When the United States was waging war in Iraq, Americans who criticized the war as illegitimate, self-defeating, and misguided were labeled by conservatives as un-American, weak, and unpatriotic. It seemed as if conservatives loved war, gloried in it, and wanted more of it.
Now that liberals control Washington and are faced with the decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan to fight Taliban and other terrorists, conservatives are not as bloodthirsty as they were before Obama's election. Instead of supporting our commander in chief they do everything they can to portray him as indecisive and incompetent. They even float the idea of pulling out of Afghanistan all together.
But this is politics isn't it? Yes, and it's politics in rare form.
But let us take a moment to observe just how much liberals and conservatives have in common when it comes to the war in Afghanistan. Both want democracy and stable elections in the country where US troops are fighting. Both want to minimize Afghan and Pakistani casualties. And both want to make sure we are maintaining strong allegiances with allies in the region. And I tell you both are extremely wrong.
Neither liberals nor conservatives are willing to do what it takes to actually make Americans safer, namely killing as many terrorists as possible as quickly as possible with the goal of defeating those who conspired to attack us on 9/11 so that we can continue to live in peace in the USA. If democracy is established, if civilian casualties are minimized, and if our allegiances with allies remain intact as a result of our efforts, then so much the better for us.
But this knee-jerk reaction to events, these wars of crisis management without strategy, of US aid and goals of spreading democracy - it's all hindering our progress in our war against Islamic Totalitarianism. We need to fight and then get out.
For a great article about the current state of affairs in our war against Islamic Totalitarianism, read "America's Self-Crippled Foreign Policy" from The Objectivist Standard journal.
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2009-fall/america-self-crippled-foreign-policy.asp
I think your comment "we need to fight and then get out" cuts to the heart of the matter because, quite simply, I don't know if that is really possible.
ReplyDeleteIf what America is fighting against is an idea, then as V says in "V for Vendetta," "ideas are bullet proof." You can't win an ideological war with physical weapons - unless you start talking about such things as extermination.
This is what a secular country does not understand - that we cannot win over an idea in something when we, as a people, believe in nothing.
I do agree about this "knee-jerk reaction to events" as you put it, and very well I might add. We keep jumping into things and then realzie that we have no idea what kind of war we are getting into.
there's no question that an idea cannot be fought with bullets alone. v for vendetta is an awesome movie by the way. but is it true that americans believe in nothing?
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