[lit-ideas] Re: Dark Thoughts on Iraq

Stan wrote of Marlena's posted strategy:

Nothing's changed because the oil spot strategy requires a major influx of military to handle the necessary security. If one area at a time is secured and expanded, it needs to be protected so the residents there feel able to function safely every day: take their kids to school, go to work safely, enjoy their lives again.

A friend interested in military history also sent me this, which confirms what Stan wrote:

yeah, that was the old "ink blot" theory from Vietnam, and it was in Foreign Affairs recently ... the problem is that it concedes safe areas to the enemy while you're waiting for the ink blot to expand, and then you're in the same kind of race we're in now: can we create faster than they can destroy? ... and we'd need a much larger military, something akin to the cold war force that Clinton halved during the fantasy of the "peace dividend."

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