Isn’t ecouraging legitimate democracy in the world in our national interest?
Like I posted in your Levin thread today.
The bottom line hasn’t changed since 911, since Pearl Harbor or before. If the US is attacked, Americans should respond accordingly and with the proper military action. Our elected officials have a duty as prescribed in the Constitution to protect and defend the people from all enemies.
However, the federal government should NOT make nation building mandatory. As always, the notion of spreading real democracy to the Islamic world remains a fallacy.
A Dangerous Delusion
We go to war to defend our interests, not to encourage democracy.
DUH.
Ilamic nations,socialist nations,communist nations turning towards democracy would certainly seem to be in the interest of America.
I don’t believe we can change Afghanistan. Our influence there lasts only as long as we spend money and lives to keep it. The place really is not worth the powder necessary to blow it to Hell.
Bump
The surge we need is at home: to roll back Islamism’s infiltration of our schools, our financial system, our law, and our government. In addition to not being universal, the “values of the human spirit” are not immortal. If we don’t defend them in the West, they will die.
———That says it all. As our troops and former President was protecting us from the physical attacks of Islamic Jihadists, we as a nation were not standing up against it’s creeping into our soceity...and the Van Jones’ of the world are here to promote it, and promote it into the white house, they did.
The surge we need is at home: to roll back Islamism’s infiltration of our schools, our financial system, our law, and our government. In addition to not being universal, the “values of the human spirit” are not immortal. If we don’t defend them in the West, they will die.
———That says it all. As our troops and former President was protecting us from the physical attacks of Islamic Jihadists, we as a nation were not standing up against it’s creeping into our soceity...and the Van Jones’ of the world are here to promote it, and promote it into the white house, they did.
We went to war in Afghanistan to stop Al Qaeda from killing innocent Americans - still a good reason to be there.
Particularly, but not exclusively, in fact, Western influences are johnny-come-lately when it comes to the foundational conflicts in Salafism. Those are ethnic: Arab versus non-Arab, specifically the Turks.
That is one reason Salafism isn't quite the monolithic opponent McCarthy is portraying it here. The halcyon days of the Muslim explosion in the 7th Century for which the Salafists yearn were the last time the Arabs had unalloyed charge, that being diluted by the Persian character of what became Shi'ism later in that century. In that sense even the Turks were johnny-come-latelies by nearly half a millennium.
It doesn't actually boil down to the simplicities put forward by either McCarthy (whom I generally admire) or Will; it doesn't boil down at all. What we actually have is a toxic brew of religious fundamentalism, anti-Western propaganda in tropes and techniques that originated in the German and the Soviet police states, and high-technology weaponry that enables a small, determined group of fanatics to exercise a destructive capacity disproportionate to their actual numbers.
It was actually the last of these that brought us into conflict in Afghanistan. The Taliban's enthusiastic hosting of al Qaeda training camps and subsequent refusal to disband them were the major - nearly the only recognizable - strategic objectives behind our attack on that country. I'll have to qualify my "small group" characterization there - by conservative estimates those camps consisted of some 70,000 combatants, many of whom we met later on the sands and in the cities of Iraq. But understand that this was a War on Terror in the limited meaning of the word - no "root cause" nonsense, no nation-building, but a direct engagement of people who had attacked us and meant to do so again.
What has succeeded that both in Iraq and Afghanistan is a body of theory so fraught with abstractions that it can make one's head spin. "Neocon" this, "Democracy" that, "Colonialism" whatever. Many of the people who earnestly use these terms appear to think they know what they mean by them but none of it suffices to provide much strategic guidance. That remains - "How do we best punish the people who attack us and prevent them from acquiring the means to do so at whatever arbitrary scale we decide is our benchmark?" We won't be able to prevent a single fanatic, a Sirhan Sirhan, from acquiring a pistol, for example, but we may be able to prevent a small group of them from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Or not, depending on who, how, and where. It is those latter decisions that must be made and promulgated by civilian leadership. And at the moment ours isn't doing it.
Is this related to Afghanistan anymore? In one sense, yes, at least if a re-accession to power on the part of the Taliban means a rebuilding of the terror camps. In another, not necessarily - the people who man those camps are elsewhere at the moment but certainly engageable should that become a strategic priority. It is they on whom we should focus, IMHO, no matter where they are - Waziristan, Iran, Somalia, back in Afghanistan, wherever. This will inevitably bring us into conflict with the current governments of those areas, one price they pay for providing sanctuary to our implacable enemies. Those issues are the real War on Terror, and if current American civilian leadership prefers to wave vague platitudes at the thing and attempt to shove the responsibility onto the military without the means to exercise it, we really will have Vietnam all over again.
>>> As military officials described it to the New York Times, “the overriding goal of American and NATO forces would not be so much to kill Taliban insurgents as to make ordinary Afghans feel secure, and thus isolate the insurgents. That means using force less and focusing on economic development and good governance.” THIS is consistent with the delusional belief that terrorism is caused by poverty, corruption, resentment, Guantanamo Bay, enhanced interrogation tactics, Israel — in short, anything other than an ideology rooted in Islamic scripture. (my emphasis) <<<
“This” seems consistent with standard US counter-insurgency strategy. McCarthy is showing either his ignorance or his dishonesty.
Overall, what a worthless collection of sophistries and special pleading. If McCarthy is any indication, it looks like NRO is playing footsies with those poltroons the paleocons.
The closing paragraph is excellent:
Instead of worrying about democracy in Afghanistan, we need to worry about democracy in America. The surge we need is at home: to roll back Islamism’s infiltration of our schools, our financial system, our law, and our government. In addition to not being universal, the “values of the human spirit” are not immortal. If we don’t defend them in the West, they will die.