Studies on radicalization & comments

[Dayuhan]

Dayuhan. I know we see this from differing perspectives

No, really? Ah hadn't noticed...

Yes, I know we keep coming back to it, but it's an issue at the core of how we're trying to handle the current mess, and I'm not quite willing to let it go.

The idea that foreign fighters represent an insurgent populace at home is something that needs to be examined, and I'm not convinced that it stands up to examination. After all, an abundance of foreign fighters flocked to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets... were they also representatives of an insurgent populace? Fighting the Russians in Afghanistan seems an odd way of expressing discontent with American influence over the homeland. I'm not sure quite why you would say that foreign fighters indicate insurgency on the home front, rather than a relatively small number of young men driven by a potent mix of testosterone, religious fervor, and lack of anything better to do at home... a mix that has sent young men off to fight in wars of dubious purpose many times in the past (the Crusades might be cited as an example).

I agree with Bill, who said what I was trying to say in a good deal fewer words:

It is imperial hubris for us to attempt to “push” our values upon another country. What you see as illegitimate governments may in fact be legitimate in the eyes of the majority of their population. Just because a few thousand radicals who want to impose Shari’a law upon their fellow men are dissatisfied doesn’t equate to a popular revolt.

Regarding this...

(2) Also specficially address any nation considered an "Ally" or receiveing U.S foreign aid that is also listed as a major human rights violater and is possessed of a populace that is a major provider of AQ foreign fighters / terrorists. Include a plan that cuts aid to each of those countries by 50% per year until such time as they open negotiations with their own populaces to identify and address concerns; as well as to create mechanisms, logical and acceptable to them, to provide a reasonable and certain procedure for the populace to affect changes of governance short of insurgency.

In the case of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, this of course gets us exactly nowhere, because we don't give them any aid and they are not in any way dependent on us. Even if we had leverage, though... how do you think the populace of, say, Saudi Arabia would react if we demanded or even suggested that the Saudis need "a reasonable and certain procedure for the populace to affect changes of governance". I wouldn't expect any appreciation or gratitude. I'd expect them to tell us to mind our own damned business, amid a great deal of suspicion that our intention is to use that mechanism in some devious way to insert of Government that will be subject to our control, a suspicion that AQ will be all to eager to promote and exploit. AQ, after all, is agitating for more despotism, not less.

Whatever our actual intentions, I suspect that the policy you suggest will be perceived, even among its intended beneficiaries, as arrogant imposition, self-interested meddling, or both.

The notion of "dialogue with the populace" is I think hopelessly simplistic. Many of these populaces are extremely fractured and factionalized, and there is nothing even resembling consensus on who speaks for the populace or what policies are desired. What one faction sees as an irreducible minimum demand may be seen by another as an intolerable provocation. The problem in many cases is not that there is no dialogue, but that the dialogue has devolved into a screaming match, or a shootout.

You mentioned Algeria and Yemen... Algeria has an elected National Assembly with over 20 political parties represented. Yemen has what on paper appears to be a quite admirable set of democratic institutions. Of course these institutions don't work the way anyone would want them to. Your suggestion seems to assume that the Governments in question have the capacity to make things work, but don't choose to do it, and that we can force them to make things work by threatening to reduce aid. I doubt that's going to work, because the sad reality is that they have no idea how to make things work, and neither do we.

In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states I really don't think there's any major popular demand for a mechanism to remove and replace Governments. These are very conservative countries, and there is a pervading fear that establishing such a mechanism would generate intense competition for position, and the result would be chaos. For better or worse, many in that part of the world fear chaos more than they fear despotism.

Certainly there was much discontent in SA during the 90s, driven by the combination of the oil glut and the highly visible US military presence. In many eyes these two phenomena were related: just as Americans tend to blame high oil prices as a conspiracy driven by the Saudis and the oil companies, Saudis tend to blame low oil prices on a conspiracy between Americans and oil companies. Despite prodigious efforts to exploit that discontent, UBL et al were never able to generate anywhere nearly enough support to drive an insurgency. Today the narrative of resentment from those days has dissolved almost completely under a rain of dollars: it's amazing what sloshing a few hundred billion around will do to mellow out a disgruntled populace.

I think it's dangerous to assume that AQ's attacks on us were a reactive phenomenon that was driven by our policies and can be undercut by a change in our policies, and that if we follow that assumption we can easily spend a great deal of effort in policies and actions that are not productive and may be counterproductive.

