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I'd be down with war if it means a deployment and a promotion.

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In case you haven't been paying attention, we already are importing those problems.  What we aren't importing is the solutions that have proven effective at dealing with them.

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We're in the civilizational war, me thinks. However, the Muslims so far have copied the American Indian playbook of being more brutal to each other than their outside enemies.

I'd go one step farther...there are moderate voices within Islam that could be successfully co opted, but most don't have the combat power to defend themselves. Sistani comes immediately to mind.

I would honestly make a public pronouncement that the US makes no stand on the nature of any recognized Islamic government, understanding that Islam itself is pretty muted on the issue of democracy. This would help square the circle of support to the Saudis or Egyptian military while demanding democracy in Iraq or Turkey. However, should the US be identified as the "Far Enemy" and attacked, we reserve the right to pursue the perpetrators anywhere in Umma. I would do everything possible to make attacking the Far Enemy a dangerous enterprise.

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Crook was brilliant on multiple levels. To me its indicative of our real interest in COIN or population centric warfare that Crook is a mystery to even Army officers, where everyone knows Patton. I'd argue that even Patton was the third or fourth best maneuverist in the history of the US Army, after Grant, Sherman, and Greene.

Crook's ultimate COIN innovation was ultimately extra-Constitutional...I don't think that anyone really thought that Indians should be arguing for their positions in a court, vs. in the field of battle. He figured out how to do it.

And of course the Air Force renamed Ft. Crook after a rich local banker's kid killed in an airplane accident.

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Grant?  The fuck?

Grant was a 300 pound fighter against a 180 pound boxer.

"Dance, bitch, dance.  I'm still going to beat your ass."

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The Vicksburg campaign? Shit, entire Western theater? Or, the greatest Joint campaign since the invasion of Mexico and not to be paralleled until 80 years later?

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The 9/11 hijackers came from comfortable, middle class backgrounds, many university educated. Three of the four 7/7 suicide bombers were born in the UK and had university educations. The morons who set themselves on fire trying to bomb Glasgow airport were a doctor and a engineer studying for a PHD. The two jihadists who murdered Lee Rigby were born in London and went to university there. The "underpants bomber" was the son of a Nigerian banker and studied engineering at University College London and a number of other universities arround the world. Nidal Hasan was both a psychologist and a major in the US Army. The current British poster boy for ISIS had been offered a place studying medicine at Oxford or Cambridge before he left for Syria. al-Zawakiri was a surgeon before he joined Al Qaeda. Not to mention the fact that even after his family disowned him and cut him off, bin Laden was a multi millionaire who started Al Qaeda with his own personal money.

The individual insurgent shooting up a passing convoy in Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia may be an illiterate goat herder who can count to potato, but the actual terrorists operating in the West are most certainly not impoverished peasants scraping a living in a refugee camp.

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Liberals know more about islam than muslims.

Which is not suprising.  They also know how I should spend my money better than I do.

They really are a superior form of human being.

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Extremists on both sides are a major problem everywhere.

Religion
 

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If Islam is one side, what is the other side? Atheist extremists, I assume?

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The raping, terrorism and the decapitating, or the condescending dirty looks?

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They also know more about Christianity and the Bible, but I can never get them to sit down with me for a Bible study so they can explain it to me.