Originally Posted by
Pragmatic Thinker
Steve you wrote -- "Second, while the administration is right that the foundation of the threat we face is the ideology which generates extremists, it has come up with a strategy that focuses on killing or capturing extremists rather than undercutting the hostile ideology. America's primary "partners" in the conflict--Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan--tolerate and even support the ideology which gives rise to violent extremists. Our strategy tolerates this. It is a fatal flaw"
I think that capturing/killing extremists (terrorists, insurgents, guerillas,...) is important in a sense that our message is that if you join these ranks bad things can happen to you. This gets solidified everytime we hear the enemy saying "I am slightly demoralized and scared because my buddy Abdul just got captured last night in a raid, I am not sure I want to be a jihadist anymore..." Of course, I made that quote up but my point is this is a measurable way to do something. Also, I disagree with those who would contend that capturing/killing these guys hurts us. I will say that we will never "win" in Iraq and Afghanistan by this method alone but I will say that it is important part of the overall strategy which is what the military was created to do. However, I think our civilian government (mostly Department of State) has done a terrible job politically getting these countries "fixed", which they say is difficult to do based on the security situation and foreign investors unwilling to risk life and money in projects. So the cycle continues, we attempt to improve security (capturing/killing bad guys) and on the cheap we try to "rebuild" but there isn't nearly the impetus in rebuilding as there is in securing. I believe a major flaw in Iraq came when this administration shut out any outside foreign investors from going into Iraq and rebuilding. This is not an example of our government doing what was best for the Iraqi people, but what was good for the U.S. businesses. It is a shame that Iraqi's still lack basic electricity and running water four years after the war.
Now you mention that we tolerate Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan which I am assuming means that our support to these regimes is causing the militancy in the first place and secondly these regimes are mostly non-democratic from a western point of view and there are strong undercurrents of social discontent within those three countries. Sooo...my question is what should we do? Cut ties with them? In the case of Saudi Arabia that goes without saying, we have strong economic ties with them plus long standing political relationships that I still don't fully understand but they are there; in the case of Egypt we have strong interests in seeing someone we can deal with in charge of the Suez Canal; and in the case of Pakistan I think we continue with poor foreign policy in that one... Bottom line, I am not sure I know how to defeat an ideology. I know how to find and kill individuals who would like to bring physical harm to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I don't know how you defeat that drive in them to commit these acts. When foreign policy (war simply being an extension) is driven by economics and politics, and not truly morally or security driven you are going to have a messy conflict. People are pissed off because the Americans came into their country under the banner of "bringing prosperity and democracy" and all that has ensued is lots of violence and little overall prosperity. We can't have both...we either commit to these campaigns to truly bring prosperity which in my mind would mean any company (U.S. or otherwise) that is willing to come in and rebuild infrastructure should be allowed that opportunity. Also, you realize that when a country contains several disparate ethnic groups who have a long history of hating each other that removing the dictator isn't going to create a condition where love toward fellow man will follow. It is called a power grab and everyone wants their agenda met. We should have learned this lesson in Bosnia and Kosovo, but the only guy who really sounded off was General Shinseki and look what that bought him...
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