]

It's interesting that this point comes up. I had a conversation with a special operations civil affairs soldier who was supporting a NSW team. He told the tale of doing well at one key leader engagement with a small sheik because they spent several hours talking about nothing but porn, sex, and the shiek's exploits.

I'm telling you the fourth F is the key to victory

[Adam L]

It's interesting that this point comes up. I had a conversation with a special operations civil affairs soldier who was supporting a NSW team. He told the tale of doing well at one key leader engagement with a small sheik because they spent several hours talking about nothing but porn, sex, and the shiek's exploits.

There are two universal cross-cultural constants. The first is porn, and the second is The Rolling Stones.

Adam L

[MikeF]

It's interesting that this point comes up. I had a conversation with a special operations civil affairs soldier who was supporting a NSW team. He told the tale of doing well at one key leader engagement with a small sheik because they spent several hours talking about nothing but porn, sex, and the shiek's exploits.

It's very interesting that he brought this point up. My unit caught one bomb-maker, and outside of the bomb-making dvds we found, we found substational amounts of American and home-made deviant porn.

Also, Sayid Qutb supposedly had some issues with sex.

I've always wondered if that was a causal variable. Kinda hard to prove. It's like trying to figure out how many men are employed by a gang or insurgent group. Can you imagine a survey officer walking around asking,

"Excuse me, my records show that you are currently unemployed. Are you gainfully employed by al Qaeda?" Probably wouldn't go over very well.

Mike

[Meh]

I should also note that how often one frequents and posts on message boards is inversely related to how often one gets laid. Now that's scientific fact....etc.