I find myself quoting Amynda with approval:
In the biggest non-surprise of the century, Republicans are getting bolder about just dropping the pretense that they give two shits about Afghanistan.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.
So, what was the Senator’s first clue, the first British defeat in Afghanistan, the second British defeat in Afghanistan, the third British defeat in Afghanistan or the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan?
And how much longer will it take before a similar admission is made with regards to Iraq? Rich Lowry was complaining today on NRO that if our military is only good for breaking things and killing people, it can never defeat the Iraqi insurgency.
That’s kind of the point, Rich. There are two ways to defeat an insurgency, the Roman way and the British way. The Roman way requires killing and enslaving a statistically significant portion of the populace and colonizing the land. The British way requires dividing the potential resistance and constantly playing the various parties against each other.
Simply pointing machine guns at people and telling them all to play nicely together will never cut it. Since Americans possess neither Roman ruthlessness nor British mercantilism, there is no point in playing at occupation. Once it became clear that no one was ever going to be interested in buying condos overlooking the Euphrates, the occupation was doomed.
This isn’t rocket science. It continues to amaze me that the warmongers are still making their idiotic appeals to a nonexistent national will to win, as if that has ever made any difference when the strategic equation is stacked against one.
Bring the boys home. Kick the jihadists and their sympathizers out. Deport illegals. Jealously protect our national sovereignty and the God-given rights of the individual. Marry and have children. Foster entrepeneurialism and technological advancement. History repeatedly proves that this the only road to lasting victory.