The eight year war in Afghanistan looks more and more like the war in Viet Nam.
Unwinnable by military power, yet lacking a comprehensive political strategy for winning support of the Afghan people, the war grinds along, consuming lives and resources, as it wears down the resolve of the Afghans and the patience of Americans. How long can we avoid looking frankly at what is realistically achievable? And that only after we clearly define our logistical goal there. If terrorism is our enemy, we need to coldly assess what is causing it, and stop fueling its growth. Drones and smart bombs are clearly not the answer.
There is still hope for Obama to act for peace. A significant part of his election support was from the peace movement; which has since waited for the change to happen on its own. It won't, without support from those who sent him to change policy. The dreadful resources of the war culture are firmly entrenched in DC, and Obama, if so inclined, can only challenge it with a popular mandate.
A number of well-known antiwar activists have signed onto a statement being circulated by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, calling for an end to US military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The statement and a partial list of signers are at http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1014/stmt.shtml.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
These peaceniks sound like the Jews in Germany in the early 1930's. How would the Jews have stopped fueling the growth of the Nazis? Obviously, withdrawal and complacency did not work well then. Why would anyone think it would work well now? It took a world war to shut down the Nazi cancer.
ReplyDeleteHow long can we avoid looking frankly at the nature of fanatical Muslim extremism? They are no different, and in some ways worse, than the Nazis. To be sure, they are NOT like us! The fallacy that our withdrawal will quench their fire is at the root of the current problem, because it results in Obama’s indecision to commit to a full, unrestrained, swift military victory. I don’t think there is anyone on the planet who can say that if the United States committed its full, unhindered military resources on that little shthole of a country, that we wouldn’t win that war in a matter of months. But we have all these politically sensitive rules of engagement. Don’t shoot here; don’t walk there; wait until you get shot at before firing back… That’s what’s killing many of our troops.
I’m all for getting out immediately if we are not committing fully and unrestrictively winning that war.
Everything cannot be analyzed by comparison to the Nazis/Jews in the early 1930's. You may see some similarity in tactics, but since the situations share no common attributes, tactical failure in addressing the Nazis holds no lessons for todays political strategies.
ReplyDeleteYou should try to percieve the populations of the countries in question as men and women equal to yourself in value, and approach them with respect. That is NOT the same as looking the other way no matter what they do. In fact, a lot of our current trouble in Afghanistan is a direct result of having ignored past criminal behavior on the part of our "allies" there, which is now proving difficult to control.
Your concept of deploying "full unhindered military resources" is simplistic in the extreme. I don't know what the word "shthole" means, but from the context, it's clear that you are advocating a military policy similar to that employed by Israel in Gaza last year. We will have to answer for our complicity in that crime, and what did it accomplish?
I'm so disappointed with the way the Iraq War went that I probably don't support it anymore. I supported it at the beginning because I believed that we needed a response to 9/11. It could be argued in all kinds of different ways that this was not the appropriate response to 9/11, but to be honest doing nothing, in my view, was not an alternative. Unfortunately, Donald Rumsfeld made a catastrophic mistake in the beginning by just sending 130,000 troops, and everything went south from that point on. At this point there just seems like we are fighting a lost cause. The terrorist infrastructure in that country has had a lot of time to organize and prepare for a long campaign. The cancer has already spread and I don't think anyone can stop it. Same as in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
ReplyDelete