Why we won’t “win” in Iraq or Afghanistan

First, the definition of “win:”  The establishment of a sustainable government that will not promote or allow hostile actions against the US from its soil.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently mused in Foreign Policy about his thinking that led up to his (to him) ground-breaking revelation about what our military strategy in Iraq and, I suppose, in Afghanistan, needs to be.  As he put it:

“What was hazy then soon became our mantra: It takes a network to defeat a network.”

OMG!

I hate to be so presumptuous as to suggest to a high ranking US general that his conclusions are ignorant, but he makes it so easy.

No, general, sir, it doesn’t take a network. You have apparently been spending way too much time with Hillary. It takes understanding the culture and the supremacist, violent, deceitful orthodox Islamic ideology behind that culture to defeat a network of Islamists.  General, sir, not all “networks” mirror our own networks.  We cannot compare our version of networks to networks based on a totally opposite set of moral and ethical standards as our own.  General, sir, you are making the same stupid mistake as our military has made in the past and our federal government continues to make in assuming that our enemy plays by the same standards as we do.  You, General, sir, continue to view the enemy though our own colored glasses and not seeing, acknowledging, and acting on the objective reality of the enemy.

Take a look at General McCrystal’s thought process in excerpts of his article published here and be amazed, in a very disappointing sense.

General, sir, the mere existence of resurgent Islam in a nation guarantees hostile actions will continue to take place against the US.  No amount of democracy in an Islamic nation will reverse this reality.  In fact, it will energize and sustain it.  This is true in Egypt, in Jordan, in Libya, in Tunisia, and in Saudi Arabia.  The sooner we all realize that and act on it, the sooner we will quit wasting our dwindling resources and set our foreign policy on a productive course.