In the context of Iraq, the United States has been adept at killing terrorists, moderately successful in promoting freedom and material improvement, tardy in its efforts to create an Iraqi national army to spearhead security and earn the respect of fellow Iraqis, and mostly unsuccessful in preventing Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, and Syrians from flowing into Iraq. Yet whenever all of these four requisites have not been met, failure has usually followed, despite overwhelming firepower—as for example in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Soviets indiscriminately slaughtered civilians, sought to impose an autocratic and foreign atheism on a deeply tribal and religious people, and were unsuccessful in isolating and killing the mujahideen, much less stopping the importation of jihadists and sophisticated weapons from Pakistan.
Hanson never pulls a punch, does he?
I think, however, this is one of his weakest pieces because it concentrated primarily on military issues.
It's the force of ideas which will win in Iraq. Ideas are every bit as potent as RPGs and nuclear weapons. If we don't arm ourselves with convincing ideas which defeat those of the insurgents, the whole enterprise will be lost.
And the fight of ideas should not be a particularly difficult one to win. After all, what rational individual would choose oppression over freedom, tyranny over democracy?
We are obviously not considering these issues in our work in Iraq. |
