Charlie Rose

REMant  01/13/2010 02:37 AM Report

I am sure we can do this, too, but for what reason, to what purpose, at what cost, and for how long? As Cleland said, this is Vietnam. It makes no sense except that it might at some enormous cost prevent an attack closer to home. IMHO, they are both far too young to actually know what they are talking about despite experience and position. I used to marvel at the Air Force's pseudo-strategic analyses years ago, and the similar Rand studies of Vietnam, but I see it has since morphed into a worldwide establishment spewing as much nonsense as the other half of the military-industrial complex. If we have insurgencies, as he says, because we have globalization, and I don't disagree with that, why not let globalization take care of them all by itself, unless by advocating military means you seek to in some way profit from it, or even sustain it? It also violates the basic rules of warfare, because it is never the territory, but the enemy you are after in a military action. But since WWII we are forever trying to win friends and influence ppl, which, ironically, they don't seem to be able to see, and the fundamentalists are no doubt right in viewing us as missionaries. If guerrillas do not pose a threat that exceeds the cost of eliminating it, then leave them alone to die out like the Indians, and try to get yourself out of the situation where you are vulnerable to attack. And if they do, then fight to eliminate the enemy wherever it maybe hiding. This is not social work, and I'm sure the local populations understand that, however much they may protest. I'd be the first to say (and have said) that treating criminals harshly does nothing to reform them, but they usually leave you no choice, and I think that's the case here as well. We cannot obsess over the ppl there, nor draw fine distinctions about who is an enemy and who is not. We either have to fight the war, or not, but not conduct a community action program, and esp not when it seems we are funding the enemy or potential enemies in the process. We look at the NLF and their Taliban imitators and say they are out-do-gooding us, but how can they be? Like the NLF, the Taliban will have to follow through to succeed, or they can expect the Afghan ppl to throw them out, and if they do follow through they will have created a state we not only can live with, but would undoubtedly be better than anything we can do, which would appear to be an assembly of warlords. Indeed, if all we can expect is ppl like Dostum, we may as well take him up on the offer to do the fighting. If they give sanctuary to groups wishing to attack the US and Europe then they can expect retribution, and they and/or the Afghan ppl will have to decide which they would rather have. There were two lessons of Vietnam, I think, the first that guerilla wars cannot be won, and secondly that they don't have to be. Like the business cycle, insurgencies are trying to tell you something about the way the world works, or doesn't work, and we'd be better off, as in the Vietnam era, of dealing with that beginning at home, if not, we should just trust enough in ourselves to let them alone. Speaking of home, it hasn't been mentioned by anyone yet, that the result of all these misadventures is inevitably a wave of immigrants given asylum here: Vietnamese, Salvadorans, Iraqis, etc., so perhaps it would just as well to give them all visas to begin with.

Arguing that the Taliban has no interest in helping the ppl, because they hide among them, is I think, an accurate perception, because they are, rather, like the NLF, being harbored by them.