Welcome, Obama, to the March of Folly [from the left]

I don't pretend to understand Afghanistan, but I do know it's a big, poor, backward Islamic country in Central Asia with all sorts of warring factions that have been at it for decades, or even centuries. I know that American soldiers have been fighting there for eight years and that the situation is still a huge mess.

And now President Barack Obama, after sending 21,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in March, is set to announce next week that he's going to send over another 30,000 or so, which will bring the total number of US troops in that big, poor, backward, bewildering, violent Islamic country to about 100,000.

I don't know much about Afghanistan, but I'm pretty familiar with America, familiar enough to know that America is not up for this. I don't know if it's possible to pacify Afghanistan - or Pakistan, Iraq, Iran or anyplace else in the region. I don't know if this can be done even with millions of American troops fighting for 100 years.

But I do know, as I think everyone knows, that America is not ready to fight Islamism like it fought Nazism and Communism, which means that in its wars in the Middle East, America is destined to lose. The only question is how long these futile adventures will last.

Actually, America fought one war in the Middle East that was not futile, not at all - the one in 1991 against Iraq. That was a truly "necessary war," to use Obama's term for the mess in Afghanistan. Back then, Saddam Hussein invaded an American-allied country, he electrified the entire Middle East, he was bidding for control, direct or indirect, over two-thirds of the world's oil - he had to be stopped and turned back.

So president George H.W. Bush set a very clear, reasonable goal - forcing Saddam out of Kuwait - then sent half a million soldiers to do the job, accomplished it in six weeks with minimal allied casualties, then brought the troops home, leaving Saddam and Saddamism in ruins.

That was a "good war." But Afghanistan? After 9/11, the Americans should have retaliated by carpet bombing select areas of that country, killing tens of thousands of people, terrorists and civilians both, to let al-Qaida, the Taliban and everyone in the Islamic world know that there is a terrible price to pay for attacking America and killing 3,000 innocents.

Instead, America decided to "transform" the region. The result is that another 5,000 Americans have been killed, soldiers this time, bombs are still going off every which way in Iraq, and now a new president, this one a liberal Democrat, not a Republican neocon, is driving deeper and deeper into Afghanistan.

And what about Pakistan? And Iran? Are they next? "All options are on the table," says Obama.

AMERICA'S PROBLEM is that it still wants to be a military superpower but is no longer willing to pay the price in blood and money, so it tries to do it on the cheap and as painlessly as possible, and winds up fighting endless wars with impossible goals in distant, hellish places.

If the US were serious about taking on a military challenge of this scope, it would reinstate the draft. This isn't Grenada they're dealing with, this is an enemy with outposts across the Middle East, and parts of Africa too.

And the US means to go to war against this enemy with a volunteer army that's drawn from less than 1 percent of American families!

"The problem in this country with this issue [of Afghanistan]," said Democratic Congressman David Obey, "is that the only people who have to sacrifice are military families, and they've had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war."

The American people won't stand for a military draft; it's a taboo subject over there. They won't even stand for a war tax; that's another taboo. But neither will they stand for the idea that America is not a military superpower anymore. And nobody in that country, not even the messiah of change, has the guts to tell them that they can't have it both ways.

So the US pretends it can fight World War III like Grenada, its army is so far beyond overextended that there isn't a word for it, the country spends more and more billions of dollars that it doesn't have, and this has been going on now for almost a decade.

At this point, is anybody confident that if and when the US gets out of Iraq, after all these years of horror and devastation, it will leave behind a stable, decent, more or less pro-American country?

I don't think so. I think if America knew right after 9/11 what it knows now, there is no way on earth it would have started these wars.

But now Obama wants more - not because he believes he can salvage the situation in Afghanistan, but because he's afraid of what will happen if he abandons it to the likes of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Which is a very legitimate worry. I worry about that too.

But the only way the US can salvage Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or Iran, or any country in the Muslim world, is to fight like it fought every other major war in its history - with a draft, with war taxes, with a clear, reasonable goal and the readiness to pursue it to the end.

Is America up for that today? No, it's not, I'm happy to say, because, like I said, even millions of American soldiers fighting for 100 years might not be enough to neutralize the threat of Islamism.

It's fight or flight, which means the only choice left is flight. The US is not a military superpower anymore, and it's just hurting itself and a lot of other people by pretending.

The time has come for America to wrap up these endless, failed third world wars.

It's not going to be easy. And the worst part is that after Obama deepens America's commitment with 30,000 new soldiers, getting out is going to be even harder.

“That was a “good war.” But Afghanistan? After 9/11, the Americans should have retaliated by carpet bombing select areas of that country, killing tens of thousands of people, terrorists and civilians both, to let al-Qaida, the Taliban and everyone in the Islamic world know that there is a terrible price to pay for attacking America and killing 3,000 innocents.”

