Pentagon: Terrorists defeated by police, political process.

[Elfdart]

Which is what happened in Iraq.

By that logic, the Surge wouldn't have succeeded. Yet it has.

There was no surge.

[Flagg]

Which is what happened in Iraq.

By that logic, the Surge wouldn't have succeeded. Yet it has.

There was no surge.

Succeeded in what, anyway? The escalation of forces was supposed to bring about security so that political reconciliation could occur. We have the security, but the politicians are as far as they've ever been from actually building a working government. So no, the "Surge" has not succeeded in its stated goal.

[PainRack]

Oh, lets talk about Thailand, then.

One of the reasons that PM Thaksin was deposed and replaced by PM Chulanont was because Thaksin's policies towards the Islamic insurgency in the south was very heavy on the use of the military, et al to defeat it.

(We won't get into the political skullduggery around Thaksin attempting an end run around Thailands established political families by bringing reconstruction aid, etc near-directly to the poor; Stuart can explain that aspect better than I can).

So anyway, Chulanont upon taking power eases up on the use of the Royal Thai Army in combating the Islamic insurgency in the south; and apologizes for any "atrocities" that the RTA may have committed in the south while fighting the insurgency.

Does this make the violence level go down?

Nope. It increases big time.

Errr..... No it didn't. Using a lagtime of months, violence in the South actually increased during and after Thaksin removal and has now simmered back down a couple of years AFTER the new concillatory policies.
Or are you counting the brutality of incidents vs the number of incidents and lives lost?

We could ALSO point to Mindano and point out that while a period of violence continued after the olive branch was extended, it was the continued extension of that olive branch that ULTIMATELY led to the peace accord that shut down violence and the insurrection.

[Patrick Degan]

Which is what happened in Iraq.

By that logic, the Surge wouldn't have succeeded. Yet it has.

Um, no it hasn't actually.

The violence tapered off because the Shia had already finished their ethnic cleansing ops. Which makes the Surge irrelevant to decreased sectarian violence.

Sunni groups stopped attacking our forces when we started paying them off, which could have been accomplished without an increase of troops, which again makes the Surge irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the country is no more secure politically than it was before the Surge, and the remaining Republican argument for staying in Iraq is that pulling out would leave the country in chaos —which means the Surge has not accomplished the main object of the exercise.

[Winston Blake]

I'm reading the RAND study now, and it's very contradictory at times.

The evidence since 1968 indicates that most groups have ended because (1) they joined the political process or (2) local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members. Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.

Does it really matter who kills key members of the terrorist group as long as said key members are being killed?

What? I read that as contrasting police/intelligence action with military actions, not contrasting 'kill them / don't kill them'. That is, most groups ended because the police/intelligence agencies did the job the best.

The job of arresting/killing key members isn't as simple as 'let's just go kill the motherfuckers'. How you get the information, how the operation is handled and how it's justified are important too. The militaristic answers to those tend to be 'torture prisoners, write off civilians as collateral damage and fuck the checks and balances'. It's not hard to see how that might create more terrorists. Their attitude could have been 'I'm glad the police got rid of the troublemakers in town', but is now 'My life's mission now is to burn as many of the motherfuckers who 'accidentally' killed my family'.

[Guardsman Bass]

Sunni groups stopped attacking our forces when we started paying them off, which could have been accomplished without an increase of troops, which again makes the Surge irrelevant.

That's not entirely true. Although these groups started breaking off from supporting Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the equivalent groups in 2006, what the Surge did was help escalate their "defection" to our allegiance by ensuring that there was enough American force around to make sure that they didn't simply get picked off by Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Simply saying that it just helped Baghdad is kind of misleading, too (I'm not referring to you saying this, Degan, since I don't think you were the person who brought it up). Baghdad has close to a fourth of the population, and that's just in the city itself, not to mention the surrounding areas and slums.

[Guardsman Bass]

Maybe he's thinking that if he keeps making noise, releasing and speaking about every bad rumor to float his way about the Russians, at least some of them will "stick" in the international community, winning him some more sympathy.

[The Yosemite Bear]

oh and the pay demands point, I am again as a student of history reminded of the collapse of the Roman Empire. We pay off the barbs, we use them to fight our wars, we treat their families like slaves or live stock, and then we get suprised when the Goths revolt on us?