In a better time, when the burdens of war were shared by an engaged nation and not shouldered exclusively by military families making up less than 1 percent of the population, the high farce that is the Afghanistan mission would have been obvious before President Obama uttered one word on Wednesday night. All you’d need to know is the story that came to light the day before.
Turns out that the U.S. government has embraced a core tenet of sharia — that archaic corpus of Islamic law that Mitt Romney recently assured us would never gain traction in America. Patrick Poole reported at Pajamas Media on Tuesday that the secretary of the army has just granted “conscientious objector” status to Pfc. Nasser Abdo, a Muslim American soldier who refused to deploy to Afghanistan. Heeding the admonitions of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood operatives, the Pentagon accepts the claim that sharia forbids Muslims from assisting infidels in a war against Muslim forces in an Islamic land.
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News Flash One: The war in Afghanistan, an Islamic land, is a war waged by infidels (that would be us) against Muslim forces — the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, etc.
News Flash Two: The operating theory of the American counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan is that the hearts and minds of the population of this tribal sharia society will side with us non-Muslims in a war against their fellow Muslims, most of whom are also their fellow Afghans.
Which is to say, our strategy is insane.
That does not mean our troops cannot kill a goodly number of jihadists. They have done that, and they will no doubt continue to do that as long as U.S. and allied forces remain in Afghanistan. Naturally, the number of terrorists we manage to get will dwindle as we draw down, while our diminishing numbers will make our own troops increasingly vulnerable to attack. But, sure, we can stick around forever, killing pockets of jihadists and overtaking their strongholds, however temporarily.
That, however, is not victory. It is an ever-worsening stalemate. Victory, under our chosen strategy, can never be achieved. That is why Obama, Gen. David Petreaeus, and COIN enthusiasts everywhere resist mention of the V-word.
“Victory” has been downgraded to “success,” but even success is not much discussed — and that is because, as conceived, success is a pipedream too. The idea is that we stay and hold the Taliban et al. at bay until we have finally trained enough Afghan soldiers and police officers to fight the Taliban for us. Because once we win over their hearts and minds, the theory goes, these Afghans will believe they are actually fighting the Taliban for themselves — fighting “their war,” not ours, as the heady plan was explained by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former theater commander and Kennedy School fellow who now teaches international relations at Yale. It’s all very cerebral, psychological, and sophisticated, the kind of war professors could love.
There’s just one problem with it. Okay, there’s a ton of problems, but let’s get to the big one: If we acknowledge that sharia is a valid reason not to send an American Muslim to fight against his fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, what on earth makes us think the Afghan Muslims are going to fight their fellow Afghan Muslims in furtherance of American national-security interests?
The sharia objection Private Abdo successfully posed to his deployment is not frivolous. To the contrary, from the perspective of a devout Muslim, it is ironclad. The animating theme of Islamic law is the supremacy of Islam and the imperative that it reign over the earth, that Muslims overcome non-Muslims. Consequently, infidel forces are generally regarded with hostility in Islamic countries (particularly if they are pursuing their own, rather than Islamic, interests). This is why politicians in the new Afghan and Iraqi “democracies” get such mileage out of America-bashing. Their populations, which are nearly 100 percent Islamic, despise America. In these places, the very thought of Muslims helping non-Muslims make war against Muslims is anathema.
Reliance of the Traveller, the classic manual of Islamic law accepted throughout the ummah, instructs believers that there is nothing “more heinous in Allah’s sight” than “the killing of a believer.” How, you may ask, are we to convince Afghans that when we kill Taliban operatives we’re not killing believers, and that when they kill them for us, they won’t be killing believers either? Here, our Beltway solons get downright Jesuitical, maintaining that these Taliban characters are not really Muslims but, yes, “violent extremists” who have perverted Islam. But behold: Even in the West Wing faculty lounge, they don’t really buy this fairy tale. That’s why such pains were taken to give Osama bin Laden a fastidiously Muslim funeral, during which American naval personnel actually prayed for Allah to pardon him and grant him every blessing of paradise before feeding him to the sharks.
So why exactly did O'Bama send in another 30,000 ground troops to what was once called "the good" war? Merely to avail himself the opportunity to extract them right before an election? This is as serially incompetent as LBJ's Vietnam. The fortitude of those who serve is undoubtedly limitless.
If one would take the trouble to actually read the Qur'an ("the words of Allah") AND the Haditha (the words of Muhammad)
one would understand that McCarthy is correct. For the life of me, I simple cannot understand why highly intelligent, highly
literate people , concerned with these matters, steadfastly refuse to read these primary sources. Is it fear? Laziness?
Indifference?
The final part about breaking the will of the enemy seems to be large gaping chasm of blackness over which the Obama administration strides, with chin jutting forward in some semblance of amiable leadership. You cannot win any war by half-measures. What kind of Algonquin roundtable would have brought peace to the world in the 1940's, if we just had a chance to sit down with, say, a Tojo, or a Hirihito, and explained to them how giving up their arms and their empire-building was really, really, in their best interests?
