Thomas Friedman presumes to have SOME of the answers - but I have trouble buying this theory of his that the over the top military response is somehow going to dissuade people from resisting.
After all, as I saw when sitting with my Dad yesterday watching some DVDs, it didn't work for the Cylons.
I don't think you can enforce a civil society with the threat of violence alone. It's all stick and no carrot. Peace is a deal, and when people aren't getting what they want out of the deal, it falls apart.
To make a deal that sticks, it has to be fair. To some people, especially in the realm of the op-ed, the idea of fairness is thought of as an objective thing - something that you prove to the audience. So the op-ed columnist's goal is to convince their readers that their idea is the fair solution, so that the audience sides with the columnist against anyone who might disagree.
But that is, essentially, a sideshow. It doesn't solve the problem of creating a fair deal, it's just about cheerleading for one side or the other and can never lead to resolving the situation that they are discussing.
I had a game theory professor in college, Steven Brams, who has made a career of studying fairness. If there is one simple take-away from the class I took with him, it is that one of the best indicators of fairness is the idea of being envy-free. In other words all parties look at what all other parties have and universally feel that they wouln't want to trade their position for anyone else's.
What I find most interesting about that concept is that it's entirely subjective, but that its subjectivity is its strength. When both sides feel that they got the better deal relative to the other, neither has an incentive to rock the boat - they both go home happy.
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