[Ken White]

The notion of "dialogue with the populace" is I think hopelessly simplistic. Many of these populaces are extremely fractured and factionalized, and there is nothing even resembling consensus on who speaks for the populace or what policies are desired...
. . .
I think it's dangerous to assume that AQ's attacks on us were a reactive phenomenon that was driven by our policies and can be undercut by a change in our policies, and that if we follow that assumption we can easily spend a great deal of effort in policies and actions that are not productive and may be counterproductive.

Two very important truths...

There may be one out there but I know of no nation where the population is monolithic as implied. Not Norway, not Singapore. Not even the Vatican...

As for AQ and a number of other "they hate us for what we are /were/ did..." That's very fallacious thinking. A lot of quite counterproductive effort is undertaken due to standing broad jumps at wrong conclusions...

[Bob's World]

No, really? Ah hadn't noticed...

Yes, I know we keep coming back to it, but it's an issue at the core of how we're trying to handle the current mess, and I'm not quite willing to let it go.

The idea that foreign fighters represent an insurgent populace at home is something that needs to be examined, and I'm not convinced that it stands up to examination. After all, an abundance of foreign fighters flocked to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets... were they also representatives of an insurgent populace? Fighting the Russians in Afghanistan seems an odd way of expressing discontent with American influence over the homeland. I'm not sure quite why you would say that foreign fighters indicate insurgency on the home front, rather than a relatively small number of young men driven by a potent mix of testosterone, religious fervor, and lack of anything better to do at home... a mix that has sent young men off to fight in wars of dubious purpose many times in the past (the Crusades might be cited as an example).

I agree with Bill, who said what I was trying to say in a good deal fewer words:



Regarding this...



In the case of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, this of course gets us exactly nowhere, because we don't give them any aid and they are not in any way dependent on us. Even if we had leverage, though... how do you think the populace of, say, Saudi Arabia would react if we demanded or even suggested that the Saudis need "a reasonable and certain procedure for the populace to affect changes of governance". I wouldn't expect any appreciation or gratitude. I'd expect them to tell us to mind our own damned business, amid a great deal of suspicion that our intention is to use that mechanism in some devious way to insert of Government that will be subject to our control, a suspicion that AQ will be all to eager to promote and exploit. AQ, after all, is agitating for more despotism, not less.

Whatever our actual intentions, I suspect that the policy you suggest will be perceived, even among its intended beneficiaries, as arrogant imposition, self-interested meddling, or both.

The notion of "dialogue with the populace" is I think hopelessly simplistic. Many of these populaces are extremely fractured and factionalized, and there is nothing even resembling consensus on who speaks for the populace or what policies are desired. What one faction sees as an irreducible minimum demand may be seen by another as an intolerable provocation. The problem in many cases is not that there is no dialogue, but that the dialogue has devolved into a screaming match, or a shootout.

You mentioned Algeria and Yemen... Algeria has an elected National Assembly with over 20 political parties represented. Yemen has what on paper appears to be a quite admirable set of democratic institutions. Of course these institutions don't work the way anyone would want them to. Your suggestion seems to assume that the Governments in question have the capacity to make things work, but don't choose to do it, and that we can force them to make things work by threatening to reduce aid. I doubt that's going to work, because the sad reality is that they have no idea how to make things work, and neither do we.

In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states I really don't think there's any major popular demand for a mechanism to remove and replace Governments. These are very conservative countries, and there is a pervading fear that establishing such a mechanism would generate intense competition for position, and the result would be chaos. For better or worse, many in that part of the world fear chaos more than they fear despotism.

Certainly there was much discontent in SA during the 90s, driven by the combination of the oil glut and the highly visible US military presence. In many eyes these two phenomena were related: just as Americans tend to blame high oil prices as a conspiracy driven by the Saudis and the oil companies, Saudis tend to blame low oil prices on a conspiracy between Americans and oil companies. Despite prodigious efforts to exploit that discontent, UBL et al were never able to generate anywhere nearly enough support to drive an insurgency. Today the narrative of resentment from those days has dissolved almost completely under a rain of dollars: it's amazing what sloshing a few hundred billion around will do to mellow out a disgruntled populace.

I think it's dangerous to assume that AQ's attacks on us were a reactive phenomenon that was driven by our policies and can be undercut by a change in our policies, and that if we follow that assumption we can easily spend a great deal of effort in policies and actions that are not productive and may be counterproductive.

