But all things end eventually, even stubborness

Reality will in the end decide which side people thinks is better. Ours or theirs. If we are right, then people should join ours if nobody coerces them or just our enemies coerce them. I think it is a simple lack of belief in the American position, but on a righteous basis and a strength basis, to believe that Al Anbar will choose Shariah or anti-Americanism after fighting with the US.

War breaks down all prejudices, even the Sunni’s. For them to choose Al Qaeda, Shariah, or what not after that, would literally mean the US is not worthy of victory. And I could not accept that, because the logic would spell our doom.

They will have trouble, because those young people are going to be working alongside the US. That’s what leadership is about, getting people to follow you or at least along with you.

Should, for example, the sudden turn of the tribes in Anbar succeed, what we will have, besides a sort of victory, is a tried and tested, successful power locus which may be reluctant to go along with Baghdad.

The only thing that matters as to calculating and predicting what power groups will do is just basic human psychology. They will do what their psychology tells them to do. And it is not predetermined by your words, Richard. Why do you act as if it is?

The US needs a successful power locus, you cannot win without one, and just because you want to deny your enemy one doesn’t mean you want to deny your allies one es well. You might as well have said the same thing about the Norther Alliance, that they were successful and were going to cause problems because of the Warlordism.

And if they decide to institute shari’a, then we’ll see the problems I’ve mentioned.

See this is where you’re not looking at what is going on. Why would people who fight against foreign jihadists because they tried to impose shariah on them, after winning then institute Shariah themselves? You don’t expain that for the Sunnis. You just say they will, as if that makes any kind of psychological sense. These are not communists, I remind you, they are not fighting a doctrinal war over who gets the spoils.

That kind of culture doesn’t work, and its waste products, expendable young men, hatred, poverty, and fanaticism are inevitable.

Do you know how the South worked as a Culture back in the American Civil War and during Reconstruction? It worked inefficiently. Of course the culture works. They’re working the slaves aren’t they? They’re producing jihad aren’t they? Things don’t work because they Have to follow your blueprint. Things work all by themselves for their own purposes and goals.

So in this case, it doesn’t matter whether you think a society works or not. It only matters how efficient that society is at in accomplishing their self-stated goals.

To add in some perspective. People have to choose whether they will side with Al Qaeda and play for their team or side with the US and the iraqi government and play the game our way. A person can make that decision in peacetime and it would normally be inconstant because it is just letters on paper. But in war time, these decisions are permanent. Once you have chosen your allies, there’s no going back, not without some drastic actions. The Democrats resorted to those actions when they had to cut off the US-Vietnam alliance. Just as France and America still has an alliance going even after France’s betrayals. Once you choose your allies, you are stuck with them, until they get killed of course.

You’re saying Richard that Al Anbar Sunnis will ally with the occupation American foreigners to fight against Al Qaeda who has been imposing Shariah Law and killing tribal members in Al Anbar, and then institute Shariah Law after the US has helped Al Anbar defeat the terrorists.

Your analysis of the situation has less to do with Al Anbar and more to do with what you personally think is workable or non-workable for Muslim societies in the Middle East. While totally irrelevant to the specifics of Al Anbar, you try to make it as if they will follow a certain trend. But they can’t follow the trend, because that trend exists in the ME because of a lack of American interference.

So, while I like the idea of the Anbaris getting after the foreigners, the future is not necessarily a New England town meeting democracy and a proliferation of Rotary Clubs.

Those are worthless when the objective is to create frontline shock troops, observation posts, border guards, and enforcers in Iraq. You act as if logically speaking, if you dont’ get Shariah, you get new England “democracy”. Incorrect.

You don’t get Shariah precisely because of the tribal nature of Al Anbar. And tribal doesn’t mean “democracy new England” style.

There are specific cultural, societal, and personal traits to the Sunnis in Al Anbar that you are grossly ignoring in favor of the Shariah storyline. If you want to analyze the situation in Al Anbar, then you should analyze the situation itself, not the situation in Iran or other Shariah Muslim nations. Explain to me why the leaders of Al Anbar would be motivated into becoming Al Qaeda Lite after shedding blood with Americans, fighting with Americans, by Americans, for Americans, in defense of their homeland?

Obviously you’ve given it some thought, considering how you often talk about how they will go Shariah or some other “inevitable” trends afterwards.

“Neo
You are just about all by yourself on this blog now. It is happening all over the blogosphere. The Right wing sites are drying up. Feel those walls closing in?”

Get a grip frank. Public discourse on Iraq in the blogosphere isn’t going away. The “drying up” and “walls closing in” apparently have more to do with the arid condition and narrowness of your mind than with reality.

The therapy Bandura is most famous for, however, is modeling therapy. The theory is that, if you can get someone with a psychological disorder to observe someone dealing with the same issues in a more productive fashion, the first person will learn by modeling the second.

