I saw a report on ABC News tonight that a Lt. General Ray Odierno believes that by talking to insurgents in Iraq, they "can convince 80 percent of Sunnis and Shiite insurgents to lay down their arms."
That would be nice, and undoubtedly would be an improvement and mean fewer deaths, but it's not going to solve anything fundamentally. The basic problem is that any society requires just about unamimous consent of the governed in order to function properly. If even 1% of 1% of a population is not willing to peacefully accept the status quo, and is willing to engage in terrorist attacks, you cannot have a functioning free society.
This is why the Bush Administration's whining a year or two ago about how the media were "only covering the bad news" and were "ignoring the good news" in Iraq was so bogus. Even if true (and that's doubtful), the fact is that if even a few people are disgruntled enough to go violent, that was the most important thing you need to know about what's happening in Iraq, because it ruins any chance of a social compact, and the media would be right to focus on that.
If you have any doubt about that, look at the impact on the metropolitan Washington DC area when two (2) guys decided to start randomly shooting civilians. The sniper killings significantly disrupted an entire city for weeks. I remember going out on the playground by my house with my newborn daughter (who was born as this was taking place) and sons and being the only people anywhere in sight; many people were apparently afraid to venture outdoors to such a space.
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