Jacques Youssef

Afghanistan=Vietnam?

Posted by Jacques on September 30, 2009 | 31 Comments

Eight years and counting, trillions of dollars down the drain, and hundreds of brave American soldiers who have given up their lives.

We are fighting a war that we will never win, not because they are better than our brave soldiers, but because they have nothing to loose. They are fighting for their beliefs, and that is something very hard to defeat.

For us to win, we must change our strategy. Simply sending more troops is not going to solve the problem. Why is it so hard for our military leaders to learn from the past mistakes. Have we learned nothing from Vietnam? Have we not learned from the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan? For ten years they waged one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century, and what was the end result? Defeat!!!

In order for us to succeed in Afghanistan, we have to start thinking like the Mujahideen and the Taliban. That’s right, in order to defeat your enemy, you must understand how they think and use their own strategy against them. First we must understand that the main cause of extremism and terrorism is poverty. We must understand that the Taliban use this poverty to their advantage to entice people to turn towards extremism.

Non interventionism and nation building aside, if we are really concerned in “defeating” terrorism in Afghanistan we must attack the root of the problem. If we are to defeat the Taliban we should be spending our money on building schools, factories, roads, hospitals, etc. If instead of spending money on war, we invested this money into educating these people and improving there lives, we would eradicate terrorism in Afgahnistan.

As we have proven war will not defeat terrorism. We must change our policies in the region. Poverty creates extremism and terrorism, and war creates more poverty. Henceforth waging war and destruction will only strengthen terrorism in Afghanistan and the whole region.

As always I look forward to seeing what you all have to say on this matter.

-Jacques