One drawback to the therapy is that it isn’t easy to get the rooms, the snakes, the actors, etc., together. So Bandura and his students have tested versions of the therapy using recordings of actors and even just imagining the process under the therapist’s direction. These methods work nearly as well.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html

It is not just powerful therapy, Neo, it seems to be the process by which leaders create behavior in a society. Meaning, inspire, lead, cause you to do things you otherwise would not have done. A powerful and charismatic leader can motivate people to follow him to hell. Whether to fight there or just have a tea party with Satan.

The Arab version is obviously that of the martyr and Imams. But none of that is set in stone. Leaders can die and they can be replaced in battles over domination. Good leaders can replace bad ones, bad ones can replace good ones, godo leaders like reagan might die first leaving folks like Carter around. You know.

You’re mistaking individual bonds for national bonds.

Which I covered concerning the Gurkhas.

I don’t remember Russians taking orders from Americans division generals or vice a versa, Richard. They weren’t even fighting together against a common foe, but pushing the foe towards each other. That is another difference, quite apart from the national vs individual bonds deal.

Again, you’re assuming that cultural templates determine the destiny of nations. Rather than arguing why that is true. Your example of the Russian communists is one of those examples. Where you argue based upon national destiny based upon communist socio political templates, rather than determining the human motivations and decisions which created Russia’s Cold War history with the US.

We’re arguing about what determines the fate of nations. I’m not automatically going to accept your assumptions here.

Enemies like Japan and Germany were killing Americans, and in the latter case beating them like animals. Now a days… as I said, the destiny of nations is determined by leadership, not culture.

Certainly culture plays a part, but it is only the foundation. The engineer is the will, he that shapes events and material. A good culture with a bad leadership isn’t going anywhere, where a bad culture with good leadership gets ahead faster.

Point is, the traditional ME culture breeds lots of young men, not so many young women due to female infanticide and now abortion for sex selection.
It also locks the huge majority of them into lives of poverty and no hope.

We’re talking about Iraq here, Richard, not the entire Middle East. Don’t you think we should take one stepping stone at a time here?

It doesn’t matter what the problem is, because simply repeating and restating the problem doesn’t do anything. It is solutions that matter, and in this case leadership is the solution. Or leadership provides the solutions.

Where they can expiate their shame on the enemies helpfully pointed out to them by their imams and governments.

By their leadership, you mean. So what is your position here. That they are better leaders than you are, that they can provide better and more powerful and more charismatic leadership than we here in the US can provide? I disagree.

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/04/coin_the_gravit.html

I tend to think the US military was learning as it went concerning how COIN was going to fit inside regular Army command. COIN usually fits inside SF and small unit tactics and commands because there really is no need for a greater strategic command other than logistics support. It was far better as you said, to calibrate tactics to your neighborhood and to select one neighborhood to guard and to base yourself in.

With Petraeus, the US military has learned pretty much all it can, now it has to do. To apply what it has figured out. Hopefully for some beneficial rewards.

Point is, the traditional ME culture breeds lots of young men, not so many young women due to female infanticide and now abortion for sex selection.
It also locks the huge majority of them into lives of poverty and no hope.
It is a shame culture and the young men not favored by family or connections are bitterly ashamed by their inability to support a family, attract a woman, or get any action, and are good recruits for jihad. Where they can expiate their shame on the enemies helpfully pointed out to them by their imams and governments.

“The problem isn’t that Islam needs a “reformantion”, it is that Islam is a political system based on false beliefs in the first place.”

That, my friend, is the last ideal one must embrace to effectively realize a counterinsurgency. Quite the contrary, US tactics should be those that embed and accept. This isn’t to say that US operatives need “go native” or accept Allah, rather that the whole “Islam is the problem” approach is utter failure. The entire basis of counterinsurgency should be dividing the existing populace from the resistance. In terms of Iraq, margenalizing Islamic ideals in the fashion of “exposing them as false” is counterproductive.

In light of Ymarsakar’s post I would suggest a military doctrine that entailed the US occupation of the Philippines in the late 19th century be applied to Iraq. In effect the American occupation was divided between islands and, not having the modern advantage of radio, each officer who commandeered a slice or island of the Philippines was afforded essential sovereignty. The effect was a division between the insurgency and the populace as each officer’s approach was based not on the central commands edicts but the reality of the territory that they controlled. In essence, tailor made politics.

A simple test would be to see whether you could ‘expose’ the Democrats beliefs as false so that no Democrat, Leftist, or anybody else would ever lose their soul to their ideology. If you can’t do that, what makes you think that can even be done for Muslims?

Educated people living in the United States still believes in crap. What makes you think those living in ignorance, violence, and repressive indoctrination, can achieve what not even the US has achieved?