Beta Test: Models for Winning the War on Terror

[Ironside]

Hear hear! I could swear that some of the people now saying that we need more US troops have said previously in other threads that it's the US soldiers that are causing the violence....

Having troops on the ground gives rise to several factors, like suppression factor, safety factor, annoyance factor and hatred factor.

Without enough troops on the ground, you'll not give enough on the suppresion factor and safety factor, making the population more sensitive to the annoyence factor and hatred factor and at the same time increasing those factors.

So without enough troops to secure the area, the question will come: What the hell are those troops doing there?

Although with the civil war looming in the shadows, only the suppression factor becomes truly important.

[macsen rufus]

G-cube -- you're advocating the policy that allowed the Nazis to win in occupied France.... oh, they didn't win though, did they?

And generally I voted for the Police Action model, although "Integrated" had its appeal I cannot endorse any "regime change" element. Another country is another country, and we shouldn't be ****ing with other people's system of govt. If it's that bad, it WILL fall. It might take time, it might be messy, but viable, democratic institutions do not arise Athena-like, fully formed from chaos. They take time, and most importantly they have to be home grown.

Example: imagine a country where women cannot vote, have limited property rights, are expected to stay in the home rather than work, are not allowed to drive, where the vast majority of the population follow the established state religion and attend its religious gatherings every week, without state healthcare or education, where homosexuality is illegal, and where most women over the age of thirty are shrouded entirely in black from head to toe. Sound familiar? Yes -- that was Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. We didn't get where we are today by being bombed senseless by America! Why the hell should we expect Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia (oops, sorry, they're our friends aren't they???), North Korea etc to develop if they're constantly being bombed "back to the stone age"?