The War on Terror is sometimes referred to as a counterinsurgency designed to build Afghanistan and Iraq into stable nations that do not cause problems with their neighbors.

Most people understand that radical Islam is not located in a specific country and that radicalism is not restricted to Islam, but that radicalism has a strong correlation with economic and educational factors.

The basic requirement for a successful counterinsurgency is that the government against whom the insurgents are fighting be more powerful than those insurgents in every respect. Another important factor is that if the insurgents are not clearly identified politically a counterinsurgency may be not a counterinsurgency at all but a more conventional conflict whose boundaries have simply not been clearly defined.