But as the airwaves and print are full of the same steady drum beat of a majority opinion that has us 8 years into a war, and strategcially worse off and an economy in tatters and a national reputation at arguably an all time low to show for it.

I could be wrong, its theory and I have no metrics to prove my case.

There are strong metrics however that the majority opinion is wrong.

(Oh, and 5 minutes of google research on foreign fighers and and insurgent movements will show you the clear connections that I speak to. And I have NEVER, EVER said we should impose our values on others, quite the contrary. In fact, I beat a steady drum that we need to stop the hubris, and stop trying to control every outcome, and to help enable populaces everywhere to enjoy their own self-determination, and that in so doing we will turn down the heat on a global security environment.)

[Dayuhan]

But as the airwaves and print are full of the same steady drum beat of a majority opinion that has us 8 years into a war, and strategcially worse off and an economy in tatters and a national reputation at arguably an all time low to show for it.

I could be wrong, its theory and I have no metrics to prove my case.

There are strong metrics however that the majority opinion is wrong.

There are certainly strong metrics to suggest that current strategy is misguided... though the relationship between "GWOT" strategy and our economic issues is pretty tenuous. I'm not convinced that this strategy is built around a majority opinion on radicalization, though: it seems to me to have derived more from a poorly considered backlash after 9/11, an impulse that was exploited by a relative minority who had long believed that US military force could be used to reshape the Middle East.

It seems to me that the fundamental flaw in current strategy was inaccurate assessment of capacity: we believed we could do things that we did not in fact have the capacity to do. We believed that we could remove governments, and we were right. We believed that we could quickly replace those governments with fully functioning alternatives that would be accepted by the various populaces involved, and we were wrong. We also significantly underestimated our antagonist's capacity to muster opposition to our operations in the countries involved.

It seems to me that your proposal suffers from many of the same problems. You suggest that we can use the threat of withholding aid to move countries to govern better, satisfy their own populaces, and reduce the motivation for insurgencies that target both host nations and the US. For this to even be possible, 4 conditions have to be met:

First, there has to be a government: we can't press a government to reform if there isn't one. Won't work in Somalia or in the various ungoverned spaces in our target areas.

Second the government has to have the capacity to implement the reforms we want. If a government lacks the capacity to perform, pressing it to reform is like threatening to stop feeding a paraplegic who refuses to walk: all you get is starvation. Misgovernment is not always a consequence of willful neglect or exploitation by despots. It also happens when a weak or ineffectual central government is unable to control exploitive or abusive local clans, tribes, power brokers, military units, or other elements of a factionalized populace. I think you'd find that these conditions apply in a number of our target countries.

Third, the government in question has to be dependent on US aid. Many of the countries involved are not. The insurgency in southern Thailand, for example, could certainly be resolved with reform, but the government does not rely on US aid and the threat of withholding aid is not likely to have any effect. We might want to influence the Saudis but we can't do it by withholding aid, because they don't get any aid from us, nor are they in any way dependent on us. Libya, Kuwait, Syria and Sudan are not on our aid list.

Fourth, we have to apply pressure in a way that is not going to provoke a backlash against us. As I've said before, many countries are extremely sensitive to anything that could be perceived as American interference in domestic affairs, and our efforts are likely to be interpreted as self-interested meddling. Populaces are anything but uniform, and substantial parts of any given populace may see our pressure as an unwelcome threat. A country where a portion of the populace opposes the government may also have a portion of the populace that supports the government and resents are pressure. We've recently seen this problem in action: the US put its weight behind a fatally flawed "peace agreement" in the southern Philippines that was supposed to placate one restive segment of the populace, totally failing to anticipate the response of another segment of the populace. Good intentions are not necessarily interpreted as such by the intended beneficiaries. The road to hell, they say, is paved with 'em.

(Oh, and 5 minutes of google research on foreign fighers and and insurgent movements will show you the clear connections that I speak to.

After rather more than that, I don't see a connection. Correlation, perhaps, but no solid evidence of causation, and even the correlation is tenuous. Looking here:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...p/49-watts.pdf

Ranking by foreign fighter intensity (fighters/100k Muslims) we see that by far the most intense sources of fighters are Libya and Saudi Arabia. Both countries face internal dissent, but in neither case has it reached a level that could credibly called insurgency. The Libyan government is hardly a creation or a tool of the US, and since neither country receives aid from the US it isn't likely that we can change their policies by withholding aid. In Saudi Arabia in particular any suggestion that we are applying pressure toward a move away from monarchy would almost certainly inspire far more resistance than sympathy among the populace.

