PrintApril 21, 2010
Soft Power and No Plan for Iran
Anyone who remembers the Vietnam War might be having hot flashes of déjà vu today. We are again engaged in a grand campaign to "win the hearts and minds" of an implacable foe in a place where we do not understand the language, the religion, the culture, or the opportunity costs. The macro-strategy is "nation building," a policy that explicitly admits, unlike Vietnam, that there are no "kinetic," or military, solutions to the Afghan insurgency. So strategy begins with an oxymoron: 100,000 troops deployed to secure, police, and train -- not to kill and break things. The assumptions here are twofold: that Afghan troops or cops will serve for reasons other than pay, and that NATO troops are best used as secular missionaries -- teachers and social workers first, warriors only as necessary. Put aside for a moment the practical difficulties of such tactics. The purpose of this nation-building is to convince a semiliterate peasantry coming off years...(Read Full Article)
