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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (122672)	1/2/2004 7:04:22 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<If, to stop them, we must kill them and some of their followers, that's OK by me.> That's the problem. Killing doesn't stop them. My main objection to your methods, is not just that it is immoral, but that it doesn't work. Without good intelligence, (which can only come from locals), our killing isn't selective. We end up doing area sweeps, using artillery in urban areas, and other methods of mass random targetting. Good intel is a prerequisite for victory. Otherwise, our killing kills mainly non-combatants, and never finds our enemies. That's what's happened, since 9/11. We have conducted ourselves so we are deeply and universally hated by the civilian population on the battlefield. We have killed far more non-combatants than enemy. We have just ratchetted up the cycle of mutual hatred and mutual killing, without solving anything. We are copying Israel's methods, which have failed to achieve victory, in 35 years of occupation. In Afghanistan, we have re-created the conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban: endemic violence, poverty, chaos, a shattered nation preyed on by warlords. I predict that, unless there is a radical rethink of our methods in Afghanistan, the Taliban will be back in power within 5 years. At the latest. In Iraq, our control is beginning to wane. The "Governing" Council now answers to the clerics, not to our soldiers. The locals are building militias and staking out turf. There are only two realistic outcomes in Iraq: 1. warlord state, like Somalia and Afghanistan. Kurd, Shiite, Sunni, Baathist, tribal-based militias partition the country. Maybe Turkey and Iran and the Saudis join the fun, backing proxies. 2. a unified state, controlled by anti-American Shiite clerics. The dreamy NeoCon idealists are out, and the Realists are back in charge in Washington. After two years of bluster and bullying, the NeoCons achieved nothing, with N. Korea, Iran, or Syria. All their ambitious goals will be quietly forgotten. The lasting legacy of this period, will be the wreckage of our alliances, and the isolation of America.