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Afghan withdrawl strategy
The news is full of reports about how badly NATO is doing in Afghanistan. It seems as though we've built a lovely military machine for stomping the **** out of Russians in Germany, but it's unprepared for nation building in Afghanistan. So now the talk is of sending tens of thousands more troops (which may not even help matters) or of tucking our tail between our legs and slinking away.
One idea I haven't heard proposed is to leave, and burn everything behind us.
I know that this is probably because our defense strategy is decided by a bunch of people who worry about human rights and other nonsense. To them, the idea of torching farms and villages out of spite is inhumane. It's a "war crime" and we're better than that. To me, it's a winning strategy that the United States has used on many occasions. To me, the only crime in war is losing*.
A hundred and fifty years ago, native tribes like the Comanche and Sioux posed a real threat to Americans on the frontier. Decades of brutal warfare later, and now they just run casinos and live in poverty. In order to win we pulled out all the stops. We attacked their economy by slaughtering buffalo for sport. We attacked their civilians at places like Wounded Knee. We hunted them like animals, until they submitted to our will. Some might look back on that with regret, but most people accept it as the moral price we paid to be a great nation.
In Afghanistan we run the risks of either quagmire or defeat. Why not just recast our whole campaign as a carrot and stick approach? We offered them schools and wells and other benefits of development. We gave the Afghan people a chance to live like civilized human beings. But they chose the retrograde medieval fanaticism of the Taliban and the parasitic corruption of the Karzai clan instead. We can't change their minds, but we can certainly make them pay for their ingratitude.
The West should withdraw. We have no stake in Afghanistan economically or strategically. We should pull out gradually, and burn everything that we leave behind. The Taliban isn't able to contest us in conventional warfare (although they are getting better at it). They won't be able to stop us from destroying villages and burning food supplies. And it will be very difficult for them to persuade people that they won when they're boiling their shoes for soup.
Does anyone have a better idea?
*Seriously, look at how the post-WWII war crimes tribunals worked. America waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific, the UK and US firebombed cities in Germany and Japan, and the Soviets massacred Polish POWs at Katyn. None of the victors had to answer for these crimes.
One idea I haven't heard proposed is to leave, and burn everything behind us.
I know that this is probably because our defense strategy is decided by a bunch of people who worry about human rights and other nonsense. To them, the idea of torching farms and villages out of spite is inhumane. It's a "war crime" and we're better than that. To me, it's a winning strategy that the United States has used on many occasions. To me, the only crime in war is losing*.
A hundred and fifty years ago, native tribes like the Comanche and Sioux posed a real threat to Americans on the frontier. Decades of brutal warfare later, and now they just run casinos and live in poverty. In order to win we pulled out all the stops. We attacked their economy by slaughtering buffalo for sport. We attacked their civilians at places like Wounded Knee. We hunted them like animals, until they submitted to our will. Some might look back on that with regret, but most people accept it as the moral price we paid to be a great nation.
In Afghanistan we run the risks of either quagmire or defeat. Why not just recast our whole campaign as a carrot and stick approach? We offered them schools and wells and other benefits of development. We gave the Afghan people a chance to live like civilized human beings. But they chose the retrograde medieval fanaticism of the Taliban and the parasitic corruption of the Karzai clan instead. We can't change their minds, but we can certainly make them pay for their ingratitude.
The West should withdraw. We have no stake in Afghanistan economically or strategically. We should pull out gradually, and burn everything that we leave behind. The Taliban isn't able to contest us in conventional warfare (although they are getting better at it). They won't be able to stop us from destroying villages and burning food supplies. And it will be very difficult for them to persuade people that they won when they're boiling their shoes for soup.
Does anyone have a better idea?
*Seriously, look at how the post-WWII war crimes tribunals worked. America waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific, the UK and US firebombed cities in Germany and Japan, and the Soviets massacred Polish POWs at Katyn. None of the victors had to answer for these crimes.
) to nuke Germany to defend France from a Russian invasion deterred any direct Soviet aggression against the west.
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