definition of insurgency – an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict

To make a long story short, insurgency is only a reaction on something.. if you want to delete insurgency. remove the reasons for it. That means the forced westernisation of the Middle East is not a solution of the violence. Why not let them simply be? Do you really need Arabs dancing on rap music?

I will simply ignore the hater remark.

Poverty is a source of frustration, but not the reason for terrorism. Finally, in Mozambique or Haiti there is poverty, too. Where are their terrorists, then? As aleady written to Sean, for terrorism you need a focus idea to attract the masses. Israel is a key factor here.

Shi’a in Iraq had more than 30 years of reasons to do their share of payback on Sunni minority. AQ did not need to move a finger.

Sorry flex but wrong again. Israel is not the focus, if you actually knew what you were talking about you would realise that AQ dislikes the Palestinians almost as much as westerners. If Israel was the focus that would be where AQ would concentrate its efforts, it does not, in fact it largely avoids operations there as it regards the Muslim protagonists as heretics and traitors.

The issue has been the wrong sort of western intervention, negative instead of positive. Other poor countries do not have terrorism becouse they have yet to have their frustrations mixed with the right sort of ideology. However the same frustrations do create similar sorts of responses, MS13 in the Americas for instance.

As already explained, AQ had to do plenty. It was they who manned the first death squads, it was they who bombed Shia shrines and it was they who even faked reprisal attacks. It was even AQ who sent agents into Sunni communities to stir up reprisals- history and fact proves you wrong. The reason for Sunni-Shia strife in post war Iraq derives from two primary factors, US incompetence creates a power and security vacuum, in to that AQ emerges (largely foreign lead) and effectively starts the killing. It took them quite some time, until February 2006 before they achieved what they wanted. Had Iraq have been the explosion waiting to happen that you falsely claim it was it would have descended into civil war in 2003, it did not, it took over 2 years of AQ operations and US incompetence.

The Iraq ‘war’ is actually two different ‘wars’ (which can be further subdivided but it seems neccesary to keep this simple for now),

1) The anti-American insurgency, as previously explained this evolved in the security and power vacuum that occurred immediately after the war. Every single service industry collapsed and the country descended into chaos (remember the looting?), this is not dissimilar to what happened in New Orleans after Katrina. Everything went, water, electricity, trash collection, every symbol of normal life. Certain idiots made this even worse by making over 100,000 militarily trained and still well armed men unemployed. The people of Iraq were told to, and thus did, expect security, prosperity, order and liberty. Instead they got chaos, mayhem, whilst the economy and everyday life collapsed. In the mean time Iraq’s politicians endlessly argued over the new constitution seemingly endlessly. The combination of the removal of every state institution both security and services, insufficient US troops with no applicable doctrine, and political indecision created the correct notion that the US had failed the Iraqi people, quite understandably they got rather upset about and this and began to see the US as corrupt occupiers and so came that war. The bit of the surge that does not get enough mention that focuses on this is very important and I would advise everybody here to read the current US Army Field manual for COIN before further contributing, it is publicly available.

2)This is the sectarian war, as mentioned above it was/is the product of the post war collapse and AQ meddling, as shown by the fact that it did not properly start until February 2006.

To suggest that Arabs or Muslims need an ‘iron fist’ to control them is both untrue and borderline racist. As with any other population they simply need reasonably effective and competent government of one form or another to provide security and meet previously established expectations.

Why should we go about westernizing the rest of the world? They can live how they want and believe what they want, up until the point where those beliefs cause them to desire to blow apart buildings in downtown NYC, as far as I am concerned.

The Arab nations have been irate over our support of Israel for decades. Israel is not the only reason, but it is a big one insofar as state-sponsorship of terrorism is often concerned, for example.

Not so much oppression and poverty as lack of education (this does not mean that all Muslims are uneducated, bear with me). Someone who can’t read very well has to rely on what his teachers tell him the Koran says. If the Koran says go kill foreigners, how can he believe otherwise if he can’t read it for himself?