He is spot on. America does not have the guts to do what every world leader has known since Adam and Eve, you only transform your enemies AFTER you have broken their necks. Trying to make nicey nice with the enemy is a losing strategy. America will fail in Afghanistan because it is more concerned with world opinion than success.

I do find it strange that such an article was written in the Jerusalem Post. If the Israelis would take their own advice, there would be no problem with the Palestinians. A couple of well placed nukes would take care of the problem. They will not do it for the same reason that America will not succeed in Afghanistan. PR trumps success. If you are not going to do what it takes to win, then it is better to surrender at the beginning. The only morality in warfare is victory. Everything else is immoral.

Nice find and an excellent opinion piece with which I agree with much if not most.

What a shame we have wasted 8 years and many brave American lives attempting to once again change other cultures.

It also saddens me that so many, especially on this forum view the Iraq and Afghanistan engagements as successful use of our military.

But of course we engaged our great American military with an enemy bent upon our destruction without a "Declaration of War" which translates into "politics" and of course "as usual".

This republic, alas, is so bereft of principled leaders and sadly has been for quite some time.

The US is not a military superpower anymore, and it's just hurting itself and a lot of other people by pretending.

This assertion is just silly, of course America is still a military superpower. But the author's assertion, once shorn of its hyperbole, speaks a greater truth. America is no longer a country that can afford guns and butter. Nor are we a country that can afford peripheral wars in peripheral places which bear no compelling and demonstrable relationship to our national interest.

We can no longer afford to fight wars in which we cannot define victory and we cannot describe what the battlefield will look like after we have won our victory. We certainly cannot afford to fight a war for reasons which we cannot articulate. All of these objections apply to the war in Afghanistan. Bumper sticker rationales no longer serve; they just sound puerile. America is flirting with economic collapse brought about by mindless government spending. The real threat to America's national security lies at home.

Congressman Obie is right for all the wrong reasons. He does not want a draft to increase preparedness or to spread the pain, he wants a draft to increase public opposition to the war in Afghanistan. He does not want a war tax to better fund the war but to increase resistance to the war. But he is right, we cannot afford this war. A generation from now as our children try to put back the wreckage of the American economy and preserve what is left of our democracy against the intrigues of the Marxist that home and the terrors of the Muslims abroad, they will look at the excursion in Afghanistan as the last binge of a country on a 20 year drunk.

This is not a war for national survival. There is no convincing argument which tells us how bleeding and spending to hold turf in Afghanistan will somehow protect the homeland against a strike by another 19 Muslim crazies. The idea that there is some connection with preventing another terrorist strike is absurd. Al Qaeda does not need Afghanistan to produce another 19 suicidal maniacs, they can comb every godforsaken Muslim corner of the earth and find plenty of them out of the census of 1 1/2 billion believers.

If I were Osama bin Laden and I wanted to conduct a jihad against America, I would inveigle America into a war in Afghanistan. Let America spill her blood and treasure into the sands of Afghanistan as she goes broke at home and hastens the day when America is no longer a military superpower, and, indeed, hastens the day when America is not a superpower of any kind. When America is finished bleeding, Osama will simply walk back into Afghanistan and have it if he want it. But why would he want it when America will have so enervated herself that she is ready to succumb to sharia at home?

The war on terrorism is a war of intelligence that must be won ultimately by the Muslim world motivated to save itself from Islamism. It cannot be won by America putting boots on the ground from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the mountains of western China in a quixotic hope to stop terrorism by occupying the whole Muslim world. America must be clever as a serpent and select the inflection points where we can act with decisive power. The Arab street is not impressed by apologies or professions of goodwill, it is impressed only by the ruthless application of power. Afghanistan is not a theater where we can exercise our power cheaply. The author is wrong, we must exercise our power cheaply or not at all because we do not have the financial wherewithal to squander our treasure.

The battle for the survival of America is not in Afghanistan but at home.

Although I agree with most of what you state there are a couple of points that I believe should be added.

Afghanistan is a NATO war. Had the US done this on our own, I believe it could have been done faster and with less loss of life. Had we bombed the hell out of them and unleashed our military this war would have been over years ago. Just my opinion. Had we put Afghanistan out of her misery, it would have sent a message to every other country and terrorist in the world that you can’t screw with America and not pay the consequences, period.

Bush Sr. did not win a war. He succeeded in expelling Hussein from Kuwait and left the Iraqi army mostly intact. Truth is we should have destroyed them completely, but that’s hind sight. Bush would have had instant problems had we followed the Iraqi into their own country when our stated goal was only to expel them.

Contrary to popular complaints, we DID win the war in Iraq. The problems we created were in winning the peace and in that we were not as prepared as we should have been.

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