Fitzgerald’s money saving answer to fighting the Jihadists:
“And can’t we, intermittently, using Special Forces, drones, and missiles from afar, from time to time disrupt any attempt to return Al Qaeda or any of a dozen terrorist groups to Afghanistan? Wouldn’t that make better sense? And why should we build up yet another Muslim country, when it is impossible for its Muslim inhabitants to abandon Islam and what it teaches them? And what it teaches them requires them to view us with permanent, deep, if occasionally hidden, malevolence.”
This is wishful thinking. No amount of special forces or drones will not defeat an enemy if you can’t find the target. Fitzgerald, like so many ivory tower dreamers, doesn’t know a tinker’s damn about asymmetrical warfare. Such a tactic practiced by the Jihadists is fought using the tactics of counterinsurgency. Yes, it does involve some nation building to win the support of the people you need to fight the insurgents. Yes, this tactic was successful in Iraq and it is being applied in Afghanistan by General David H. Petraeus. And, yes we want to stick around in Iraq, just in case we need a base of operations against Ahmamadnutjob in Iran.
I can’t believe I read Fitgerald’s page of drivel!
I believe the opposite. “Nation building” is the ivory tower magical thinking. It won’t work.