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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (54672)	1/26/2007 6:24:19 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 90947

"Real improvement can be hard to measure if it isn't a large sustained improvement." Why do you say this? If we "clear and hold" a specific area, which I think is the plan, we should be able to compare violence within that area relative to violence in areas not yet "cleared and held". If we clear area it should reduce violence, eventually. But in the short run their may be counter-attacks. Also violence fluctuates. Short and even mid-term fluctuations could go in the opposite direction of the overall trend we hope to achieve by holding these areas. Eventually the trend down should be clear if the tactic is successful in an absolute sense. If the violence keeps going up the tactic isn't working. In a relative sense, compared to what we are doing now, the tactic could be a good idea, but be over come by other factors. But "good idea", or "successfully and putting downward pressure on violence", or "reduces the rate that violence increases", would not in the opinion of most people be considered the same as "successful", so if given sufficient time, no change (or a negative change) is observed, you can say the plan failed. My point is only that it isn't reasonable to say that quickly.