I found it. And the article wasn't by Fred Kagan, it's by Edward Luttwack. He has a few things to say, but what I was focussing on was this sentence: "It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless. Violence can work to destroy dangerous weapons but not to induce desired changes in behavior." BTW, he views diplomacy and concessions as equally delusional. His solution is to stop thinking so much about the Middle East: buy their oil (they have no other economy for most intents and purposes, so they HAVE to sell to us) and let them deal with their own problems.
Here is the name and link:
The Middle of Nowhere by Edward Luttwak, Prospect Magazine, May 2007
Host, I don't get into the details on a lot of this stuff because for the most part it involves two people talking past each other. I wrote a blog post on methods of discourse and analysis, and the limitations of logic, that you might find interesting - it's
here. Logic ain't all it's cracked up to be, at least outside mathematics.
If I were to try to address most of what you wrote I'd have to spend a long time diagramming your arguments, isolating premises, picking which were defensible and which not, and then reconstructing the argument, backed up with research. This forum is a form of entertainment for me - mental exercise, if you will. Here I'm just doing some mental noodling, not trying to win arguments or make definitive presentations. I respect what you do, Host - you put a lot of work into it, and I'm not belittling that by any means. I just don't feel I have to match it. I might do some detailed discussion from time to time, but it really would be as the mood strikes me.