The Problem of Counterinsurgency.

Will someone tell me how this strategy is supposed to convert an insurgency? Every step in creates more anti-US sentiment.

From an article describing a US raid on an alleged Mahdi weapons smuggling ring around Amarah,

Latif al-Tamimi, head of the security committee on Maysan's provincial council, said 16 people including two women and a child had been killed and 45 wounded in the pre-dawn raids. He said 11 were killed in Majjar al-Kabir and five in Amara.

Tamini called the operation a "catastrophe," accusing troops of firing randomly. Tamini said the Iraqi government should explain why the raids were carried out.

So, in this operation, the US successfully broke up one link of a weapons smuggling ring, but, in that operation, they also further enraged the people in Maysan. ((Reuters) "The suspects were killed by fire from aircraft, it said.")

The same problem is faced in Afghanistan,

In an operation backed by Afghan troops, jets on Sunday targeted a compound that also contained a mosque and a madrassa, or Islamic school, in the Zarghun Shah district of Paktika province. Early reports indicated seven children at the madrassa and "several militants" were killed, and two militants detained, the statement said.

Or maybe this one,

Despite the Taliban's quick claim of responsibility for the car bomb attack on a U.S. convoy that left four Afghan civilians dead, people on the street became enraged only after American bullets landed in the crowd, killing one and wounding two. Some 50 to 100 people chanted, "Death to America."

No, I don't have an answer. I'm just frustrated like everyone else.