Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
So, then I am to believe that a country can act more aggressively and in a war-like manner in some other country where it has no sovereign rights than it can within its own borders??
We have the sovereign right to pursue people who attack us or who we know are plotting to attack us. In countries with functioning legal and law enforcement systems that doesn't have to be done in a "war like manner": that's not just in our country, it's in most countries. In the few exceptions where there is no local law, other means are needed. I quite agree that we shouldn't be targeting "nationalist insurgents" in these attacks, but neither am I convinced that we are. I don't think it's an entirely bad thing for nationalist insurgents (or anyone else) to know that if they harbor our enemies they may suffer for that decision.

I have a few issues with your proposition:

First, the connection you propose between AQ and nationalist insurgency is quite tenuous and not supported by hard evidence or detailed reasoning. If you propose a major policy shift based on that proposition, you have to support the proposition a lot more effectively.

Second, there's no clear need to compete with AQ for influence among nationalist insurgents because there's no clear evidence that AQ has much influence with nationalist insurgents. AQ's attempts to generate nationalist insurgency have generally failed: AQ has only gained real support when they fight against a foreign invader. Where nationalist insurgencies in Muslim countries have flourished, as in the Arab Spring, those insurgencies have shown few signs of AQ influence: even where AQ-connected groups have participated, they aren't in control. The Arab Spring rebellions had no special AQ flavor and even where Islamist groups like the Muslim Brothers have played major roles they have tried to steer toward a moderate stance. I see no concrete reason to assume that AQ is an effective or dominant element in any nationalist insurgency anywhere, and I think attempts to push the AQ issue to an insurgency perspective are very questionable.

Third, your policy recommendations are too general to be reasonably discussed. If you would select a few specific regions or nations where you think current policy is wrong, describe what you think is wrong, and offer specific recommendations illustrating your contentions, the argument would be more effective.

I certainly agree that invasion, occupation, regime change and "nation-building" in Iraq and Afghanistan were counterproductive and effectively gave AQ more of what it needs to survive, but I have no clear idea of what you actually and specifically propose to do outside those countries, especially in the core Arab countries. These nations are not our children or our dependencies, we have minimal influence over them, and we certainly aren't enabling them to oppress anyone. It's hard to see how your general propositions apply in any specific sense.

In some ways I think you're a bit stuck in a Cold War paradigm. Possibly the greatest mistake the US made in the Cold War was to allow Communists to seize the moral high ground of opposition to decaying colonial regimes and troglodyte post-colonial dictators. That decision did leave us in the awkward position of supporting and empowering (generally the empowerment was more economic than military) regimes that relied on us against insurgents that were primarily nationalist in character. The times they have a'changed, and I don't think that paradigm is particularly applicable now, at least not in any case I can think of offhand.