But the solution cannot be to simply fall back on the old John Wayne archetype of the tough-guy infantryman killing the equivalent of demonized "gooks."
West wants teams of tough, very smart US soldiers to live ruggedly among Afghan soldiers with the dual goal of killing the enemy and training up the Afghans to replace them. One can have great respect for the "grit" and bravery of such men but still recognize the fundamental problem that, no matter how tough and rugged these soldiers may be -- no matter how admirable they may be in our eyes here at home -- for a very significant element of Afghanis they will always remain foreigners intervening violently in their country.
As cannot be emphasized enough, William Polk writes in Violent Politics, his smart little book on the history of insurgency, there is one thing "common to all insurgencies. ... (A)single thread runs through them all: opposition to foreigners."
In the end, training Afghan soldiers cannot guarantee their loyalty to US interests, which of course is the whole point of the Washington policy in Afghanistan, not the honor or glory of the US soldiers doing the training.
While it's hardly an epidemic, the instances of Afghan and Iraqi trainees shooting US trainers is not insignificant. Plus, we shouldn't forget that we're training soldiers in an Afghan government army commanded by Hamid Karzai, who constantly threatens to negotiate with the insurgents we want to kill. Once we train his army, that may be in his and Afghanistan's interest.
So the only real guarantee of US interests, it seems, is a massive US military presence to intimidate our Afghan allies. And that's something we can no longer afford.
The famous film The Battle Of Algiers gives a sense of this kind of historic arc of events. The French army uses violence and torture to successfully decimate the FLN insurgents in the city of Algiers -- only to be confronted with massive demonstrations in the street two years later that drive them out. We can only wonder if there is a real-life echo of this now in the street eruptions in North Africa and the Middle East.
So maybe it's time for US policy makers to try humble.
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