massive cultural change
 

its been said that a successful counterinsurgency takes about 14 years to take root. as the US counterinsurgency approaches that approximate time, what are your thoughts on artificial cultural change?

Which one?

any artificial cultural change you can think of. the most recent one i can think of is the one in progress in iraq. i'm sure there have been others though there werent as obvious because of war. the WoW cultural change is my personal favorite. after awhile people were willing to accept that contact with other people though an MMO was sufficient social contact

Are you talking about our efforts in Iraq? If so we are nowhere near the 14 year mark as the war was in 2003 and the insurgency really didn't kick off for another couple years.

Iraq was already relatively modern. Afghanistan is a completely different story. I would say that first generation true 'insurgency' in Afghanistan came around in about 2004. So we are looking at 2018 as the 14 year deadline.

Even so, Afghanistan now has a robust cell-phone infrastructure and people who live mud houses with out-houses routinely possess cell phones. The literate ones text and have internet ability. The people play sports and have bodybuilding (really) and other competitions. In the cities, women are often allowed to go to school, walk around unaccompanied, and without a Burkha.

These are huge social changes and they are spurred on directly by the wealthy in big cities having access to the internet and being exposed to other ideas and ways of life.

Under the Taliban Cell Phones, TV's, Internet, etc. were all banned.