It seems the problem is that you think the field human psycology is just a “belief” instead of a science, and so can be changed by believing in something else. Don’t like Freud’s conclusions? Just believe them wrong, and the whole human race will change to match whatever you believe!

If only it were that easy.

Poison

You seem to be arguing that because the Islamic Jihad believes in the stuff you re-iterated, that means they won’t believe in what I want them to believe. That might be true, if you ignored how the Islamic Jihad got those beliefs in the first place.

It’s been done before, you have not provided any reasons why it can’t be done now.

Good luck convincing people to believe in something they not only don’t want to believe in, but that their day-to-day experiences seem to prove false. The very core principles of Islamism are designed to only dole out fame to those who have given teir lives for their cause, simultaneously granting twentysomethings willing to trade their lives for a moment in the spotlight a means to do so, and ensuring that those who do not get themselves killed can never amass enough popularity to pose an organized threat to their masters.

A war that is won, will never be fought again.

Its true the sectarian violence is encouraged by outside forces (Iran and Syria) so it should be considered to be in our strategic interest to get it under control… but we have no plan or tactics to fight sectarian violence. How do step in between feuding civilian militias? We can’t do it in Yugoslavia without permanent partitions. Can’t do it in Crete without the same (the longest / never-ending peacekeeping mission I’m aware of).

This is probably why the dems won. They said they’d have a new direction and or implied they had a new idea (vs. the administration sending troops around Anbar on patrol to get blown up… i.e., a non plan). So, what to do. And dems, what exactly is that plan (aside from giving up… re: another non plan)?

People are actually easier to manipulate than forks. Because inanimate objects obey the laws of physics, where as you can get humans to act a certain way simply by convincing them to believe in an illusion.

Not necessarily. I can manipulate a fork, but that doesn’t mean I can manipulate it into turning into a bar of gold. And forks are far less prone to fighting the manipulation itself than people are.

The anti-vanity systems woven into the Islamist faith itself will have to be undone, before their children will stop seeking fame the only way they can: by becoming a jihadi martyr.

douglass, the Soviets themselves, as well as the jihadists, try to make moral equivalency arguments about how we are as bad as them. But it isn’t as true. Even if America did do some of the things they did, it would be for different reasons and it would be done a lot cleaner. America cannot be compared to any other nation or people because there is no nation or people with the success track of America in wars or societal improvement.

You say that Russia fights insurgencies effectively. But they don’t, they are too crude for that, their methods too crude and their ideology too crude.

The people in Poland and Ukraine, rebel the instant they sense weakness in Russia. Does American want to emulate Russia’s failures with indigenous populations and rebellions? No, our objective is not to crush insurgencies, it is to make them disappear, permanently for all time, or at least as far in time as possible.

We want an Iraq where if we leave, they aren’t going to start rebelling against America. There should be no reason to, as with Japan. It has to be a partnership. But first, you have to eliminate the enemy, via crushing their armies and logistics first, before negotiating.

Russia never negotiates in good faith in the first place. So however brutal they become, they will always get more brutality out of the mix. The world is an example of chaos unleashed, chaos ontop of chaos, producing more chaos. Only America is an example where order has been imposed. And perhaps the Roman Empire, but they are ancient history, they no longer matter.

Whether you refer to the British Empire or Europe in WWI, everyone except America, acts like their sole objective is to create more wars and more death and more suffering of the downtrodden. Only America has successfully imposed order through chaos, and destroyed chaos with successful wars. No other nation may boast of the same. Not Britain, not Australia, not Japan in WWII, not China with Taiwan, and not Vietnam or North Korea. And certainly not Russia with their fallen empire.

I give more leeway when America is exercising power over death and life, than I would give to any other person or nationality. America has a success track of doing things well, of doing things via correct ethics, and still winning. I do not have to worry that Truman will drop 50 nuclear bombs if it wasn’t necessary to win the peace and future prosperity of the world.

I would worry if Russia was nuking people. And Pelosi being in charge of America, means American power will become more brutal and

I guess I need to work on my language skills. I didn’t mean they couldn’t be manipulated, I meant that they can’t be convinced to stop fighting.

“They always had natives defect to them for power rewards. Perhaps we should pay more attention to that.”

That’s a good strategy for empire-building. Not so good for building democracies, though. The fundamental feature of a democratic government is leaders who submit themselves to the will of the people. Power at the price of such restraints is nothing compared to the lure of unrestrained power, so we would have to either abandon “spreading democracy,” or make promises we know (and, thanks to our media, that all our negotiating partners know) can’t be kept.