Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Worth considering is that you subscribe to a position that fits fairly closely with the thinking that has driven US reactions since 9/11. How is that working for us?
One of the core elements of my position is that the US should not occupy Muslim territory or try to determine the form of governance in any Muslim country. That doesn't sound like what we've been doing.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
But without insurgent populaces who are both very dissatisfied with their own systems of governance, and who equally perceive that external Western influence, money and manipulation is a major factor in why their governance is so out of step - there would be no AQ.
You keep saying this, but you provide no evidence or reasoning to support the contention. It's simply laid out as revealed truth. The problem with this is that it's not consistent with what we see on the ground. We know that populaces aren't turning to AQ for help in getting rid of their own governments because every attempt by AQ to raise an insurgency against a Muslim government has failed to draw anything close to a critical mass of popular support. What we actually see is that while Muslim populaces are happy to fund and support AQ as long as they're fighting infidels far away, that support stops as soon as AQ tries to bring the jihad to their neighborhood. Interview-based studies on foreign fighter motivations have not revealed any hint that people are traveling to fight in order to affect governance in their home countries: the motivation is consistently to end the oppression of Muslims and expel the infidel in the place where the fight is going on.

The contention that AQ s driven by populaces who oppose their own governments and believe that support for AQ will change those governments has to be supported by convincing evidence and reasoning to be accepted. It can't simply be decreed.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Getting rid of AQ without addressing that base of energy will only open the way for the emergence of "AQ 2.0."
It's good that we don't need to address the "base of energy" that comes from tension between Muslim governments and their populaces, because we can't. That's not about us and it would be self-defeating to try to impose ourselves on those situations. The governments in question do not for the most part depend on us, are not accountable to us, and will not do what we want.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Again, I cannot emphasize enough, revolution does not happen to bring something new, it happens because their is tremendous energy within a significant segment of the populace to remove something that exists and is deemed intolerable.
Possibly true, but since AQ is not a revolution and you've shown no evidence to suggest that AQ is driven by revolutionary sentiment, I don't see the relevance to AQ.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Such "successes" validate the anti-American message of organizations such as AQ, and serve to extend the reign of governments no longer wanted by their own people in their current form. It allows such governments to treat their people with impunity and to rely for their sovereignty upon the protection of the US rather than upon the consent of those they govern.
This is arguably happening Iraq and Afghanistan, where our (IMO) misguided attempts to install governments left those governments under our protection and dependent on us. That (again IMO) was a bad idea, it shouldn't have been tried and it shouldn't be done again. Other than those cases, which of course occurred after AQ was already established, I can't think of any Muslim government who relies on the US to protect it from its people, or whose oppression of its people is empowered by US support. That contention, again, needs to be supported by specific evidence and examples.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
But we can work across the DIME spectrum in a neutral way in those few places that are actually critical to our interests to force governments to listen and to help keep violence (state or insurgent) within the bounds of clear red lines.
How do you propose to "force governments to listen"? Even if you could, how do you force them to hear what you think you hear, or react as you think they should?

I seem to recall that not long ago the US told the government of Bahrain to listen to its people and implement reforms. I also recall that all we accomplished was to look impotent: they ignored us. I think you overrate the influence we can bring to bear.