tomahawk6 said:
How do you make friends with terrorists without sacrificing your beliefs ? Any deal that allows anti-government forces to flourish is a loss for our efforts to stablize Afghanistan. Besides its not up to a NATO commander to cut a side deal with the enemy, it is the province of the Karzai government.
The short answer to the beliefs part of your statement is that your beliefs are your beliefs. The other guy has his beliefs as well. Mutually you can stand on principle and slaughter each other all day every day. Or you can say Insh'Allah and find a pragmatic compromise. Me, a Presbyterian, I ended up marrying a Catholic (and a Liberal - She is coming around on the Liberal side of things but she is still a Catholic).
Despite the existence of Muslim fanatics I choose to believe that most Muslims, like most Christians I know and most of every other type of person I have met, most of the time are apathetic compromisers that pragmatically want a quiet life. They will get aroused when they are brought face to face with a rabble rouser at the mosque. They may even donate to the cause through tithes, alms, taxes or charitable donations. But few will actually take the road of Jihad - unless it gets personal. Even us Brits didn't get too exercised about WW2 until 1940 when Germany started killing Brits in France and then in London. You lot felt the same until December 7th, 1941 and September 11th, 2001.
America may have been built on principle, although I find most Americans to be pretty pragmatic in daily life. Britain pretty much foreswore principle in favour of pragmatism in its institutions. In the interest of the peace that permits prosperity the abiding domestic principle is that no (or very few) cause is worth disrupting the public peace. Better to have a show of hands, accept the rule of the majority and get on with life. You can be right and dead. That doesn't help the kids and pay the bills and those are the driving interests of most people.
That is the problem I have with our own Liberals, NDPers, Activists and Supreme Court judges. They all seem to think that there are right answers to every question. There may be. Trouble is nobody can agree on what those are. Perhaps that is why these groups gain their grass-roots support overwhelmingly from the young and the well-heeled. Their bills are paid and most of them don't have kids to worry about. I am talking about rank-and-file here. The Liberal leadership understands pragmatism to a fault.
By all means slaughter those that are attacking you as the Brit commanders did. But is doesn't hurt to stop from time to time, as one of them did, and say "had enough yet? We can keep this up for a long, long time." Or invite some members of the attackers to break off, to go home, to come over. Or to invite the locals to take control of their own situation and demonstrate that you will allow them to show themselves worthy of trust. Yes, that entails risk - more bodies or retaking old ground. But those are unavoidable risks. If those risks weren't involved then the job would be left to CIDA and the diplomats and there would be no need for the soldiers. Putting on the uniform is not about killing. It is about taking the risk of dying. Killing is what is done to reduce that risk, although not always the personal risk.
Sooner or later a deal has to be made.
You are quite right it is not up to the local NATO commander to make that deal. It is up to the government of the day, Karzai's government. But it was Karzai's government that opted for the platoon house strategy to demonstrate presence. It is Karzai's government that has an amnesty programme for the Taliban to wean the support from the leadership. It is Karzai's government that has willingly turned a blind eye to crime and injustice in order to reduce the temperature and allow discussion to occur. The pragmatic over the principled. Stop the killing long enough to debate the principles and then decide whether those principles justify standing on ceremony and reverting to the gun.
Personally I think Karzai is doing about as good a job as can be expected under the circumstances. The jury is still out on his fellow pragmatist next door in Islamabad. While Karzai is pragmatically inclined to work with "Us" Musharraf seem pragmatically inclined to work against "Us".
Cheers sir.
