Why Military Action isn’t Enough
Douglas Farah continues to impress with his concise analysis of why we find terrorist organizations resurgent after we vanquish them and move on. Case in point, a Washington Post Outlook story on how the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan.
The point made is that the Taliban is resurgent, and somewhat accepted, because the government offers nothing better, or at least is perceived to be corrupt beyond redemption.
I think this is somewhat simplistic and misses some important issues (the Taliban’s ability to finance itself through opium etc.), but people living through the current Afghanistan situation say the current level of corruption and abuse by those in power has made a mockery of the government and stripped it of all legitimacy. Perhaps the difference is that government drug traffickers and warlords work only for themselves while the Taliban sends at least some of its illicit proceeds on upgrading the fighting capabilities of its forces.
Democracy works only when the rule of law is present to check the excesses that more freedom brings. There’s some truth to the adage that a powerful dictatorship only has one criminal (the dictator) but many more crimes (freedom denied for all). But a market-based economy without the rule of law leads to something nearly as bad: many criminals and freedom denied for most.
If the government we support and pour billions of dollars into, cannot come off in the minds of the vast majority of citizens as clearly better, then the efforts are worth little.
Farah’s analysis resonates with me. The reaction to it is what matters. Should we simply retreat behind our borders and try to take a solely defensive posture against the tide of Radical Islam? The problem with that approach is that we must then invoke more and more restrictive measures here at home.
When Ben Franklin said “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”, he wasn’t taking a position similar to the 21st century peaceniks who quote him. Instead, his message was to those that advocated isolationism and accommodation of those trying to deny liberty. Franklin’s admonition, cited by the left so often, speaks to the need for armed intervention when liberty is threatened. It was a call to arms, not to pacifism. One of our longest wars ensued after that quote.
Success against the terrorists is good news/bad news. We can kill them, but they keep coming back. Our military is great at their mission: killing the bad guys. But combing military action with “nation building” is usually a failure. It may succeed in Iraq (we hope and pray), but it appears to be headed for failure in Afghanistan. It rarely succeeds anywhere outside of western culture; our Christian values lend themselves to the rule of law and individual rights.
Post-war Japan is one shining example of when “nation building” did work, but the ingredients for that recipe included the complete and utter devastation of that country and unconditional surrender, de-deification of their emperor and an iron-fisted occupation by an army General.
And that recipe may be too harsh for the modern American diet.
