PrintMarch 4, 2012
Afghanistan: The Failure of Strategic Leadership
Much is being said and written about the violence in Afghanistan over the improper burning of a Quran. But much of it misses several key points. The problem is not that the Qurans were burned, as was pointed out in part by an American Thinker article on 28 February, but the problem is that of leadership at the strategic levels and the leadership at the American Military Detention Facilities throughout the world.
Strategic messaging in the Islamic world is a battle the United States continues to lose. Part of it is because we do not fully understand the people we're trying to communicate with, but a larger part is simply because we fail to do the staff work necessary, and do it in sufficient detail, before we open our mouths.
Ned Barnett's article "We Don't Belong There" correctly put a few things into context, but it is clearly written from a viewpoint of somebody who rarely, if ever, deals with an Islamic people in the Middle East. It is true that the...(Read Full Article)
