Totally suspect, the recent Afghan UnAssing Consortium gets additional spiritual s'pport from the somewhat suspect "Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It"
Totally anti COIN - the authors attempt to present a curious meme that counter insurgency operations (deceitfully termed out as 'occupations') actually crank out an avalanche of suicide bombers.
Reinforced with data from "...every suicide terrorist attack worldwide from 1980 to 2009... analysis of suicide campaigns by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka...only a tiny minority of these attacks are motivated solely by religion. Instead, the root cause is foreign military occupation, which triggers secular and religious people alike to carry out suicide attacks"
Sorry! Uh, zoned out there for a sec. Say what, now?
In order for this to truly be true - where is the data on exponentially increasing suicide attackers from Deutschland, Osterreiches, Italy, Soko, Nippon, Philippines, Cyprus, Cuba or any of the ancient Warsaw Pact?
Why no rowdy Deutschers detonating themselves for Right of Return to Danzig and Konigsburg? Or Greek kamikazes for Smyrna?
Cutting the Fuse is really code for cut and run - pleading a case for "...new, effective solutions that America and its allies can sustain for decades, relying less on ground troops in Muslim countries and more on off-shore, over-the-horizon military forces along with political and economic strategies to empower local communities to stop terrorists in their midst..."
That kind of "Offshore Balancing" approach means Great Satan/NATO "...will not be engaged with military forces on the ground, and yet what we have learned in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan is that we achieve our objectives most fully when indigenous forces are partnered with us and made able to take over the work of U.S. forces in the fight. They have greater legitimacy, local knowledge, and make the outcome most durable..."
"...An offshore balancing approach is also inherently retaliatory and has been shown to increase the resistance of affected populations to supporting our objectives. We threaten to use force from the safe confines of distance; that use of force may have pinpoint accuracy but will often be less precise and cause more civilian casualties than forces on the ground, which will again feed into public attitudes about whether to support U.S. goals.
"...Instead of working with the people most affected and helping build their capacity to protect themselves, offshore balancing does little to change the problem in positive ways.
Pic - "Moreover, al Qaeda and the Taliban have done everything to stop the drone attacks by killing hundreds of innocent civilians on the pretext of their being American spies.
Too bad spammers don't don the suicide vests!!!
ReplyDeleteWell, there's this inconvenient fact:
ReplyDelete“There was not a single act of Arab terrorism against Americans before 1968, when the U.S. became the chief supplier of military equipment and economic aid to Israel.”
And guess who concluded this:
"Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. Defense Science Board, authorized by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
However, I know this won't change your mind. Muslims are just strange, ungrateful creatures who don't realize that when we prop up dictators in their countries, or bomb them, or courageously unleash remote-control death machines, we're doing it for noble reasons.
Old Rebel - currently Indonesia and India have more m'Hammedists than the rest of the world combined. Both are rowdy secular democrazies.
ReplyDeleteSince 1968 Great Satan has donated way more military bling bling to Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan than Little Satan.
Best of all, you are sounding kinda daemoneoconic on the autocrazy support regimen.
Glad it's rubbing off!
I too am having a hard time with this argument. I understand he has data but I still think of terrorism as a tactic rather than a strategy. Suicide bombers are simply a tactic to further a strategy. Removing us to over the horizon doesn't remove the problem.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think there is some goodness in over the horizon capabilities. Sea basing concepts provide an interesting option when conducting initial entry operations. Still, simply saying the equivalent of "if we were not there then nobody would blow us up" is a lot like "if a tree fell in the woods would you hear it?"
Just my 2 cents
GSGF,
ReplyDeleteYeah, citing facts that disprove Neocon fantasies proves you're really in favor of Neoconism.
You're making my head hurt again.
Oh, 14 NATO troops were killed today. There's still time for you to volunteer to replace them.
Don't break in line at the recruiting station.
Hey Old Rebel, why don't YOU lead by example and enlist with the Haqqani Network? Hell, you could get a bonus enlisting with Al Qaeda, they need you now more than ever.
ReplyDeleteThanks Centurion, that's about where I'm at on it.
ReplyDeleteLOLZ Old Rebel. Always thought you were kinda cold and calculating, but you're really quite emotional.
ReplyDeleteAren't you?
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteSo -- I point out that interfering in other people's conflicts hurts us and others, and you conclude that means I favor radical Islam?
No wonder you're anonymous.
GSGF,
ReplyDeleteWell, that's the definition of a conservative: one who uses the mind for the things dear to one's heart.
But you are not a conservative.
ReplyDeleteYou are a disloyal neo-Confederate secessionist with an unhealthy fixation on Jews.
"You are a disloyal neo-Confederate secessionist with an unhealthy fixation on Jews."
ReplyDeleteIf "disloyal" means I do not support a government that illegally spies on its citizens and promotes the reconstruction of this country into another Third-World banana republic, then you're damn right I'm disloyal.
And those who support such a monster are serfs.
But where do you get the idea I have a fixation, healthy or otherwise, on Jews?
And where do you get the drugs you take before posting online? They must be gooood!
You, Mike Tuggle, are the only one in this thread defending all Muslim terrorists.
ReplyDeleteNot all Muslims are terrorists, but the vast majority of current terrorist acts are committed by Muslims.
All governments spy on their citizens. Always have, always will.
In 2012 we get to vote the incompetent fool out.
Monsters and serfs? Who is on drugs here?
