Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Read Sam Smith on Three wars we’ll never win
Snipped from the essay The three wars we'll never win by Sam Smith. It’s unfair snipping a little bit of his articles, so I hope this entices you to click the link and read the whole thing. You’ll have to do that to find out what the three wars are that we’ll never win, ‘cause I won’t give it away here.
Consider what happened the other day in Times Square. In a few months it will have been nine years since something far worse happened in New York City, yet during all that time our country has not taken one significant step towards improving relations with the Muslim world. We have instead continued to support Israel's apartheid and its abuse of Palestinians, treated Muslims in this land like pro forma suspects of terror, escalated the war in Afghanistan and expanded it to Pakistan, including drone attacks on innocent households. All the time denying we were anti-Muslim.
The Afghan war, the second longest war in American history (after Vietnam), is also the second longest military failure in American history (after Vietnam). Again, leaving morality aside (since the media and our politicians find it offensive and cowardly), it can be said fairly that the major result of the Afghan war has been to increase Middle Eastern and Muslim hostility towards the United States.
This hostility has been reflected in a number of ways, but perhaps most interestingly has been the recent shift in the character of our most feared opponents from being little known residents of Pakistani encampments to being citizens of our own land. We have, you might say, domesticated Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This is not a smart move.
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