“Tactical success is built on strategic quicksand,” according to Ralph Peters in the June 2010 issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine entitled “You Can’t Win Hearts, Minds of Radical Islam.”
Peters suggests that in order to regain our strategic footing, we need to see the Taliban as different from Al Qaeda. The Taliban is regionally located with local aspirations. In contrast Al Qaeda is an international organization with global ambitions. By failing to recognize these basic differences and exploiting these differences between them, Peters points out that our current policies encourage the two to cooperate against us.
Peters is insightful and points to our pattern of uncanny “self-delusion” and our failure to recognize the reality that our heavy handedness in Afghanistan has played into the hands of propagandists for jihad who have depicted us as infidel invaders. If you think this has no effect, then think of the fact that the Taliban’s resurgence has coincided with our troop build up in Afghanistan.
Perhaps we have failed in America to recognize the power of our religion or we have succeeded in minimizing the relevance of religion in our own culture, but the same thing that blinds us at home blinds us abroad. Peters’ article is loaded with wonderful quotes and quibbits:
“In Afghanistan, we’re imagining the enemy we want, rather than seeking to understand the enemy we face.”
“When we elevate political correctness over intellectual integrity in wartime, we throw away the lives of those in uniform.”
We have blinded ourselves with our political correctness and as a result our irrationality has us bogged down in Afghanistan and I see no success coming from that effort. Perhaps General McChrystal is lucky in bailing out and retiring when he did. As it is, his successor and former superior, General Patreus is facing a defeat.
And with that all I foresee is more American blood and treasure being squandered abroad meaninglessly. When will we learn the lesson that these United States of America need to allow others to determine their own fates much the same as we were permitted during our American Revolutionary War?