I thought I'd toss in an exchange on this from my Facebook page. I blanked out the names of the other participants in the exchange since I don't have their permission to copy it here.

Steve Metz During the Cold War, our enemies were the best minds the other side could find, some of them brilliant. In the "long war," the bulk of our enemies are life's losers from here and around the world. I continue to think that our goal of trying to re-arrange the world to produce fewer losers is a fool's errands. There will always be losers (e.g. gangs in our culture). There has to be another way.

Yesterday at 8:52am

Participant #1 Well, looking at it another way, the enemies might have produced the best minds, but they lost the Cold War. Can we say the same thing about networked Islamist violence and the larger diaspora currently considered "global guerillas" arrayed against us?

The USSR fell. With a deterritorialized, non-state enemy, could we say the same thing is possible?

Yesterday at 8:59am

Steve Metz Well, I've been someone from the beginning who never thought AQ could "win." Its most important technique is one of the most pervasive ones for an early-stage insurgency: provoke the state (us in this context) into an over reaction which erodes its power more than it weakens the insurgents. And we've swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

Yesterday at 9:01am

Participant #2 ...needless to say, books and dissertations have and can be written on this - but sure seems to me that the USSR collapse, mainly as Kennan said - because of its own internal contradictions. Add to that corruption, economic inefficiency, quanty v. quality emphasis and considerable military overreach - the idea that the Mujahadeen caused the USSR to collapse seems pretty silly to me. Empires collapse due to their own internal and external contradictions. And, also when they fail to prioritize well and over-react to provocations. As Steve says, we've swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. To me, this is the fundamental folly of the surge strategy in Afghanistan - as Amb. Eikenberry made clear in his memos - other strategic approaches apparently weren't even considered. At any rate, only great powers can defeat great powers - especially if they spend themselves into oblivion...

Yesterday at 9:08am

Participant #1 Possibly. But the goals of AQ aren't to win by "defeating" the US, at least not in the short time span that could be measured in decades.

Some might suggest that the goal also isn't mere survival. Rather, much as PIRA in the later years, the task at hand was to produce compelling events (propaganda of the deed) to create a strategic narrative attractive to enough in the local population to sustain it, but more importantly to communicate to a global audience, begining with the ethnic diaspora and then reaching other consumers of the news imagery worldwide.

This what was always so nettlesome about AQIZ in Anbar: Many of their most lethal, daring and photogenic events really weren't going to affect the balance of forces there. Indeed, many of the VBIED attacks that killed so many civilians likely worked against some of their legitimacy, but remained spectacular images online used to recruit volunteers and raise money through donations. AQ and its various franchises have shifted strategies throughout the GWoT, but the propaganda of the deed has remained paramount. In the end, maybe because that's what's at the heart of their effort.

Yesterday at 9:09am

Steve Metz The goals of AQ are to cause the West to collapse from exhaustion and to augment its own support. To do that, they encourage us to over extend and, in effect, chase them. And they augment their support by provoking us to validate their claim that we have invaded the Islamic world and intend to make it more secular and hence less Islamic. We willingly play along with this strategy.

Yesterday at 10:12am ·

Participant #1 Well, the goals (stated) have changed over the years. The immediate goal of forcing the US to quit propping up the dynastic or secular despotic states of the Middle East and North Africa has remained the same. The fixation from the far-enemy by AQ compared to the near-enemy by the Salafi affiliates (and some not affiliated yet) is there only because they identified the US military underpinning as the security on which these despised governments survive.

At first, the goal became to prod the US by attacking diplomatic and military assets. That failed. So they turned to daring POP involving iconic targets of interest to the American people. That didn't work. Today, I don't really think that AQ's goal to tie the US down in endemic conflict around the globe is anything more than a propagandistic point made about the obvious. AQ can't compel the US to do that which is geo-strategically stupid forever.

In the end, perhaps in McLuhanesque fashion we reach the conclusion that the violence in the POP is an end in itself, a loop wherein the act creates volunteers, donations, sympathy and a consistent narrative.which needs a machine in place to carry out the deeds. Simple. Seamless, really.

Yesterday at 10:24am ·

Steve Metz We may be talking past each other. My concern is that we believe that tactical prowess--which we've got a lot of--can compensate for a flawed strategy. To me the question isn't whether what we're doing in Afghanistan today is the right method, it's what do we hope to accomplish. Imagine we succeed in Afghanistan. We end up with a fragile ... See Moregovernment in need of assistance forever which is less likely than the Taliban to provide open bases for AQ. And the cost for that is $1 trillion or more, thousands of dead or maimed Americans, and a badly strained military. That's a very bad deal coming on the heels of a very bad deal in Iraq.

Yesterday at 10:49am ·

Participant #3 Actually the US doesn't have a lot of tactical prowess. It does a lot of "tactical stuff" but that's not the same thing. The UK in Afghanistan has been forced into performing tactically irrelevant actions because the strategy is poor.

Yesterday at 11:45am ·