A perhaps surprising op-ed piece "Afghan casualties remind of war's waste" in an American newspaper. It would be interesting to learn of the response it evoked.
"Besides stupidity and arrogance, the root cause of every modern war boils down to a failure of empathy. Afghanistan and Iraq are the poster children of pointless, fear-based wars in this era. It just happens that we own them both.
Last week, the Taliban shot down a Chinook helicopter leaving Helmand Province after a firefight in southern Afghanistan. Thirty Americans and eight Afghans were killed by what investigators suspect was an attack on the slow-moving copter by one shoulder-fired missile. It was the costliest day in Afghanistan for the American military since the war began.
It happened to a squad of elite American fighters, but that doesn't make it any more tragic than if it had been an Afghan village decimated by a Predator missile strike because military intelligence mistook a wedding party for an al-Qaida jamboree.
On a scale of deadly, absurdist folly, it is at least equal to the misery visited on Afghanistan by NATO forces in the name of freedom every day. The Taliban soldier who brought down that helicopter is no less a hero to his comrades than the members of SEAL Team 6 who took out Osama bin Laden a few months ago. The ironic thing about war is that the more savage it is, the more "heroes" it produces on both sides.
In the cold calculus of war, such moral equivalence is easy. We're justifiably sick to our stomachs over the loss of so many American lives. We forget that the men we're trying to kill are defending themselves and their "strange" way of life in their own country.
The "rightness" of our cause doesn't matter to young Taliban fighters who were children at the time of 9/11. All they've ever known is American occupation and death.
We're losing this war because the Taliban aren't as interested in writing history as we are. They know history is on their side, so they're indifferent about how they'll be portrayed in books written by others.
Meanwhile, our elected leaders invent new rationalizations every day to explain why we're still in Afghanistan. Every day we spend there is a testament to short-term thinking about our national honor."
"Besides stupidity and arrogance, the root cause of every modern war boils down to a failure of empathy. Afghanistan and Iraq are the poster children of pointless, fear-based wars in this era. It just happens that we own them both.
Last week, the Taliban shot down a Chinook helicopter leaving Helmand Province after a firefight in southern Afghanistan. Thirty Americans and eight Afghans were killed by what investigators suspect was an attack on the slow-moving copter by one shoulder-fired missile. It was the costliest day in Afghanistan for the American military since the war began.
It happened to a squad of elite American fighters, but that doesn't make it any more tragic than if it had been an Afghan village decimated by a Predator missile strike because military intelligence mistook a wedding party for an al-Qaida jamboree.
On a scale of deadly, absurdist folly, it is at least equal to the misery visited on Afghanistan by NATO forces in the name of freedom every day. The Taliban soldier who brought down that helicopter is no less a hero to his comrades than the members of SEAL Team 6 who took out Osama bin Laden a few months ago. The ironic thing about war is that the more savage it is, the more "heroes" it produces on both sides.
In the cold calculus of war, such moral equivalence is easy. We're justifiably sick to our stomachs over the loss of so many American lives. We forget that the men we're trying to kill are defending themselves and their "strange" way of life in their own country.
The "rightness" of our cause doesn't matter to young Taliban fighters who were children at the time of 9/11. All they've ever known is American occupation and death.
We're losing this war because the Taliban aren't as interested in writing history as we are. They know history is on their side, so they're indifferent about how they'll be portrayed in books written by others.
Meanwhile, our elected leaders invent new rationalizations every day to explain why we're still in Afghanistan. Every day we spend there is a testament to short-term thinking about our national honor."
Comments