U.S. isn't losing in Afghan for lack of cultural confidence.
Mark Steyn thinks we're losing in Afghanistan because we're not killing enough Afghans:
The reason we're losing this thing is because of a lack of cultural confidence, of which the fetal cringe of this worthless husk out-parodies anything Coward could have concocted. When I'm speaking on this subject, I often get asked to reprise the words I quote in my book, from Gen. Sir Charles Napier in India explaining to the locals his position on suttee -- the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Napier was impeccably multicultural:You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.In the absence of cultural confidence overseas, we are expending blood and treasure building an Afghanistan fit only for pederasts, tribal heroin cartels, and the blood-soaked savages of Mazar e-Sharif.
Steyn is responding to the admittedly sad spectacle of U.S. senators blaming the Koran-burning pastor rather than the Afghans for the recent bouts of carnage in that country. And he's right about where the fault lies (with the murdering Afghans, not the moron pastor). But the idea that we're losing in Afghanistan because we're unwilling to kill enough Afghans to change their cultural practices is absurd on its face. By this definition, we can only "win" in Afghanistan when Afghans don't go on murderous rampages against foreigners. That's an unreasonable standard and one that's wholly disconnected from the (tenuous) counter-terrorism rationales that still keep large contingents of Western troops in the country.
(AP Photo)
