Posted on 09/04/2009 6:42:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
Finally, some debate over U.S. war policy in Afghanistan. Or at least debate over George F. Will's call to pull the plug on U.S. war policy in Afghanistan, headlined "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan."
The negative response from conservatives was revealing. It showed that after eight years of America's post-9/11 war efforts, which started out as President Bush's vaguely named "war on terror" and never crystallized into a cogent strategy against the jihad driving the "terror," ambiguity and confusion still cloud the prevailing thinking, from the conventional wisdom to war strategy.
Most conservative rebuttals ignored Will's reckoning of just how grossly ill-suited Afghanistan is to the hallucinogenic U.S. policy of constructing a modern society out of dust as our military worms affection from a hostile population. Instead, they focused on the concept of leaving Afghanistan -- a move I, too, have advocated since April in my column and at my blog as a necessary precondition to better repulsing global jihad. Such an effort is, or should be, a multi-level campaign to reverse jihad's ultimate goal, which is to extend Islamic law by both violent and other means. In this larger context, Afghanistan is not only just one front, it is also a front too far.
Most of my conservative colleagues, however, see withdrawal from Afghanistan as surrender.
This assumption, based in the fallacy that U.S. forces are simply fighting an army called "the Taliban," rather than struggling with a culture called Islam shared by enemy and civilian alike, makes sense only if withdrawing from Afghanistan means ending our efforts against global jihad. The point of withdrawal is not to stop destroying America's active enemies in Afghanistan or elsewhere; this can continue from worldwide bases, or "lily pads," as necessary, as Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely (USA ret.) argues. The point of withdrawal is to stop trying to create an American ally out of Sharia-supreme Afghanistan, something we attempted at great expense in Sharia-supreme Iraq, and failed.
Of course, what animates and drives most conservatives today is their vision of Iraq as a "success," and their desire to repeat that "success" in Afghanistan. What has become increasingly clear to me, however, is that an infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an Islamic nation. This, in effect, is what our "nation-building" troops have been ordered to do both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let me rephrase: An infidel nation can indeed fight for the soul of an Islamic nation. It just can't win it.
It also turns out there is nothing there for infidels to win. After six U.S.-intensive years, Iraq remains just another OPEC-participating, Israel-boycotting, Hezbollah-sympathetic, Sharia-supreme, anti-U.S. entity with new and improved ties to Iran. Why? Our belief systems, Islam's and the West's, are so diametrically opposed that our interests cannot intersect. Left and Right in this country, however, scrub this truth and its centuries of confirming history from all policy -- an antiseptic way to view conflict in the world that will always miss the cure by ignoring the germs.
On this count, Will's column is no different, never once contemplating Islam. Which is why his conclusion may be a little fuzzy. Describing his "offshore" alternatives to basing a massive army inside Afghanistan, Will identifies the key mission as "concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters."
I'm not sure what Will means by calling Pakistan "a nation that actually matters." Certainly, Pakistan's nuclear arsenal "matters" because it could hurt us, and thus our national security demands an execution-ready plan to neutralize it. But Pakistan, a jihad-based culture, doesn't "matter" in terms of fitting into an anti-jihad alliance -- the ultimate goal, whether admitted or not, of efforts to work together. It can't. Quick facts: Pakistan's army's motto is "Faith, piety and holy war in the path of Allah." Seventy-eight percent of its people, the latest Pew Poll tells us, support the death penalty for leaving Islam. Not exactly our ideal match.
But we keep such politically incorrect facts out of focus. Then we struggle to see why things go wrong. More clarity is required. More debate is essential. Eight years after 9/11, this means finally reckoning with Islam -- discussing jihad, analyzing Sharia, understanding dhimmitude -- as a strategic factor in U.S. policy.
I am about as conservative as they come. I supported what we did in Afghanistan post 9/11 and what we did in Iraq through the surge. At this point in time however, I agree with George Will on both Afghanistan and Iraq. We should leave sooner rather than later, because it is a certainty that WE WILL LEAVE. There isn’t political will in the country to continue to send our troops to these wars and that will will decline rapidly. Better to disengage now rather than shed more of our brave soldiers lives.
We could always use Afghanistan as a study in the benefits of the removal of mosques and mullahs.