Inconveniently for you and the ahistorical excuse for a professor, Arab Muslim terrorists repeatedly attacked US Marines in Lebanon, 1958, killing one. And Israel had nothing to do with it.
Where? Just about every place on the internet that you've infested with your treasonous bile.
Such strange bedfellows, you and Glenn sockpuppet Greenwald from Brazil. So very revealing.
"The war... was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides."
-Robert E. Lee
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteSo you're ok with the Feds violating the Fourth Amendment. And ignoring habeas. Or lying us into wars. Here's a quote for you from that disloyal secessionist Sam Adams:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
And you admit you can't find one instance of my alleged "unhealthy fixation with Jews."
Pathetic. I strongly suggest you remain anonymous.
Nobody is ok with governments violating their own laws, except government employees. Are we supposed to believe your mythical neo-Confederate government will be any better?
ReplyDeleteNobody lied us into war.
Every single time you use the word Israel on line is an example of your fixation, every single time.
You strongly suggest? Is that a threat?
"I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy."
-James Longstreet
"Nobody lied us into war."
ReplyDeleteYou mean the $50 billion invasion that would take 6 weeks so we could stop Saddam from enslaving us with weapons he didn't have?
"Every single time you use the word Israel on line is an example of your fixation, every single time."
Just to humor you, I pulled up my posts with the word "Israel" appearing either in my post or in readers' comments. In 2 1/2 years of almost daily blogging, the word appeared 68 times. That's fixation? Betcha GSGF has triple that number.
"You strongly suggest? Is that a threat?"
Calm down, Sparky. I'm only suggesting you keep your mediocrity out of the limelight.
Are we supposed to believe your mythical neo-Confederate government will be any better?
ReplyDeleteOr will come without war?
"How any Southern gentleman can still boast of 'the lost cause' or speak of it in language other than that of shame and sorrow passes my understanding."
WT Sherman
"Are we supposed to believe your mythical neo-Confederate government will be any better?"
ReplyDeleteThe Empire is doomed. It's over-extended militarily, out of money, and is increasingly ungovernable. So, yes.
"Or will come without war?"
The bloodiest dictatorship in history, the Soviet Union, dissolved peacefully. Surely we can accomplish the same.
Peacefully?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAiyWbrGSk4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDoBKlCU6Ss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkfZKiVYtgY
Anonymously,
ReplyDeleteYes, peacefully -- there was no wide-scale fighting, proving that Lincoln's invasion is not the only result possible from a people's exercise of their God-given right of self-determination.
Other examples of peaceful secession include Czechoslovakia and Norway.
Face it, the destructive policies of the DC empire are unsustainable. A small minority benefits from the outragious amount of military spending, which the vast majority pays for.
http://saberpoint.blogspot.com/2007/05/paleocons-assault-on-truth-and-reason.html
ReplyDeleteMoscow, Chechnya, and Kyrgyzstan are unquestionably wide spread from each other and were far from the only examples of the wide spread fighting that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was nothing peaceful about the break-up of the Soviet Union, other then it could have been far worse. In many cases, the fighting in the former USSR continues to this day. Which southern city are you prepared to sacrifice like Grozny?
The Confederates attacked and confiscated federal property, firing on Fort Sumter long before Lincoln invaded. God given right of self-determination? How did that work out for the slave population of the Confederate states? What about their right of self-determination?
We'll have to assume that you mean the Velvet Revolution and not the Sudeten Crisis of 1938, (noting much of your peer group, there is some question). Czechoslovakia was separate to begin with, two languages, two cultures, two very different people, and nobody asked the Roma how they felt about any of it. What about their right of self-determination?
Again, we'll have to assume that you mean the separation of Norway from Sweden, as opposed to the separation of Norway from Denmark. And again, two languages, two cultures, two very different people. Norway separated from Sweden by plebiscite, even as both nations mobilized their respective military's. How do you think your secession idea would fare if it were put to a vote in today's United States? Think you'll have much support from the existing US military? Look around you, does this nation look or act anything like Czechoslovakia or Norway?
There is no DC empire, only temporary administrations that come and go on a regular basis. Some of those temporary administrations are better then others, some are not. You are a fool to believe otherwise. This nation can sustain another one hundred and fifty years of this, we've already seen worse, and survived. So go into the weapons business if you think its so outrageously profitable. What happens to your Neo-Confederacy when Mexico demands Texas and then invades? What are you going to do when we come to burn Atlanta again?
Do you pay taxes? Afraid to put your money where your mouth is? Why are you even here? Have you considered joining Glenn sockpuppet Greenwald in exile? If so, would you be so kind as to take Kirk Lyons with you?
“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Both read the same bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
-Abraham Lincoln Inaugural Address 1865
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteWe've strayed from the original thread here, that Muslims don't attack us because they're inherently evil, but because we're attacking them.
Anyway, by citing the different outcomes resulting from secession movements, you're proving my point that not all such efforts have to end as they did with the War for Southern Independence.
As for cultural differences between North and South, see my earlier comments here and here.
As to why conservatives should resist DC's foreign interventions, see this post.
Face it -- the DC empire is dying -- its economy, superstructure, and internal cohesiveness are all things of the past. Big governments no longer work, which is why smaller, more peaceful, culturally based political units are replacing the 19th- and 20th century megastates.
Old Rebel is obviously a click stalker. Sad.
ReplyDelete