Yeah, that was me, alone in my apartment on September 11, 2001, yelling “Nuke Afghanistan!”
Diana West writes:
I decided to ask someone with real military experience how we could fend off jihad without further digging ourselves into Central Asia. I called up retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, one of the few top military leaders who talks on the record, to ask for his strategy recommendation for Afghanistan.
“Basically, let it go,” he said.
(…)
“There’s no permanent force,” the general said. “That’s the beauty of it.” We watch, we wait and when U.S. interests are threatened, “we basically use our strike forces to take them out, target by target.” This would work whether the threat came from Al Qaeda, Pakistani nukes or anything else.
He continued: “This idea that we’re going to go in and bring democracy to these tribal cultures isn’t going to work. If we have a problem with terrorist countries, like Iran, it’s a lot cheaper to go in and hit them and get back out.”
In other words, don’t give up the battle; just give up the nation-building. “It’s up to somebody else to build nations,” the general said. “Not us.”
Yeah, the US (re-)built up Japan and Germany. After it wiped them out.
For me, the flaw in Michael Coren’s impassioned argument here is the false premise of “we” and “they”; yes, “we” supported “them” twenty years earlier but not today — but both the “we” and the “them” are not the same individuals from twenty years ago, and the circumstances have changed.
(It’s like people who run pointless spreadsheets “proving” that Team X consistently beats Team Y on home ice — without considering that “Team X” and “Team Y” consist of an ever-changing roster of individuals, and that no such thing as “Team X” actually exists as a static entity.)
However, I share his frustration.. To my mind — and he doesn’t think this way and never would, believe me — the people of Afghanistan simply aren’t worth it. There, I said it (again). I’m going to hell anyway, so…
They are backward, violent, uncivilized, illiterate people who indulge in child rape (of both sexes), really don’t contribute anything to humankind (unless you consider heroin and some rather spectacular floor rugs a contribution) and they seem stubbornly determined to stay that way.
The Germans and the Japanese at least had some temporarily forgotten, centuries old traditions of civility to re-discover, with our assistance. The same cannot be said of our current enemies.
