Afghanistan indicators

[Bob's World]

Actually not that true. Good population centric COIN is to install a government that will protect its people and act accordingly Rule of Law. But that’s a dream somehow.
Good COIN can also be to crush insurgent quick, fast and hard; Leave them no political room to build a propaganda.

This is the fallacy of pop-centric COIN, in that it is a change of "tone" perhaps from threat-centric COIN, but it is still just as deeply rooted in the promotion and preservation of illegitimate governments over the populaces of others as derived from the Colonial roots of our COIN doctrine. It seeks to be just as controlling over the populaces of others as threat-centric approaches.

It is a half-step in the right direction, but a half-step all the same. Doing the wrong thing gently is sadly more apt to get one hurt in the process than doing the wrong thing aggressively. Both produce the same failed results, but the pop-centric approach opens one up to a lot more punishment in the process.

One cannot install a legitimate government over the populace of another. To buy into the belief that we can ties back to what we learned from the Europeans and refined in our own Colonial efforts. Its a lie we tell ourselves, and rationalize by saying that we are "enforcing the rule of law" or "bringing democracy to the people." What brings stability is self-determination of governance and justice under one's own laws; not forced sham democracies and injustice under the laws of some foreign power.

There are good concepts within Pop-centric COIN, but the overall construct as currently defined and as we currently attempt to implement it is fatally flawed.

If we must conduct such interventions to promote and preserve our own national interests, then we must learn to do so in a fashion that does not seek to control specific outcomes, dictate specific leaders and forms of government, or project specific values. Instead we must find ways to empower self-determined solutions within the parameters of broad principles designed to prevent abuses of more universal concepts of human rights than what we currently see as "proper" in U.S. culture. Those who attempt to disrupt such proceedings with violent challenges must be met with even greater violence. No need to buy the support of the people with vast development and charity either. We don't need their support, we just don't want their animosity. Their government needs their support, and they will support a government that they know to be theirs. A government that is constrained by a good constitution tailored to their own culture, but designed to prevent too much efficiency or power in any one man or section of government, and that protects the populace from government abuses of power as well.

Americans may not approve of who is selected to lead, or of the forms of government adopted. So be it. Americans will approve of not being stuck in long, expensive, bloody efforts to force our will unnecessarily onto others; Americans will approve of foreign populaces that do not feel compelled to bring acts of violence to the shores of America as well.