and I've been attacked for brainstorming in these areas before but an attack like the one we're talking about seems to add credibility to my theories.

I'm not so sure we can firmly state that imperialism isn't destined to fail on its own even without intervention from the "good guys". I even ascribe to the theory that external intervention to stop the spread of it possibly causes more harm than good in the long run.

The Achilles Heel to bullying and expanding dominions is the supply line. It's an understandable goal for an ambitious and brutal leader to want to expand his or her borders until the entire Earth is under their control but the vastness of the global surface makes this unattainable and human nature and survival instincts of the attacked countries seem to guarantee not only the failure of the expansion but the eventual collapse from within of the regime with the ambitions.

That isn't to say that people should just roll over when attacked and their territory is threatened. The opposite is exactly the case. However, when faced with overwhelming force, the strategy should be minimizing initial losses of fighters and weapons and employ tremendous patience and discretion in counter attacks. The advantage comes as the attacking forces get further and further from the center of operations and their supply lines lengthen.

Let's take WWII for example. Germany could easily have attacked its bordering nations and maintained control over those smaller countries but they made a huge tactical mistake by taking on Russia, not because they didn't have a military advantage but because the landmass they wished to occupy was simply too vast. By the time they'd advanced far into that country while at the same time moving into other distant battles in Africa and Western Europe, they were sitting ducks. Their supply lines were too long and the strain on their resources was enormous. Their march forward was unsustainable.

Conventional wisdom keeps pinning the defeat of Germany on the United States entry into the war and I'll grant that we sped up the end considerably but I believe firmly that Germany still would have failed and our post war problems would have been a moot point had the evolution been allowed to occur without our involvement. Russia would have been devastated. Germany would have been slowly torn to pieces by insurgent attacks from all the territory they occupied. Eventually one of the plots to kill Hitler would have succeeded. Yes, huge losses of life would have occurred but I get the impression no more than the final total. They simply would have been spread out differently.

We're sitting ducks right now trying to conduct wars of occupation where our supply lines are much too long. Our goal, at least for most Americans, isn't expansion but our vulnerability is still the same. ER, I agree that it's surprising we haven't seen more of this. Maybe the insurgents were still playing rope-a-dope allowing us and NATO forces to pull in more and more hardware and personnel before the attacks really started on the resupply routes.

Art