If George F. Kennan Met Osama bin Laden

“Did George Kennan know the best way to fight terror?” is the question asked by a New York Times op-ed today. My question in return is: why is so much that appears on the op-ed page of our leading newspaper so fatuous?

In 1947, writes Nicholas Thompson, the author of a forthcoming book about Kennan, the late American strategist published his famous article in Foreign Affairs under the byline of X, setting forth the strategy of containment. The Soviet challenge, as Kennan understood it, Thompson explains, was political and not military, and it required a political not a military response: “The United States should refrain from provoking Moscow, whether through confrontation or histrionics,” Thompson paraphrases. “Patience would lead to success.”

At the end of W.W.II the Soviets were active in countries like Greece, Iran and Turkey.

The Soviets are making "first and foremost a political attack," Kennan wrote. 'Their spearheads are the local communists. And the counter-weapon that can beat them is the vigor and soundness of political life in the victim countries."

Though those countries escaped without the need for U.S. armed forces engaging in combat it wasn't long after that that the Soviet "Wars of Liberation" came about. The local communists armed and used the arms for wholesale killings.

Fortunately, American policy makers viewed [Kennan's] containment in military terms.

Eventually containment would mean soldiers in Vietnam and thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at the Soviet Union. Kennan opposed every one of these actions. . .“the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation."

Sure.

The article author seems to acknowledge that our military might did indeed help bring down the Soviet Union. But he says, We also know that a strong offensive policy has yet to succeed against Al Qaeda. I think that many would argue that; the original Al Qaeda is pretty much gone and in its place are hordes of suicidal nut cases and "lone wolves." So far.

The author made no mention of "Wars of Liberation" but it sure seems to me that that is what radical Muslims are doing today.

So why should we eschew a military response and try to make nice as the author appears to be saying?

Containment was a better policy than surrender, but it took Ronald Reagan
to go beyond containment and actually work for the demise of
“The Evil Empire.”

I do wish more folks would hear Michael Reagan relate his father's determination
to finally go forward against "The Evil Empire"...
and to WIN the contest.

Without President Reagan's clear and tenacious persistance
to neutralize The Evil Empire...
the world would be locked into an even grayer version of pre-1989.

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