What do you call Saddams repression of the Kurds then? How was that not sectarian? Or the desire of the southern Shia’s to oust Saddam in 1991? That sectarianism translates to a nation-state level, even. Sunni Saudi Arabia was more than happy in 1991 to have Sunni Saddam left in power if it meant that a majority Shia population wouldn’t take hold and align themselves with the other major Shia power in the region, namely Iran.

SOC, I think we are on the same wavelength just missing each other. Lack of education is a very direct cause but that is itself largely associated with poverty and oppression, the perfect example of this is the Pakistani education system. It also worth noting that US muslims are largely happy and well integrated unlike their British cousins they dont feel the need to blow up trains. British Muslims on the other hand feel seperated and isolated and are largely economically worse of than then non Muslim neigbours…..and they are all perfectly capable of reading.;)

Just an interesting aside, the vast majority of insurgents in Iraq are Iraqi but 90% of suicide bombers in Iraq are foriegn, the reason being (and this is also shown by the Sunni awakening) that Iraqis are a very long way from being radicalised AQ style.

The Kurds have always been the Middle Easts whipping boy and it is difficult to see that changing, however it is important to remember that they are an ethnicity more than a sect. The problems in post war Iraq were Sunni/Shia related. It took a long time post war and a lot of effort on the part of AQ (whilst the US was overseeing a power and security vacuum) for the blood letting to manifest itself. For instance the first seige of Falluja actually pushed the Sunnis and the Shia together, AQ was worried about this (I know as I have seen the AQ documents) as at that stage the Iraqi identity still overrode the sectarian one. History simply does not support the Iraq time bomb theory.

As for westernizing the rest of the world, up to 9/11 it was very much not the case, indeed Bush prior to 9/11 was heading near to isolationism, it was 9/11 that changed the plans and Iraq was meant to be the beggining of the cure.

I don’t get it. Purely theoretically, if this was the real reason and US really managed to turn Iraq into a capitalist democracy, how in the world would that solve the problem with Islamic terrorism? Where is any slightest connection between Iraq and Palestinian, Saudi or Lebanese terrorist organizations?

While I must admit you are right here, the dumbest part of all was not dissolution of Iraqi Army, hunting down ex-Baath party Sunni with the help of Sadr’s militia or anything like that. The most stupid was the idea itself of choosing a country with three separate religious and/or ethnic fractions hating each other more than pest, held together only by a iron hand of an autocratic ruler and then removing the whole control system. The whole idea was totally out of any reality..

:confused: This is totally, totally wrong. Have you ever heard about one single terrorist calling the US a great satan because of their support of Kuwait? Or Emirates? All terrorists call one single reason for their hatred towards the US.. and that is their protection of Israel.. It has already been repeated until death, man, how is that possible that you still haven’t grasped that?

:confused: :confused: I must repeat my first question: how would a successful operation in Iraq solve the problem with Islamic terrorism? What has Iraq had with terrorism at all? I’d love to hear an explanation on this..

Sorry flex but you are wrong, absolutely wrong. Terrorism is a poor name, this is insurgency on a global scale. The westernisation of the Middle East could/would have reversed the slide towards radicalism. Only the most ignorant of non muslim America haters solely qote Israel as the reason for the current situation. If anything Israel is a symptom. The overriding issue is oppression and poverty, that is the real issue causing Islamic radicalism.

The idea was not out of reality at all, people like to forget that the sectarian issues did not emerge until well after the invasion and that AQ had to expend enormous efforts to manifest it. This was a product of incompetence that occurred immediately after the invasion

…even better, they are from the same company.. which makes me think that Boeing might have set the rules of engagement in a way that would favor the SH. I simply cannot imagine that Aussies did not consider the F-15 as a replacement of their F-111s, but maybe it was more favorable for Boeing to export the first batch of foreign Super Hornets than to export the (probably) last batch of foreign Super Eagles. Solving this equation would require an in depth insight into Boeing;s corporate policy, something no one of us has.

