• On-going NATO slaughter of innocent lives.
• Continued killing of NATO forces.
• Pakistan government’s complicit support of Taliban.
• Continued poverty and ruin.
• Bountiful opium crops.
• A president little more than Kabul’s mayor.
• Fragmentary NATO support.
• Fragmenting support in NATO countries.
• The deflective the war in Iraq.
It is very hard to see the up-side to continuing the NATO fight in Afghanistan.
It is about time NATO and its partner countries, Canada included, started making a sound, comprehensible case for prolonging what may be first and foremost an internal Muslim matter in Afghanistan, not much different than what is happening in many other Muslim communities. In Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestine, for instance, and a case can be made even in Syria and Iran.
“If we are to enjoy peace again, if we are to win our struggle against radical Muslim militancy, we - the Western world, the Muslim world, the entire world - must recognize that Muslim radicalism is most devastating to Muslim communities and societies. We must help Muslim societies correctly identify, fight and eradicate the cancer that attacks their people. Muslim societies can and must do it, and we need to help them.”
That is from Ian Wendt’s excellent piece, Radicalism is Destroying Muslim Societies, in which he catalogues the terrorist muslim groups throughout the muslim world.
Afghanistan is just one of many counties brutalized and corrupted by Islamic fanaticism. But as Wendt emphasizes, this is first and foremost a muslim fight and the west should only help in the fight, not take it over.
Before NATO recommits in Afghanistan and elsewhere there must be a convincing consensus within the broader muslim world of the objectives of the so-called fight against the muslim terrorists and there must be full participation of all muslim countries in the fight. Why should the west fight while the Saudis and the Iranians pump oil?
Muslim fanaticism is an enormous problem throughout the muslim world. But it is a muslim-first problem and it first must find muslim solutions. All the west seems to be doing, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine, is fanning the flames.