Feankly, I don’t disagree with the removal of troops from Japan and Germany. I think it’s high time they started paying for their own defenses. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, as a student of history, I don’t think we have the resources or public will to do any better than Alexander the Great, Great Britain (Twice) and the Russians (Twice). I have a son who is an SF Detachment (A Team) Commander and he will be going to Afghanistan in January and frankly I don’t know if anything he can acoomplish there will be any different than what I accomplished in Vietnam which turned out to be “not much”.
All I can say is, if I had a kid there (I have some friends there though), it had damned well better not be “surrender”...Will thinks his pen is mighter than the sword...gutless wonder....
The resurgence of opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan proves that the local forces can't handle the job. Al Queda and the Taliban will move in when the US moves out and we'll be back where we started from 7 years ago.
On the other hand, I don't see any exit strategy. I don't think the Iraqis or Afghans will ever be ready to assume the role we've been filling. Our allies are quietly going home and the enemy is as determined as ever to keep up the fight.
Finding the optimum strategy for defeating islamonazism is a subject on which reasonable people may differ. I have spoken to former military colleagues who have served in Iraq and Afganistan who might agree with George Will.
However, I think that the genocidal option (nuking them) is unacceptable to most conservatives as well as liberals. We would be killing 10 innocents for every enemy.
What we are dealing with is a world wide guerilla war with a religious ideology. As with all guerilla wars, the best guy to root out the guerillas is a LOCAL BOY with a gun and a knife.
The Afgans hated the Taliban and sided with us in ousting them. Since Al Quaeda is much better at killing muslims than infidels, having the locals do most of the fighting is only logical. We can back up the locals with airpower, artillery, intel, etc., but the locals must take most of the casualties.
Guerilla wars CAN be won. The Brits won in Malaysia and Kenya, but it took 25 years. I think the war against islamonazism will take at least 50 years.
The advance of civilization is on our side. As in Iran, the young people want to live that very attractive modern life they see on TV and the Internet.
We only lost Viet Nam because of communist infiltration and American’s short attention span. In the case of islamonazism, we can fight them now or we can fight them later, but WE MUST KEEP FIGHTING THEM.
If I had seen any hint that our leaders were willing to fight for a win, I’d still support the effort.
But there are too many self-handcuffing ROE’s, politically correct witchhunts on officers and men who were willing to fight like they mean it, and a total unwillingness to point at the root of the problem and solve it once and for all.
Our military is a finely honed sword that cuts deep and true. But it was put back in the scabbard before the job was done.
Using it as an anvil to hammer on Jihadists attracted to there as opposed to here does seem to have some benefits.
We’re doin’ it wrong.
Lets face it, there is no “Afghanistan.” There are a bunch of tribes whose attitudes toward each other range from distrust to outright hatred and contempt. We should exploit this and keep our troops out of harm’s way.
We need to recruit a “colonial” force to do the things we can’t and shouldn’t ask of our troops - like wiping out entire villages for supporting or sheltering Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Our presence should be limited to providing the air support and other support (mostly technological) functions the various tribes are incapable of providing themselves. We don’t sustain any casualties that we actually care about.
Eventually, one tribe will become supreme. Then there might be some hope of a “nation” of Afghanistan.
Will may be a dork but calling him one isn’t an argument, it’s lack of an argument.
The US military is not for nation-building.
The will to win against the very enemy that brought about the death of over 3,000 Americans; a strategy for victory outlined with an articulate mission statement with methods, end state and resources required to destroy that enemy and the ability to communicate that effectively to Americans to get behind it- all that starts at the top at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Do you see that happening? I don’t.
Its called cut and run.
This assumption, based in the fallacy that U.S. forces are simply fighting an army called "the Taliban," rather than struggling with a culture called Islam shared by enemy and civilian alike, makes sense only if withdrawing from Afghanistan means ending our efforts against global jihad.
She has a good point here, but the real problem is not whether we view it as surrender, but that THEY will view it as surrender.
Did we "surrender" in Somalia? Not really. We blasted the hell out of thousands of Somali militia, wreaking havoc on the warlord power base. Then we said "Screw you guys, we're out." They saw it as surrender and it led to a perception that we're weak and vulnerable, thus 9/11.
I don't know what the right answer is for Afghanistan (though I do agree that classic "nation-building" is utterly impossible), but I can't see how just up and leaving is going to help us in the long run.
Mope.
lol COFFEE Please! NOPE!
This is not about obama ( who I despise), this is about winning, they will not hesitate,why do we?
The world will never love us, so crush these animals and move on.
That would in the end save more U.S. lives than piece meal war.
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