President Obama has put securing Afghanistan near the top of his foreign policy agenda, but "victory" in the war-torn country isn't necessarily the United States' goal, he said Thursday in a TV interview.
And what? That would be "insensitive" to those who lost? And, in this case, Al Qaeda? I really am not concerned about preserving their dignity in defeat.
I would like to think there are specific objectives towards which we are working, such that attaining them can be termed a victory, a success, and accomplishment, or whatever the hell you want to call it.
This is why I distruct liberals - they have some "sense" of what they want, and that gets expressed into a myriad of "objectives," but there is no thought given to how we get from Point A to Point B.
5 comments:
Wow, the most brilliant man in the world doesn't know that the Japanese Emperor didn't sign the instrument of surrender.
Catholics are taught to preserve the dignity of all human beings. Moreover, we are taught to love all human beings - including Al Qaeda.
The objective toward which we should be working is not military victory, but the conquering of hearts in Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, unless the military does exactly the opposite of what it is trained to do (kill efficiently), hearts will continue to harden and the violence will continue to spread.
Legitimate defense is appropriate, but as the Church has pointed out, modern military forces tend toward total war and illegitimate means of defense.
For once I think I understand what Obama is saying. I think he's saying that, because we are essentially fighting against guerrillas with no unified head, there is no one to formally surrender on the other side. Even if bin Laden signed a surrender (which given his ideology seems highly unlikely), that doesn't mean all the guerrillas accept that and stop fighting.
So what he's saying, I think, is that we can "win the war", but it's not going to look like the end of World War II where there were formal surrenders and treaties and whatnot. It'll look more like that island in the Pacific where, decades later, they found Japanese soldiers who had been stranded there who thought the war was still in progress. :-/
Nothing the military can do will soften the hearts of these criminals. That is not the military's job. They are to eliminate their ability to engage in terrorist acts. We also need to remember that we are not dealing with legitimate combatants, but criminals akin to the classical pirates. They should be dealt with in a similar manner.
'I really am not concerned about preserving their dignity in defeat.'
Well, perhaps you should be. You may recall that WWII was brought to us by the Treaty Of Versailles in WWI. The purpose of the Treaty of Versailles was to demoralize Germany and to prevent them from ever attaining the ability to threaten us again.
The unintended consequence was Adolph Hitler and WWII.
Post a Comment