Next down the list we have Yemen. Substantial US aid, but it's very doubtful that the government has the capacity to initiate significant reform, and the most probable consequence of aid withdrawal is a collapse into full ungoverned-space status. Not a desirable outcome.

Then we have Kuwait, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan... Kuwait and Syria aren't getting aid from us, no leverage there. Tunisia and Jordan, possibly, but now we're getting into environments where the number of foreign fighters is really pretty small and unlikely to be significantly influenced by the policies suggested.

On top of all of this, where is the compelling evidence that foreign fighters are part of a populace driven to insurgency by misgovernment? Experience shows us that religious or ideological fervor, personal discontent, and testosterone can drive some individuals to violence in virtually any governance environment. There's a significant difference between distributed discontent and insurgency.

And I have NEVER, EVER said we should impose our values on others, quite the contrary. In fact, I beat a steady drum that we need to stop the hubris, and stop trying to control every outcome, and to help enable populaces everywhere to enjoy their own self-determination, and that in so doing we will turn down the heat on a global security environment.)

Isn't self-determination one of our core values? Aren't we assuming that populaces want structures that allow for regular changes in government? Don't we tend to let our definitions of these values guide our evaluations of governance in other countries?

Suppose we have a country where .05% of the population is radically disaffected and willing to use violence to express its disaffection, 30% are substantially discontent, may provide indirect support to violence but not participate, and the balance have some gripes but aren't all that opposed to the status quo. Are we going to come in and demand changes that may not satisfy even those who are angry... and who may want to see changes very different from those we are trying to promote?

Certainly the desire to control can cause problems, but it's not the only cause. For much of the 1990s, when our current problems were brewing, our policies seemed driven less by a desire to control than by a desire to deny and ignore.

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to Leah Farrell on .... .This could drop into the Yemen thread, but sits better here, even if a short article and a pointer to a short clip from the film:

Starts with:

The Oath," a documentary by filmmaker Laura Poitras, opens a window into the world of al-Qaida, Osama Bin Laden, the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the image of the United States in Yemen. (Ends with). Poitras does not take sides. She says she tells it like it is. Her documentary "The Oath," links al-Qaida's growth in Yemen to anger at U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and to the controversial detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

[davidbfpo]

An interesting angle on radicalisation in Pakistan entitled 'Frustrated Strivers in Pakistan Turn to Jihad':http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/wo...8youth.html?hp

[Bob's World]

There are certainly strong metrics to suggest that current strategy is misguided... though the relationship between "GWOT" strategy and our economic issues is pretty tenuous. I'm not convinced that this strategy is built around a majority opinion on radicalization, though: it seems to me to have derived more from a poorly considered backlash after 9/11, an impulse that was exploited by a relative minority who had long believed that US military force could be used to reshape the Middle East.

It seems to me that the fundamental flaw in current strategy was inaccurate assessment of capacity: we believed we could do things that we did not in fact have the capacity to do. We believed that we could remove governments, and we were right. We believed that we could quickly replace those governments with fully functioning alternatives that would be accepted by the various populaces involved, and we were wrong. We also significantly underestimated our antagonist's capacity to muster opposition to our operations in the countries involved.

It seems to me that your proposal suffers from many of the same problems. You suggest that we can use the threat of withholding aid to move countries to govern better, satisfy their own populaces, and reduce the motivation for insurgencies that target both host nations and the US. For this to even be possible, 4 conditions have to be met:

First, there has to be a government: we can't press a government to reform if there isn't one. Won't work in Somalia or in the various ungoverned spaces in our target areas.

Second the government has to have the capacity to implement the reforms we want. If a government lacks the capacity to perform, pressing it to reform is like threatening to stop feeding a paraplegic who refuses to walk: all you get is starvation. Misgovernment is not always a consequence of willful neglect or exploitation by despots. It also happens when a weak or ineffectual central government is unable to control exploitive or abusive local clans, tribes, power brokers, military units, or other elements of a factionalized populace. I think you'd find that these conditions apply in a number of our target countries.

