In the comments at Classical Values in my piece War Is Not A Physics Problem commenter Giuseppe Blow questions our need for the Iraq adventure. He believes the Iraq War (really a battle in a war) was completely unnecessary. My answer:
If you think Iraq is optional you do not understand the problem.
The problem is the coming economic collapse of the Middle East. Look at what A. Jacksonian (in the comments) has to say.
Political democracy and capitalism are the answer to that question. There is no way such a system would happen on its own. A seed needed to be planted. What better place to plant it than Iraq, a country we have been at war with since 1991 and the broken cease fire agreement?
Oil socialism is a failed experiment.
Bush has done well to not just see the problem quite ahead of the curve, but also to act on it. Islam is dying. As is the oil socialism of the Middle East. What we are seeing are just the early twitches. Iraq is of course centrally located in the middle of the mess. A good place to be if we are going to contain and possibly reverse it.
I think, Giuseppe, that it is you who do not see the wickedness of the problem. The looming mass starvation in the Arab world and the destabilization that will cause, due to the shift of oil production from oil well countries to oil shale countries.
Thank the Maker for Bush, who may yet (despite his detractors) be the rescuer of the people of the Middle East. I know that such a rescue is a fairly liberal position. So be it.
I never understood why liberalism is so weak in some liberals that Bush could turn those liberals into reactionaries. The man does have amazing powers.
A couple of good reads are The Seven Signs of Non-Competative States and al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology which looks at al Qaeda, but is pertinent to any ideology system based on the fantastical. Using these as a basis of understanding for Iran is important as the state of mind of the Iranian regime is not fixed upon this world and they do have some beliefs contrary to what one would expect. There really is no need to address this world if you expect help from a 'higher power' to get you out of a jam or to work miracles for you. And if your State has a view towards an Imperial end-state of things, then actually keeping one's economy going as a Nation may seem like a secondary concern to getting the foundations of that Empire in place. Together, these make a highly toxic way of approaching the world that makes Socialists seem well founded in reality.
From that perspective, the most chilling thing I have run across is the al Qaeda 'playbook', The Management of Savagery which I do an 'as I go as best I can review' until I realize the high points had been covered and things are getting repetative. From my overall summary we have the fact that al Qaeda has actually done something that no military thinker or analyst had thought possible: find an 'end-game' to terrorism. That had always been a highly vexing problem for military analysts as terrorism is, seemingly, pointless. By supplying a pointed end to it, al Qaeda has now opened up a new realm of terrorism to destabilize small regiions within large Nations until that Nation is disrupted. Step in and take over what regions it can, exploit those regions for further local and regional destabilization so that it can step into those regions as they destabilize. I call this 'the rich man's poor road to Empire' because building an Empire used to be something Nations did. No longer is that the case. This paradigm is a flex on State-based ones along similar themese, but now opens up terrorism as a form of Empire Building to ANY terrorist organization.
While I do see the drawbacks economically, those are long-term not short term. And, as the saying goes, one must survive the short-term to get to the long-term. Depending upon implementation, region and such other things, this could prove to be a very workable strategy that gains forward momentum even if it is not sustainable in a 10-20 year timeframe. Those looking to this do not CARE about that, they want Empire in the short-run and will worry about the long-run when it gets to them. It is not only fantastical, but deadly. Just because they are out of touch with this world, doesn't mean they can't formulate something that has workable components and have some insight to it.
Taking those three as a whole to begin understanding the situation in Iran and the Middle East as a whole is necessary. These are not minds that think in the modern era and they are quite prepared to use techniques of warfare that have not been seen in the 20th century. Iran, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are already doing so.
The difficulty of waging war without a view towards the peace that will follow is that even in the places conquered it produces a counter reaction.
The Germans in WW2 were seen initially as liberators by the oppressed people of the Western Soviet Union. Then the Germans started oppressing them worse than the Soviets did and a counter reaction set in.
We see this in Iran where the Islamics were initially seen as liberators from the oppressions of the Shah. At this point in time a lot of Iran is pining for the "good old days" of the Shah's rule.
Then you have the problem of guerilla warfare. It is the problem of the long tail. Guerilla warfare does not end when it reaches its objectives. Discontents with the new regime bring the guerillas back into the field. A caliphate created by guerillas will have a guerilla problem. So even when it reaches its objective it is self defeating.
Somolia shows another vulnerability. Guerillas are subject to defeat (with relative ease) by regular armies. Even weak regular armies. Guerillas cannot hold ground. In fact in guerilla warfare the guerillas are admonished not to hold ground (at least until the end stage) because holding ground leads to the defeat of the weaker party (the guerillas).
In other words the strategy outlined is as fantastical as the objective.
As you point out guerillas are subject to the defeat of their ideology by the effect of modern communications.
I have proposed to use that effect as the basis for our countering their influence through the design and export of the Neighborhood Development Package which is a strategy similar to that the guerillas use. Create islands of technology use, and let the people benefitting from such islands protect them.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
What is his basis for claiming that Islam is dying? This seems to contradict the facts.