This has been a great thread, although I must admit that catching up on it after the fact has probably been safer than wading into the middle of it.

Unabashed, passionate, lots of bared teeth and flying elbows, but honest and reasonably respectful. A good show, really, and all contributors to it deserve to take a bow.

Of special interest to me was the fact that it was largely an argument among libertarians, ex-libertarians, and libertarian fellow travelers, except perhaps for Tina, who looks at the human condition and sees damage and woe, not opportunity. In any event, there didn't seem much place in the middle of this for a liberal pragmatist, a traditional conservative or a seer, which is probably why I took a powder early, and why shooter didn't drop in, or GC.

One other aside for Paul Dirks. There was that comment of yours setting out the habitual failures of the liberal imagination, followed by a quote from me on free will. I thought I might remind you that I am indeed a liberal, and that maybe at some point when the lava cools, we might discuss the role of stereotyping in discussions of ideological virtue. No doubt such a discussion would also engage Aych's ardor, once he recovers from the marathon today.

These are minor quibbles, though. I repeat my congratulations to all the doughty debaters today. It really has been a pleasure to lurk.

John Cole's Balloon-Juice is really quite good if you can stand a very high level of snark..

Mr Cole is a former conservative who has seen the light and now has done not really a 180 but maybe a 130 or 140.. The blog is still actually part of Pajamas Media, which is a neocon blog network.. John despises the neocons now as only a disillusioned follower can..

The commentariat there is about as intelligent as here but far more abrasive and there is a lot more humor, a considerable amount of it kind of coarse.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/

And if you are into military blogs there is Intel-Dump.com

The level of the commentariat there is I think the highest I've seen.. I keep a low profile because although I have military training these guys are pros and exceedingly knowledgeable.

http://www.intel-dump.com/

But I've been reading intel-dump for a few years now and just went back and looked and found this..

There is a poster there called FDChief who is possibly the smartest, most knowledgeable and most abrasive poster I have ever read anywhere..

I just wanna share this.. Utterly fascinating..

http://www.intel-dump.com/posts/1205027039.shtml

FDChief:My issue with all of this is that the very powerful player that DoD has become in the 21st Century U.S. tends to turn all this air-castle COIN building into foreign policy reality.

IOW, when you build it (a U.S.-policy-centric COIN scheme) they (the people who think that U.S. diddling around in the internal conflicts of crappy post-colonial, pre-Westphalian tribes-with-flags states) will come, ot of the woodwork, looking for missions.

If we still had the tiny, isolated, almost religious-order-like preWW2 Army all this would fall under the "policy implementation/technocrat" umbrella. We don't. Just as the DoD has effectively taken the much of the intelligence wheel from the CIA it has taken much of the foreign policy wheel from State. Check the discusson we had a while back re: AFRICOM. There's no real need for it. All it will do is produce a flagpole over a couple of thousand headquarters drones looking for a purpose in missions in Africa.

My take on this is: the trac record for Euro-American COIN in the Third World has been pretty bleak. Even when "successful", the success usually takes the form of empowering whatever group of expatriate or Europeanized natives that we like because they're "most like us" read "not like 99% of the local population". This group, which usually devolves into (if it doesn't begin as) a corrupt, inbred kleptocracy capable of running the "country" we're "fighting to protect democracy in" only by main force, is by its very nature a time bomb. When they implode - or are detonated - they leave behind a fragmented mess: Nicaragua after Somoza, Cuba after Batista, Congo after Lumumba, Vietnam after the Francophone aristocrats, Iraq after Saddam, Iran after the Shah.

So IMO the notion that we - the Army - should be thinking about the political big picture isn't just "important". In a properly functioning U.S. government it'd be "important". Given the presently dysfunctional political process and U.S. government, it's not just important, it's going to be critical if we want to avoid the fate of Imperial Spain and Imperial Britain. To be pushing the notion that we need to be capable of "fight(ing) real wars in the Middle East and South Asia" is not many steps away from pushing the notion that we SHOULD be fighting real wars in the Middle East and South Asia.

And we'd need to do that...why???

And to answer my own question: the only real reason to be fighting Islamic jihadists in south-central Asia and the Middle East is to prevent them from becoming a regional power with the ability to present an existential threat to the U.S. mainland. This ignores the reality that:

1. The jihadists benefit more from the mobilizing force of U.S. warfare in Islamic lands that they suffer in direct casualties from engaging U.S. forces, and

2. The likelihood of a blowback-related black swan generated by the chaos unleashed by our knocking over the native institutions (see, Iraq, invasion of) grows with every underfunded, undermanned, undrplanned, poorly-informed conventional expedition into this part of the world.

Add to this that the OTHER justification for these expeditions is ensuring the supply of petroleum. IMO this is like fighting over the plains of central Asia to ensure adequate horsehair supplies for buggy whips. We are soon, if not already, in a post-peak oil environment. Every dollar we spend fighting over controlling petroleum is a dollar we're NOT spending on the post-petroleum Manhattan Project we'll need to survive and succeed in the Post-petroleum Era.

Bottom line: these post-Imperial advenures are very likely to cost more than they produce in benefits. Bin Laden himself talks about that - his entire concept of operations involves goading us into rushing about the Islamic crescent trying to put out the fires of takifiri jihadism with the gasoline of CBUs and our undermanned infantry and armored troops.

So - if we can do this using local proxies, well and good. If we plan on continuing to spend blood and treasure to "slay Afridis where they run" we will quickly find, as Kipling's British did, they "they are cheap and we are dear."

Too rich for my blood. We need to find a smarter paradigm for the 21st Century.