Wars end when the enemy realizes there's no more point in fighting, that the battle and war are lost. If the enemy's idea of victory is to snipe at soldiers, blow up the occasional humvee, and terrorize a populace stuck firmly in the 12th century, well, there's no will to break there. There's no government to take down. There is little in the way of commerce that might provide hope to the hopeless.
All this to say, both Obama's increase in troops and his declared withdrawal timetable are monuments to his political calculations, and he should always be viewed in that light. It demonstrates his complete lack of belief in mission, and lays bare and naked his unwavering ambition to be president. Not that he's interested in leading. He's just interested in being loved for being in the job, and sadly, I think he thinks that a re-distributive Republic is what will generate the most love for him.
Excellent article. The sooner that practicable and safely we get out of there the better. If the Afghans do not want to sent girls to school and stone adulterers is not our problem, it is sad and theirs. For any future Afghan government the messagge should be clear, harbor terrorist camps and the retaliation will be devastating.
Once again Mr. McCarthy's great post keep me coming back to NR...w/o McCarthy I'd tend to avoid the Trotsky-cons residing here since Buckley purged the better Cons.
After the "drawdown" there will be twice as many US troops in Afghanistan as when Obama was sworn in. The idea you're trying to convey that Obama's somehow soft on the Taliban is complete nonsense. He's even expanded the war across Afghanistan's borders without a shred of congressional oversight. The problem with Obama's foreign policy is not that he surrendered the war on terror; it's that he escalated it.
Mr. McCarthy is largely correct about Muslims not wanting to help infidels kill fellow Muslims, even barbaric Muslims like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But he leaves out 2 major exceptions that undermine his argument:
1) After the 9/11 attacks infidel American troops invaded Muslim Afghanistan and worked with Muslim Northern Alliance tribes to overthrow the Muslim Taliban savages who were ruling the country.
2) When infidel General Petraeus took command of the Surge composed of infidel American troops which won the Iraq War, the infidels won with the critical assistance of of their former enemies, the Sunni Muslims in Anbar Province. During this "Anbar Awakening," the Sunnis sided with the infidels to destroy Al Qaeda Muslim savages who the Sunnis considered a much bigger threat the infidel Americans.
Given these 2 major examples of Muslims helping infidels kill their fellow Muslims, Mr. McCarthy's argument is obviously not airtight. During the long years of the Terror War ahead that we Americans must fight, I say this: let us clever infidels find more opportunities to get some Muslims to help us kill the extremist Muslims who are a threat to us both.
Mike caton, I hoped there was at least one other person who felt as I feel and did what I did about it. Pleased to meet ya.
Thanks to an excellent Bible teacher, I was made aware of the insanity that is to be found in the Qur'an. Several years ago, I found an online version translated by an authoritative Muslim group, downloaded it and copy-pasted it into Word which allows me to do word and phrase searches. It embodies all that we might consider diabolical.
Question for you or anyone else that may have an answer. Why have Judaism, Christianity, religious historians or historians in general, allowed such an utter historical deception to go un-challenged? As far as my research has gone, I cannot find a single historical claim to descent from the Biblical patriarchs other than from the actual descendants, the Jews, prior to Muhammad’s claims.
These descent claims in the Qur'an should be enough to disqualify it as a recognized or venerated religion, let alone one of the so called big three religions. The religion of the area prior to Muhammad’s Islam, made no such claims. They were pagan and worshiped the moon and al-Hajr e Aswad the “black stone” that is in Mecca and the focal point of the Hajj.
As for your question, laziness first then fear. Here are some historical quotes about Islam. External Link
Mr. McCarthy, I asked you this on a previous thread. I don't know if you read these comments, but can you explain to me how you would define victory in Afghanistan, and how we can achieve that victory? You talk of breaking the will of the enemy, and compare it to World War II. Well, what you don't understand is that fighting a civilized government is not the same as fighting the Taliban. Oh whom, there are, by some estimates, only 100 fighters.
I believe that the strength of the current Taliban, which is practically nonexistent, is being vastly overstated so as to keep us in perpetual warfare. If today's conservatives had their way (with the exception of people like McCarthy and Steyn) we'd still be occupying not only Germany, Japan, and Cuba, but the former Confederate States as well.
