No Safe Harbor

After yesterday's bombing in Kabul, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said foreign troops should leave Afghanistan soon but that Italy would not pull out on her own. Right now an unworkable strategy is being employed with increased mission tempo and responsibility but tremendously restrictive rules of engagement that leave US and allied forces exposed and vulnerable. Along with this mission creep comes the burden of "nation building". This is a futile attempt at winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people who accept the aid, assistance building schools, wells, and roads, then refuse to send their daughters to said schools, have the water from the wells freely distributed to their sons who are gainfully employed in the Taliban and who go down the roads we build to plant improvised explosive devices at night to kill our patrols who come back to help the very people who burn with the desire to kill foreign infidels. This schizophrenic approach is doomed to high and unnecessary casualty failure. The people we are trying to co-opt to our cause and jeopardizing our own troops' lives to protect are the Pashtun cousins, brothers, and fathers of the people who want to kill us and who adore Osama bin Laden and venerate the September 11 attack and cheer each subsequent act of carnage against the West or are the very terrorists themselves who have merely stashed their AKs under rocks. Historians point to the successful suppression of the Malay Insurrection to model the struggle against terrorists and separate them from indigenous support. But I have a more recent example of how to defeat an insurgency-Sri Lanka. The government forces ignored international pressure and consternation in the West, isolated and then killed the Tamil guerrillas by the thousands, using all measure of force available to them to crush all opposition, without any particular concern whether non-combatants who were Tamil and supported the separatist cause were damaged in the crossfire. The only prospect of ever defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, that serves as another front, a staging area, and a recruiting center for the Islamists, is to follow the example of the Sri Lankan military and devastate any opposition in every area it is encountered with or without the cooperation of Pakistan whose ISI intelligence service has played a double game, pretending some common cause against terror while at the same time sponsoring terrorist organizations and operations. The time is long passed where we can coddle the ideological soul mates of bin Laden and expect they will change their minds. The Afghan people are not bystanders or innocent victims of our aggression but the willing hosts of those who brought destruction of our innocents to our shores and often willing confederates in jihad to this day. Those who will not join us to defeat the Taliban or do what is necessary to benefit from our aid and protection which we are delivering at great cost in blood and treasure must be cornered and killed until they know they are a defeated people just as the Japanese realized-only after the annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.