Choose Your Fights

Your conscience awakes
And you see your mistakes
And you wish someone
Would buy your confessions
--Part of the Plan, Dan Fogelberg

For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent
--Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop,
William Butler Yeats
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Everyone accepts that al Qaeda is a terrorist organization with significant Taliban linkages, but let's debunk some presumptions underlying out current wars in Iraq and AFPAK .

As a terrorist organization, al Qaeda would be compartmentalized and would not have shared intelligence with the Taliban on the WTC attacks. Even al Qaeda military operatives would not have had access to the operational plan.

So, if the Taliban was not complicit in those attacks, how have they become an implacable enemy of the U.S.? It is unreasonable to equate the destruction of the Taliban with the the security of der homeland.

It is equally faulty to advocate their destruction as the seminal event in the creation of a to-be democratic Afghanistan. Since there will never be a democratic Afghanistan, why bother with the destruction of the Taliban?

The conventional wisdom is that both wars will meet a salubrious termination when the respective armies and police forces are recruited, equipped and trained up. However, using our last great counterinsurgency op, Vietnam, as template, this hoped-for ending doesn't necessarily come true.

In Honduras, we have a U.S.-equipped, trained and funded army which has led a successful coup (or whatever one wishes to call it.) Because this is what Armies and militarized police forces do in Third World countries (on the backs of U.S. taxpayers.)

In short, militarizing failed states is not the solution, but rather, the problem. It is like handing out free guns during the L.A. riots. Why is this so hard to grasp? Perhaps it is not, but the lure of the almighty dollar trumps reality.

Neither al Qaeda, Iran nor North Korea are strategic threats to the U.S., so why are we portraying them as such? In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. has created police forces that will vie with those of any dictator. And in fact, whoever wields their power will be a dictator, despite any showcase elections to the contrary.

We broke Iraq, and cannot impose wholeness. The country will heal in the same way North and South Vietnam did -- after we exit the scene.