I continue to be astounded that suddenly relatively sane people are talking about quitting in Afghanistan, given the consequences of such a course that immediately run through my head when I contemplate it (something I had no cause to do until recently).
Bret Stephens of the WSJ wrote of some of them this morning in a piece headlined “The Afghan Stakes.” An excerpt:
In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. A little less than a decade later, the Soviets left, humiliated and defeated. Within months the Berlin Wall fell and two years later the USSR was no more. Westerners may debate whether credit for these events belongs chiefly to Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Charlie Wilson or any number of people who stuck a needle in the Soviet balloon. But in Islamist mythology, it was Afghan and Arab mujahedeen who brought down the godless superpower. And if one superpower could be brought down, why not the other?
Put simply, it was the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan that laid much of the imaginative groundwork for 9/11. So imagine the sorts of notions that would take root in the minds of jihadists—and the possibilities that would open up to them—if the U.S. was to withdraw from Afghanistan in its own turn….
Personally, I didn’t need Mr. Stephens’ piece to help me imagine what would happen. If you do, I urge you to go read it.
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Simple question – how do we win?
Give us the scenario that results in the complete defeat of jihadists so that they never will threaten the U.S. again.
How many innocent lives are you willing to take to try and achieve that objective?
The Soviets lost because it is unwinnable. It’s like saying you’ll defeat all the ants in your backyard. You may get some, you may get most, but they’ll be there long after you are gone.
Not if you don’t leave they won’t be.
Speaking of which, I’m reading Flashman, a novel suggested by our friend Burl, which is set against the background of British blunders in Afghanistan in the 1840s…
So, if we go, the terrorists use our “defeat” as a recruiting tool. And if we stay, the terrorists use our being on their land and killing their civilians (though unintentionally) as a recruiting tool.
Yep, that’s it, Birch. Except that if we leave, we definitely lose.
By the way, we don’t have to look at the Soviets in Afghanistan to see how this dynamic works in the thinking of our enemies. Osama bin Laden drew a similar “lesson” from our departure from Somalia in 1993.
Hey, I’m not one of these people calling for us to leave Afghanistan (or Iraq, for that matter). At least not immediately. I do hope we leave both places sooner rather than later — I definitely do not want us to stay permanently. But destabilizing a country and then skipping town is just reckless.
Even if it were best off for America to leave right now, it is our responsibility to clean up our mess before we head back home.
One of the embedded reporters for NBC did a report today as he accompanied a group of American forces in Afghanistan.
Did you know that US soldiers cannot go into the Afghan homes to search for terrorists? This is so they don’t offend the Afghans by seeing their women uncovered.
And we’re going to somehow overcome centuries of misogyny and religious fanaticism? Good luck.
The Democrats are showing how phony their act was about their campaign against President Bush: “The real war is in Afghanistan, not Iraq. That is where we need to apply force and win.” Liars.
Weakling Republicans like George Will show their lack of understanding of the region, with silly assertions that we need to forget Afghanistan and secure Pakistan.
Radical Islam considers it one region. They need Afghanistan to topple Pakistan and obtain their nuclear weapons, for attacks on Israel, Europe and us, right here. They are using Pakistan as a haven to attack tribal leaders and national leaders in Afghanistan, just as North Vietnam was used as a base for attacking South Vietnam.
The big advantage on our side is numbers: the hard-core Taliban and Al Quaeda are not so numerous that we cannot eradicate them all with a concerted effort, just as we cleaned out their bases in Iraq. But they are like cockroaches and rats, in that you cannot kill them at a rate slower than they reproduce.