Astralis,
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this is no longer as tenable as it was in the past. the individual in this age of technology has far more power than he did in the past, and unless you can kill every single individual, you risk just ONE individual doing terrific damage in revenge. thus we talk about winning hearts and minds, because inducement to fear a la machiavelli is less useful against today's individual than it was against feudal peasants, uneducated, isolated, and powerless.
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the lone gunman or small group is not an insurgency. A group of Serb nationalist started WW1, but they were not an insurgency. Inducement to fear does work even in the modern age. We have the same programming and evolutonary instincts as our caveman ancestors. The idea is not to rule by fear or repression, but to induce an aversion to violent struggle by providing a fear on one hand and hope on the other. The plan to woin the peace must be as agressively poursued as the efforts to win the fight.
Shek,
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In the end, it is the totality of your strategy that will yield your end result, and so it wasn't solely the political successes that yielded victory, but I do think that they were the most successful line of operation.
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Great read and I detect a similar goal in the original US plan. However the Malay situation didn't have the level of inter-group animosity to contend with. it also did not face 10's of thousands of combatants from myraid politcal and religious groups. Iraq is not going to work as a federal state and the groups have to be seperated, and unified only so mfar as national security and resource sharing. Existing in an automous system in other areas, and Irans voice has to be squelched.