Third, the government in question has to be dependent on US aid. Many of the countries involved are not. The insurgency in southern Thailand, for example, could certainly be resolved with reform, but the government does not rely on US aid and the threat of withholding aid is not likely to have any effect. We might want to influence the Saudis but we can't do it by withholding aid, because they don't get any aid from us, nor are they in any way dependent on us. Libya, Kuwait, Syria and Sudan are not on our aid list.

Fourth, we have to apply pressure in a way that is not going to provoke a backlash against us. As I've said before, many countries are extremely sensitive to anything that could be perceived as American interference in domestic affairs, and our efforts are likely to be interpreted as self-interested meddling. Populaces are anything but uniform, and substantial parts of any given populace may see our pressure as an unwelcome threat. A country where a portion of the populace opposes the government may also have a portion of the populace that supports the government and resents are pressure. We've recently seen this problem in action: the US put its weight behind a fatally flawed "peace agreement" in the southern Philippines that was supposed to placate one restive segment of the populace, totally failing to anticipate the response of another segment of the populace. Good intentions are not necessarily interpreted as such by the intended beneficiaries. The road to hell, they say, is paved with 'em.



After rather more than that, I don't see a connection. Correlation, perhaps, but no solid evidence of causation, and even the correlation is tenuous. Looking here:

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...p/49-watts.pdf

Ranking by foreign fighter intensity (fighters/100k Muslims) we see that by far the most intense sources of fighters are Libya and Saudi Arabia. Both countries face internal dissent, but in neither case has it reached a level that could credibly called insurgency. The Libyan government is hardly a creation or a tool of the US, and since neither country receives aid from the US it isn't likely that we can change their policies by withholding aid. In Saudi Arabia in particular any suggestion that we are applying pressure toward a move away from monarchy would almost certainly inspire far more resistance than sympathy among the populace.

Next down the list we have Yemen. Substantial US aid, but it's very doubtful that the government has the capacity to initiate significant reform, and the most probable consequence of aid withdrawal is a collapse into full ungoverned-space status. Not a desirable outcome.

Then we have Kuwait, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan... Kuwait and Syria aren't getting aid from us, no leverage there. Tunisia and Jordan, possibly, but now we're getting into environments where the number of foreign fighters is really pretty small and unlikely to be significantly influenced by the policies suggested.

On top of all of this, where is the compelling evidence that foreign fighters are part of a populace driven to insurgency by misgovernment? Experience shows us that religious or ideological fervor, personal discontent, and testosterone can drive some individuals to violence in virtually any governance environment. There's a significant difference between distributed discontent and insurgency.



Isn't self-determination one of our core values? Aren't we assuming that populaces want structures that allow for regular changes in government? Don't we tend to let our definitions of these values guide our evaluations of governance in other countries?

Suppose we have a country where .05% of the population is radically disaffected and willing to use violence to express its disaffection, 30% are substantially discontent, may provide indirect support to violence but not participate, and the balance have some gripes but aren't all that opposed to the status quo. Are we going to come in and demand changes that may not satisfy even those who are angry... and who may want to see changes very different from those we are trying to promote?

Certainly the desire to control can cause problems, but it's not the only cause. For much of the 1990s, when our current problems were brewing, our policies seemed driven less by a desire to control than by a desire to deny and ignore.

Self-Determination is the ultimate form of Democracy, even if a populace chooses for itself complete dictatorship. The point being that the populace, through processes that they see as legitimate in their culture, chooses the form and make-up of government that THEY desire. This means free from outside shaping and manipulation.

If the US still stood for the principles we claim so boldly to stand for, we would have embraced Hamas when chosen by the people of Palestine. But instead we rejected them because WE didn't like them. Hypocrisy.

Whatever a populace believes is right for them is "self-determination." Tell me the populace, tell me the culture, that believes that it is better if some foreign body shapes their governance instead?? Is this American? Only so far as America is one country with the stones to put such bold empowering words into law. But the human principle is universal.

[M-A Lagrange]

Self-Determination is the ultimate form of Democracy, even if a populace chooses for itself complete dictatorship. The point being that the populace, through processes that they see as legitimate in their culture, chooses the form and make-up of government that THEY desire. This means free from outside shaping and manipulation.

If the US still stood for the principles we claim so boldly to stand for, we would have embraced Hamas when chosen by the people of Palestine. But instead we rejected them because WE didn't like them. Hypocrisy.

Whatever a populace believes is right for them is "self-determination." Tell me the populace, tell me the culture, that believes that it is better if some foreign body shapes their governance instead?? Is this American? Only so far as America is one country with the stones to put such bold empowering words into law. But the human principle is universal.

