First Afghanistan: There was an alliance of northern tribes in insurgency against the illegitimate Taliban government that was installed and supported by Pakistan. We went into that mix to get revenge against AQ and to wrest control of Afghanistan away from the Taliban with out, I assume, fully appreciating the role of Pakistan in their regime. The follow-on insurgency we are dealing with in Afghanistan now has nothing to do with GWOT, and has everything to do with the current Karzai regime that draws its legitimacy from the West/US; and the Taliban insurgency to challenge that; along with a general popular resistance against the western military presence in their country.
In Iraq there was no insurgency and no connection to GWOT. They just happened to be governed by a guy who pissed us off. The insurgency there was purely a response to our invasion.
This is the great irony, the two places we have sent our military to "defeat terrorism" in fact, have very little to do with the root cause of the political factors that gave rise to AQ and also that motivate many nationalist insurgents across the middle east (from places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Algeria) to engage the West in acts of Terrorism.
Until we are ready to stop using GWOT as an excuse to attack the States that we don't approve of; and instead recognize that we are not being attacked by the populaces of our enemies, but are in fact being attacked by the populaces of our allies, we will not may true progress in defeating terrorsim.
This is the critical strategic point that we must address. The West supports a handful of the most oppressive regimes in the world across the Middle East, and it is the insurgent populaces of those countries that attack us; along with the relatives of those populaces who have migrated to western countries.
This is like a magicians trick. No one is seeing the real problem because we are all staring intently at the misdirection.
Yemen is the latest poster child for this. An oppressive despot being promised US aid to oppress and suppress the insurgent segment of his populace that dares to stand up to his autocratic rule all in the name of "GWOT" and because he is an ally. We can only expect more attacks on the west from this policy. We should be cracking down on the government of Yemen, not the populace of Yemen. Once we change our policies and refocus our military efforts accordingly the populaces of places like Yemen will find they don't need what AQ is selling; and they will also have little reason to feel that they must attack the US to be able to get out from under oppressive regimes at home.
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