How to Succeed in Counterinsurgency Without Really Trying

Josh Marshall lays it on the line, I think. We can look at the decisions the British made in India, Kenya, Malaya, where they had to find out the hard way that there was no squashing an indigenous insurgency -- there was only continued occupation and brutality, or outright genocide.

The Latin American model, to which Marshall refers, seems much more likely to me in the end. You want to talk about pure unadulterated evil, read about El Mozote, or pretty much any counter-insurgency op in Guatemala or El Salvador during the '80s. That's where this is headed, ultimately, toward a ruthless thug who keeps a lid on things and does what he's told, who values FDI over his own people.

It's just business. But in any case, it's a completely different lemon than the one we were sold, and should be consistently identified as such, instead of mooning over administration log-rolling and disingenuous sock puppetry.