Bob,

You are absolutly right and that is why none of the liberation wars were won by the colonial forces, evem malaysia as the british did give independance.

The ultimate question is: what if not elections?

M-A

[Bob's World]

Bob,

You are absolutly right and that is why none of the liberation wars were won by the colonial forces, evem malaysia as the british did give independance.

The ultimate question is: what if not elections?

M-A

Every culture has some process for selecting leaders. Many may not have the same hierarchy, but one can probably expand the hierarchy of an existing system more effectively than they can scrap an existing system and replace it with our own.

For example, the Sioux Indians had no concept of a single over-arching "Chief," but they had a very sophisticated and effective form of council-based governance with a variety of leaders in a system that worked for them. We needed one guy to sign treaties, so we picked on. Predictably, disastrous results came of that. We created an "official" system of governance, but it was not a "legitimate" system as well. Ideally we would want both; but if you can only have one, you want Legitimate.

The problem with legitimate is that it implies "free from outside influence and manipulation." Big problem there for the good Cold Warriors, as "containment" was rooted in controlling the periphery; so we have become used to sacrificing legitimacy in favor of official all in the name of containment.

I think that model is obsolete, and the current "GWOT" is essentially the popular backlash to such manipulation of governance.

In Afghanistan they have system of Shuras and Jirgas with Village, Tribal and Religious leaders all feeding into it. Since the mid 1700s they have used this to create national governance as well (National Afghan-style, not Western-style). I would recommend enforcing and enabling the systems that already exist within a culture. Sometimes these systems get damaged by outside interference or internal manipulation. Returning to the roots of what works for a culture is more apt to produce "legitimacy" than a wholesale replacement by outsiders with a foreign system.

I believe that we will learn that we can be even more successful fostering and working with Legitimate governments than we ever were in working with those that we had manipulated to merely being "Official."

[M-A Lagrange]

Every culture has some process for selecting leaders. Many may not have the same hierarchy, but one can probably expand the hierarchy of an existing system more effectively than they can scrap an existing system and replace it with our own.

For example, the Sioux Indians had no concept of a single over-arching "Chief," but they had a very sophisticated and effective form of council-based governance with a variety of leaders in a system that worked for them. We needed one guy to sign treaties, so we picked on. Predictably, disastrous results came of that. We created an "official" system of governance, but it was not a "legitimate" system as well. Ideally we would want both; but if you can only have one, you want Legitimate.

The problem with legitimate is that it implies "free from outside influence and manipulation." Big problem there for the good Cold Warriors, as "containment" was rooted in controlling the periphery; so we have become used to sacrificing legitimacy in favor of official all in the name of containment.

I think that model is obsolete, and the current "GWOT" is essentially the popular backlash to such manipulation of governance.

In Afghanistan they have system of Shuras and Jirgas with Village, Tribal and Religious leaders all feeding into it. Since the mid 1700s they have used this to create national governance as well (National Afghan-style, not Western-style). I would recommend enforcing and enabling the systems that already exist within a culture. Sometimes these systems get damaged by outside interference or internal manipulation. Returning to the roots of what works for a culture is more apt to produce "legitimacy" than a wholesale replacement by outsiders with a foreign system.

I believe that we will learn that we can be even more successful fostering and working with Legitimate governments than we ever were in working with those that we had manipulated to merely being "Official."

I do agree but (As there is always a “but”) then we have separate problematic that do affect stabilization operations or build or what ever phase.

First, as you pointed it, there is this need to have an interlocutor whose similar to us (by us, I hear weberian like governments). This has been pointed by many, including Kilcullen, and denounced by several anthropologists. This shows a difficulty from our side to adapt after the cold war consensus on “democracies victory”. If we won, this implies that our form of governance is better, even the only one legitimate and sustainable.

