Very good, crisp summarized description of the IED problem in Iraq. Except for this crap :

"...But maybe the lesson is that we can't stop the spread of destructive technology and information, in which case we'd better concentrate on reducing the number of people who feel motivated to use it against us...".

Standard, tired-ass liberal boilerplate thrown in. Right, sure, the fundamental solution to our defense needs is trying to make our enemies like us more, by talking to them, or giving them more money, etc. etc.

This is such a useless, and widely held belief among liberals.

Historically, this concept just doesn't apply in the real world. Never has, especially in the Middle East. Either you figure out how to kill the bad guys, or just get the hell out. "Reducing motivations" and similar psychobabble has nothing to do with the real world.

Perhaps we should deploy the Best Buy Geek Squad to Iraq.

I agree about the liberal boilerplate. The only way to defeat an insurgency is to make war on the civilian population that supports it. You may make more enemies in the short term, but how many Muslims can there be? Am I serious? I was hoping you could tell me.

. . . it's a liberal boilerplate that works.

Think of it like clearing a house infested with cockroaches. You can stomp, spray and bug-bomb that place until it's an EPA superfund site-- but until you can find out where they're coming from and put a stopper in it, there's still going to be more on their way.

Likewise with insurgencies; killing them does little good until you figure out where they're coming from and stop it. Sometimes that involves breaking up a ring or shoring up a porous border. Sometimes that involves building up the economy so that fewer people have the time to think about becoming insurgents. Sometimes that means figuring out whether some of your actions that the insurgents are using for excuses to attack you are really good ideas or not.

In short, killing the enemy is a short-term solution to the problem. If it isn't combined with a long-term solution, the problem isn't solved.

Mir: yikes.

Nice Wiki entry on Major World Religions: <link>

Apparently 1/5 of the world is Muslim.

I'm not classically trained in Military Warfare but it strikes me as counter-intuitive to wage war on the civilian population supporting an insurgency while expecting that to *decrease* the number of insurgents. That would work only if 100% of the civilians were themselves insurgents. But if you kill innocent civilians all you're likely to do is create insurgents out of the other civilians that knew them.