Obama and his Generals

What is a future military victory in Afghanistan? Some say we can create a national army that will fight the Taliban. We cannot teach the Afghans how to fight, they have had plenty of practice doing that. When not fighting invaders they fight amongst themselves.

They could remind us how to win. We used to know how to do that and we did it.

Will we speak war in a language the Afghans understand and kill offending tribes, destroy their villages and fields? Will we destroy their will to resist as we did to the Japanese and the Germans? Will be cower them and offer the sword or the cross and convert them to Western ideologies? No, but that is how military victory is achieved.

That is not the way of modern mankind.

Will we reduce their love for opium? It has increased since the Taliban were ousted and is now traded throughout all of Europe. Opium is used to addict young woman from Eastern Europe who are then traded through Muslim Albania and Kosovo to Western Europe and the Middle East.

Will nineteen year old marines, the products of American high schools spread a superior culture to the Afghans?

Will woman be liberated? Will there be religious tolerance? Will tribalism be dispersed and political grievance be debated and settled by constitution and law? Will a father accept his daughter's decision to marry a Christian? Will a town or village accept a Christian church?

What will change in Afghanistan that will be worthy of thousands more Americans killed and tens of thousands more maimed?

Is Afghanistan worthy of the expenditure of US treasure borrowed from the Chinese, while the Chinese increase economic and military strength on a global scale. Consider the absurdity of the US wasting assets in Afghanistan trying to convert Islamic fundamentalist minds and hearts while China buys up resources in the Americas by the billions using US dollars.

Our cost of running Government in the US is in deficit $1.4 trillion this year alone. How does that improve US security?

The stated and restated US strategy is eliminating al-Qaeda, but al-Qaeda has substantially dispersed and relocated. Islamic extremism has metastasized into the Internet and has established itself in Muslim communities in every country including the US.

Multiple invasions of Afghanistan have not reduced Islamic fervor; It has made it worse both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The same occurred in Iraq. Saddam Hussein restrained religious extremism in Iraq, but today extremism is more prevalent than it has ever been.

There is simply no evidence that the US and its allies are going to make an Islamic country less militant by occupying it.

We do not have the courage to identify the real problem which is embedded in the religion itself. Islam is the problem. We choose not to accept that. Our leaders specifically deny it.

The Bush Administration convinced itself and much of the country that it would rescue Iraq from itself. Freedom bells would ring and all would be well . A new dawn would arrive and change would sweep through the Islamic world. Bush sincerely believed in a reverse domino effect. A new age of enlightenment would overwhelm the thinking and culture of 1.5 billion Muslims.

How has that worked out?

Obama does not believe for one minute in the mission in Afghanistan. He is not going to give his generals what they say they need. That could be a good thing because politicians and generals are often wrong in both concert and in opposition.

However, Obama does not have the courage to take a stand of conviction, act upon it, and see it through regardless of the political consequences. We will plod on.