Then, the example of Afghanistan is interesting in the sense that the constitution was debated through a large council based on cultural researches and cultural approach to form a new government. I remember that at a point some were talking about bringing back a Kingdome in place.
Apparently, the cultural approach failed to bring a culturally endorsed and accepted form of governance. One of the main obstacle being the non recognition of such form of centralised governance (the weberian state) by at least a part of the cultural assembly and more precisely the religious part of it, but not only.
One of the hiccups may lay in the fact that cultural approach has been used, up to now, to find a way to impose weberian state by making it culturally attractive or at least acceptable. Rather than using culture studies to dig out governance mechanisms, it has been used to prove that there were pre democratic practices in a defined culture. And use them as levier to impose a governance copycat system.
The second one lay with us. Basically a “president” needs an interlocutor and not a complex group of leaders that he needs to talk with. And that is may be our biggest weakness in countries as Afghanistan as it leads us to not imagine any other forms of governance and administration.
On the other hand, post communist/neo communist/ extreme liberal see in the weberian state the most powerful revolutionary governance concept. They justify it through it success through history and both communist and capitalist form of governance. According to them, radical Islam, by rejecting the weberian state, is then doomed. So, by imposing the weberian state we do provoke an ineluctable mutation of the governance to which populations are ineluctably leading their leaders.
This may be also part of the narrative concept of justification…

[Dayuhan]

Every culture has some process for selecting leaders. Many may not have the same hierarchy, but one can probably expand the hierarchy of an existing system more effectively than they can scrap an existing system and replace it with our own.

For example, the Sioux Indians had no concept of a single over-arching "Chief," but they had a very sophisticated and effective form of council-based governance with a variety of leaders in a system that worked for them. We needed one guy to sign treaties, so we picked on. Predictably, disastrous results came of that. We created an "official" system of governance, but it was not a "legitimate" system as well. Ideally we would want both; but if you can only have one, you want Legitimate....

In Afghanistan they have system of Shuras and Jirgas with Village, Tribal and Religious leaders all feeding into it. Since the mid 1700s they have used this to create national governance as well (National Afghan-style, not Western-style). I would recommend enforcing and enabling the systems that already exist within a culture. Sometimes these systems get damaged by outside interference or internal manipulation. Returning to the roots of what works for a culture is more apt to produce "legitimacy" than a wholesale replacement by outsiders with a foreign system.

I believe that we will learn that we can be even more successful fostering and working with Legitimate governments than we ever were in working with those that we had manipulated to merely being "Official."

I pretty much agree, and certainly in Afghanistan I think the system of shura and jirga would have made the strongest basis for a new government. It seems to me that in both Iraq and Afghanistan our method of establishing new governments was targeted mainly at perceptions of legitimacy among our populace and among our allies, not at the local perception of legitimacy. Our people wanted to see the immediate establishment of a centralized government that we could recognize as a government, established in a way that our people perceived as legitimate.

Unfortunately, once you start down that road it's not easy to reverse course, and now that we've put our backing behind these processes and the resulting governments it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to change our approach. It's not as if we can announce that the whole idea was a mistake, and now we're going to remove this government and give them another. We can of course withdraw support, let the government fall, and try to work with the successor, but there's no assurance that the successor would have any interest in working with us, and there's a good chance, at least in Afghanistan, that this would mean a return to the same circumstances that generated our intervention in the first place. It's not an easy situation and I don't see any advantageous way out of it, but we made the bed and one way or another we're gonna lie in it.

The problem with legitimate is that it implies "free from outside influence and manipulation." Big problem there for the good Cold Warriors, as "containment" was rooted in controlling the periphery; so we have become used to sacrificing legitimacy in favor of official all in the name of containment.

I think that model is obsolete, and the current "GWOT" is essentially the popular backlash to such manipulation of governance.

Can't entirely agree with that, not least because I don't think there is really a "GWOT". There's a whole raft of factors involved, and I don't see any single overarching explanation that can cover the range of phenomena that we're facing. Barnett's hypothesis of reactionary backlash against the changes implicit in modernization and globalization is part of the picture, as is the Bernard Lewis observation of "aggressive self-pity" rising out of the whole history of Islamic decline, of which US policy is but a small part. Groups like AQ ride on locat conflicts that are driven primarily by local issues, just as the 3rd world communist movements of the cold war gained traction by riding on local conflicts based on local, not global, issues.

Also worth noting that self-determination is not simply a factor of us not taking control. There are other outside influences in play in virtually every conflict on the planet, and many are even less sympathetic to true self determination than we are. A power vacuum does not necessarily mean that traditional means of selecting a government will prevail. Often the response to a power vacuum is simply that whoever can muster the largest armed force takes over, kicks the stuffing out of everyone else, and imposes their own rules. Governments like that of Sadddam's Iraq, Qaddafi's Libya, or for that matter like the Taliban's in Afghanistan were not imposed by foreign powers, but the level of self-determination enjoyed by their citizens is debatable.