But what exactly went wrong in Afghanistan? As in Vietnam and Iraq, the U.S. military has not been fighting conventional armies, such as Iraqi forces during Desert Storm, which it is best at. Instead, in all three places, it was conducting what amounts to military social work. U.S. armed forces are fighting guerrillas that melt back into an all-important supportive indigenous civilian population. In Vietnam, initially, U.S. forces used excessive firepower, which alienated civilians; in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military, forgetting the lessons of Vietnam, did the same thing.
But American citizens ask, “Aren’t our forces more benevolent than the brutal Taliban? Why does the Taliban still get so much support in Afghanistan?” The answer: because they are Afghans. As my book, The Failure of Counterinsurgency: Why Hearts and Minds Are Seldom Won, notes, when fighting indigenous insurgents, the foreign invader never gets the benefit of the doubt.
This central point makes it difficult for great powers to win wars against insurgents, no matter how nice they try to be to the civilian populace. And the U.S. military is usually fairly unfamiliar with the language and culture of distant lands in which they intervene, thus making it difficult to get good information about who is a guerrilla and who is not.
Gary Edwards on 24 Jul 11excerpt: The fact that the wealthiest already pay their fair share and more is borne out by this from the IRS: Individuals earning in the top one percent paid 40 percent of all income taxes, while those in the top 10 percent paid 71 percent of all income taxes. The fact that going after the wealthiest for even more isn't going to generate significant additional revenues - certainly not enough to make a dent in the debt - isn't mentioned by the President in his letter. And if Obama is so determined to be "fair", why doesn't he simply offer to write a check to the IRS for the part of his income that he feels he doesn't deserve? He doesn't say. The President did get one thing right: The middle class is the target of any deficit-reduction plans likely to come out of Washington in the next few days: "It's just not right to ask them to pay the whole tab - especially when they're not the ones who caused this mess in the first place." He's right: The middle class didn't create the financial crisis; the Ruling Class did. Instead, the middle class, by and large, just want to be left alone to work out their own lives. Whenever possible, they resist further government intrusions into their lives - witness the growth of the Tea Party - and are waiting to see if Washington will, for the first time in memory, not listen to the siren song of entitlement protection and class warfare being sung by the President, and instead ignore him and start some serious cutting back of Leviathan. Perhaps what the President should be saying to the American people is what he said as Senator in railing against raising the debt ceiling back in March, 2006: The fact that we are here today to debate raising America 's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. In
