That’s the simplest of the simple stuff, because you not only have to figure it out, you have to remember it. The ordinary stuff gets far, far worse.

Being qualified to have an opinion worthy of respect is a condition hard to acquire.

You may as well say until Whites and Blacks stop killing each other there’s no point in trying to have an integrated society.

I never thought about it in these terms, but perhaps one reason those on the political left look at Iraq and despair so much is that they are conditioned to think about people as components of an identity group rather than as individual actors. Yes, as identity groups Shiia and Sunni are locked in mortal combat over religious ideology. However, the reality on the ground is that millions of individual Shiia and Sunni live and work side-by-side in perfect harmony, intermarry and raise mixed families everyday. The goal is not to eliminate sectarian violence and strife since that goal, just liek that of eliminating racism and bigottry in the U.S., can only be approached assymptotically. Success should be measured not in absolutes, but in terms of prevalent memes and societal acceptability. At least in the latter we seem to be on the right track.

The Shia-Sunni split is exactly why Islam will learn to be compatible with human rights (the real goal, with democracy just a HUGE step towards it). Just as Catholics needed to accept living in peace with Protestants, and vice versa.

The Left will mostly melt away in opposition — after Tel Aviv is nuked. It’s not clear anything less will make them willing to “be wrong” and accept the goal of American imposed democracy.

To do such imposition might take 5-50 years more. Much shorter than “never” or “ever”, but much longer than the next US election.

Commenter Poetry has it just right: until Shiites and Sunnis stop killing each other in the name of whatever madness they do so, there’s little point in us getting between them, attempting to foster a compromise government.

These folks are not going to play nice with each other. Haven’t for well over a millennium. Not going to start now.

Out best bet? Back one side or the other, arm them to the teeth, and to hell with what we in the West think of as a fair and balanced solution.

Even if they understood COIN, they would never agree to support it because COIN is their destruction.

If people are safe and prosperous, from where will the Revolution come, eh?

Wasn’t Germany in the same situation before?

If we were to act boldly she would cluck a bit but she would not risk war with us.

There’s always a point of no return where even boldness no longer works. And the US is running up to the deadline on that.

China is not interested in a war with us as well.

Nothing is stopping them from doing Proxy Warfare. The Cold War introduced that as the weapon of choice against superpowers.

Winning the war quiets lots of folks.

That is indeed true, if the war won is through American means rather than say, European Versailles means.

We are a terribly arrogant people to assume that Muslims are children who don’t know what is best of them.

The entire world and more than half of American are children that don’t know what is best for them. That is not the problem, the problem is determining who does know what is best for folks; who really fights on the Light for once you know that, then everything else becomes a matter of application rather than theory.

No one has wondered if perhaps those inside of Islam have seen what we have to offer and decided they don’t want it.

Why would anyone want some foul tasting medicine such as democracy? Not even America’s Republic is a total upgrade on democracy, and people don’t even want that. What people want is security, prosperity, and vengeance against those that they hate. Perhaps in that order, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter what they decided, what matters is what they need.

Al Anbar decided a long time ago to fight and kill Americans. They needed to rethink that decision and their allegiance to AQ, and they did. They did it because that was what was required of them.