As usual McCarthy writes very well, except he is writing about something he does not know first hand. dltkofan is correct in his points, and additionally McCarthy is incorrect in his assertion that the Taliban are largely supported by the population of Afghanistan. That is grossly wrong. The Taliban terrorized most of the population of Afghanistan and is despised though still feared by most of the population. The average Afghani does not like, and mistrusts foreigners (really can't blame them with their history, and current lack of reliable news or leaders). The average citizen of Afghanistan wants to live, to have a higher standard of living, and to raise their families. Many of them I met had ideas for starting new businesses and expanding their current properties and business. Yes they took well paying jobs with the US and coalition forces, so did a lot of US citizens. I do not see that as a problem, or even why it was mentioned. I liked the citizens quite a bit more than the citizens of Iraq. They were in general honest, open, friendly and disingenuous. The politicians and so-called leaders were a different matter. Good article, but try a little first hand investigation first - or talk to some of us who spent a lot of time there.
Two questions come to mind after finishing Mr. McCarthy's excellent post:
1) IIRC, to claim conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, an individual had to demonstrate his objection to ALL WAR, not just to the one then going on. If my recollection is correct (and it's been a long time, so it very well may not be), then if Pvt. Abdo does not object to ALL WAR, but merely the location and opposition force of the current war, how does this meet the U.S. military's historical meaning of conscientious objector? and
2) If Pvt. Abdo bases his claim to conscientious objection on tenets embodied in sharia against assisting infidels to kill Muslims, does not sharia (or the Koran, or somewhere) also require the conversion or, failing conversion, the killing of infidels? How does the Pentagon know that Pvt. Abdo is not another Major Hassan in-waiting? And, if he is not, then is it that Pvt. Abdo gets to pick and choose which tenets of sharia, etc., he gets to follow?
Mr. McCarthy is good at pointing out the problems America faces in the War on Terror but I've never seen him offer a long term solution. He keeps ruling out solutions. He has stated before that George W. Bush and Bush's fellow Neocon's project of fostering democracy in the Middle East to undermine Al Qaeda is a fool's errand. McCarthy may well be right. So let's forget about "draining the swamps" as the Neocons say. What other options are there besides spreading democracy?
In this article McCarthy rules out classic counter-insurgency tactics. He says we can't win in Afghanistan by winning the hearts and minds of the population because the population are the bad guys. (I get the impression from reading McCarthy that all billion plus Muslims in the world are the bad guys.) I've already pointed out in my post below that McCarthy is partly wrong about counter-insurgency not working; Northern Alliance Muslims in Afghanistan and Anbar Sunni Muslims in Iraq have already helped Americans kill their fellow Muslims in those countries. But let's give McCarthy the benefit of the doubt and assume those incidents were isolated cases not to be repeated. Ok, let's scratch off classic counter-insurgency tactics for the Terror War. Those tactics worked in America's occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War and for the British against Communist rebels in Malaysia in the 1950s and lots of other places over the years, but they won't work against extremist Muslims now according to McCarthy.
McCarthy says counter-insurgency / nation building only works after a total military victory and he sights the post World War II examples of Germany and Japan. Surely McCarthy knows defeating modern nation-states like Germany and Japan in conventional wars isn't the same as fighting a religious-fascist political movement like Al Qaeda that is spread over dozens of countries. Does he expect the US to invade and occupy every Muslim country and nurture them along to democracy like we did Germany and Japan? Of course neither McCarthy or anybody else is advocating that. America can't afford the cost in our blood and treasure. So let's scratch off the option of winning the Terror War with a Clausewitz decisive military victory that worked on the Japanese and the Germans.
A cost effective way to end the Terror War tomorrow is to blast every Muslim country off the map with America's nuclear arsenal but McCarthy and almost nobody else is going to advocate that. That solution is quick, 100% effective and affordable. But alas nothing is perfect. A voting majority of Americans think vaporizing over a billion people is morally objectionable.
Ok, so McCarthy says the Neocon democracy guys are wrong and the counter-insurgency guys are wrong. We've also ruled out a Clausewitz style military victory and nuking all the Muslim nations into oblivion.
What is left to us? We can use America's special forces troops, high tech drones, CIA assassins and so on to at least buy time and keep the enemy off balance and confused. McCarthy isn't even fully on board with that. He doesn't rule it out but he isn't enthusiastic either as cited by his statement regarding Afghanistan "But, sure, we can stick around forever, killing pockets of jihadists and overtaking their strongholds, however temporarily.
That, however, is not victory. It is an ever-worsening stalemate."
So ok Mr. McCarthy, please stop your gloomy complaining and give us your silver bullet solution to the Terror War. I doubt you have one, but don't worry, nobody else has either.
Sadly, I personally think a grinding, weary stalemate is the only option open to us for many years to come. We can tilt the odds some in our favor by stopping now all Muslim immigration the the United States but everybody knows that isn't going to happen. So we just have to muddle along as best we can, killing some terrorists overseas and trying to prevent the ACLU from helping the terrorists blow us up here at home. Maybe our grandchildren will get lucky and Islamic radicalism will implode by itself over time like the totalitarian threat of the previous century, Communism. In the meantime, get used to the stalemate. If anybody outer there is smarter than Mr. McCarthy and me and has a silver bullet solution to radical Islam, please write in and tell us.
