Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
Well sh..t,where do I start. Bob's World, What causes the cause? A person, and a person always has a motive. Until you understand that you can not prepare a Strategy to succeed. Not only that but you must have a good counter-motive to gain support for your side of things. So your objective should be to de-motivate the insurgency population(focus on their leadership). From there you can look for opportunities and select your methods. And Security Force Operations would have to play a big part in that in order to allow some type of civilized transition.
Ok, what do I mean by that? I think one good example lies within the American Revolution. Arguably one could state that "The Cause" was independence from England.

But what caused this diverse collection of colonies to unite to this common and dangerous end? Certainly there were motivating factors, such as the works of Thomas Paine, or the events in the Massachusetts Colony. But before that, what factors of causation were at work that allowed such words and actions to move a collection of individual people, and individual colonies to move as a body to throw off British rule?

I believe there are many sources of causation. One major one in this case was the simple fact that British citizens who lived in England looked down upon British citizens who lived in the colonies as somehow inferior. From what I have read this was taken as (if anyone would have even thought to ask) "of course they are inferior!" in England. But in the colonies, be it a man of means, education, and accomplishment like George Washington, denied admission to the British Regular Army due to his "status"; or a simple farmer, owning and working a plot of land that may well have qualified him for some minor title back in England; saw this as an outrage. And upon such festering sores of causation fell the cold slaps of motivation. And an insurgency is born. First of words, and then of works.

England did not need to send the most powerful Navy and Army in the world to solve this problem. A simple letter of apology and recognition of full righths of citizenship from the King would have nipped it in the bud.

But then, Kings don't do that, do they. Wouldn't be proper.