So, when in quick sand, struggle harder?
When in a rip current, swim faster?
When in a hole, dig deeper?
I prefer to subscribe to "If something isn't working, try something else." Coupled with the belief that usually when a guy thinks all his problems are someone elses fault, he is delusional.
Our current foreign policy is suffering from just such delusion. We are so sure of our goodness, our rightness, that we assume that any who dare to reject or resist what we offer or impose upon them to be "threats." They are either with us or against us, right?
I will completely agree that AQ has no populace. I repeat, AQ has no populace. They are a non-state political organization that is conducting a global unconventional warfare campaign. They target and leverage the insurgent populaces of other nations with common grievances to provide the manpower and funding to make their movement work.
You ask:
"Where and when in this conflict have we been attacked by an insurgent populace resisting a Western-supported regime? "
The first World Trade Center attack; the USS Cole, the Embassy bombings, 9/11; all of the foreign figher attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan; etc, etc, etc.
To make matters worse, the despotic governments that these insurgencies are struggling to affect now come to the US with hat in hand as great allies, and ask for money and weapons to use against their own people in the name of "combatting terrorism;" and we laud them as great allies...
We are being played, and we allow ourselves to be played because we fear the economic impact that breaking relations with these countries could cause to our economy. Ironic. Supporting them has trashed our economy even worse that what we feared would happen if we did not support them.
What I fear more than terrorism; what I fear more than the economic disruption that could come from damaged relations with Saudi Arabia, et. al; what I fear as we pursue these fear-driven policies; is that we are doing irrepairable damage to the reputation of the United States of America. That we standing up more for those who oppress more than for those who are oppressed. That we are becoming far less the country we see ourselves as, and becoming the type of country that we have always stood against.
It is time to face our fears and to get our country back on track; and no amount of military effort against the populaces of others will get us anywhere but deeper into the darkness that we fear.
As to having the capacity to "fix" Yemen. Not our job. We don't need to fix these guys, we need to give them some tough love and stop supporting their destructive behavior and demand that they either begin addressing the concerns of their popualces with our help, or ignore them and deal with the results on their own.
The "Good Cold Warriors" in DC think they have this figured out, but they are destroying us by clinging to relationships and methods that just don't bear up to the current age. We must evolve if we want to prevail.
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