Singapore did look at the SH, Australia went for it for commonality.

I have to admit that once or twice the politician thought did cross my mind too but I don’t think Lawrence is at all. You need to ask the right questions and you will soon see what angle he is coming from, Lawrence jump in if I am getting above myself.

As I understand it what he is saying is simple, logical and fair. If we as a nation intend to remain a major world player we must accept that the armed forces need to be funded adequately which at present (IMO) they are not. We cannot maintain a world class military capability on a shoestring. If we insist on shoestring budgets for the armed forces we cannot be a major world player and need to withdraw from the world stage.

So we need to make a decision one way or the other, we cannot remain in limbo. However making blanket statements like ‘we need to spend 3%GDP on defence’ is not going to address the problem either, not accurately at any rate. Accepted, after a decision is made and requirements correctly identified then the 3%GDP figure might be accurate afterall but how do you know what the percentage of GDP will be until you have identified the requirements? If the decision is made to withdraw from the world stage you might find that we require even less than we are spending right now.

However whilst we remain in limbo not daring to jump one way or the other we do not know what the future requirements will be and therefore cannot speculate how much cash we will need to fund it.

Simple really.

Spot on Phil.;)

The 1998 SDR supposedly took the decision and for the first few years the money was found and given it was only later (2003 onwards really) that things really started to go down hill, this is why the UK has such an amphibious warfare heavy fleet, that part of the SDR was largely if not totally fulfilled. However a number of things conspired against ultimate fulfillment.

1)The most worrying is that the government came to see spending (on things other than the military) as an end in itself (we have spent X and will spend X more) rather than actual solutions to problems, it was the MoD that suffered.

2)It was Tony Blair and his ideological beliefs that were the true architects of the 1998 review, but as his power waned and Gordon’s rose his ability to force defense procurement through the Treasury waned with it.

3) Defence inflation, certainly a factor, it is well documented how how many projects massively overran their budgets. However a lot of this had as much to do with the MoD living in cloud cuckoo land regarding the real cost of very high end defence procurement (Nimrod MRA4, Astute, T45 etc) as it did with bad project management. Obviously that did play a role as has the vast waste that the MoD engages in, would anybody like to count how many iterations Future Surface Combatant has been through and how many monkeys are employed and what resources they are given for such a seemingly endless farce?;)

4)9/11: This had two massive impacts, the first is obvious, the cost of operations massively escalated and the Treasury did everything in its power (Gordon certainly severely disliked the Iraq venture) to avoid giving any more cash than it had to, as such money for operations has had to be found from the existing budget not to mention how much ‘other’ procurement has to take place for all those things that just pop up during operations (counter IED kit, extra desert gear, new types of vehicles etc etc). The second is less obvious. The UK’s war on terror is very different to that of the US, the US is threatened by foreign extremists attacking them (9/11 hijackers were Saudis trained in Afghanistan) whilst the UK is faced with what is best described as a home grown insurgency (7/7 bombers british, guys protesting in London dressed as suicide bombers). Therefore two of the most important arms of defence are domestic counter-terror forces (Police and Security Services) and social spending to counter the disenchantment in the domestic Muslim community, both take from what could be/was the conventional defence budget.

And so we are where we are today, the greatest threat is an internal insurgency to which the only Military contribution thus far has been to park tanks outside Heathrow. The entire concept of what expeditionary interventionist forces need to look like has been massively confused compared to the relatively simple power-projection idea laid out by the 1998 SDR, one could go so far as to say that the entire idea of what ‘defence’ means for the UK has become confused. That reviews architect is now gone and the economic outlook bleak, hope for the future of the conventional UK armed forces is very dim indeed.

On that note one could suggest that what is actually needed is a completely new defence review from the ground up and based on the new realities, it should include all domestic counter-terror needs not just the MoD. It could even come to the conclusion that the UK needs to take a ‘holiday’ from the international scene in order to get the home situation dealt with.