Category Archives: Afghanistan

In a way, when you read the AP piece which Crittenden has posted, it merely reflects what Herbert Meyer calls the growing ascendency of "Perception Two: We’re Reaping What We Sowed," in regards to 9/11. I have to admit that President Bush, despite admirable attacks to dispose of the Taliban and Saddam, has failed to do the obvious: put the US on a war footing, impose some sort of draft, decapitate Iran and Syria and help the Israelis dismantle Hezbollah and Hamas. How Bush expects Gen. Petraeus to succeed in Iraq, without either closing their borders or hitting the insurgents’ suppliers in Iran and Syria, is beyond me. As for Petraeus, he admits, in the Army Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency which he authored (excerpts available here in PDF), that insurgencies are rarely beaten and the only time the US has done it was in the Phillipines a hundred years ago. Moreover, he says wars against insurgencies take nine or ten years to win. Meyer sees little chance of that sort of committment, after more than four years in Iraq. Even Victor Davis Hanson, who has written that democracies rarely support wars of more than a few years, has come around to the view that we’ll retreat from Iraq. Then what? Meyer says we’ll need a bigger repeat of 9/11 to finally go all out. Sure looks that way.