The Afghanistan Debate

We have a nice debate in conservative circles over Afghanistan strategy going on between Andy McCarthy of NRO, Fred Kagan and others. Be sure and follow the links to the other posts.

In the current post, Andy says,

"A U.S. strategy built on the premise that mainstream Muslims will be won over to our side against their fellow Muslims in an Islamic country is built on wishful thinking. It's not a question of whether Muslims reject the takfiris' extremism. Muslims constantly fight amongst themselves, often with deadly force. The question is whether such infighting means they will prefer us. They won't — certainly not on a mass scale."

His point is that the counterinsurgency strategy proposed by General McChrystal assumes an essential difference between moderate and radical Islam, and that we can therefore gain the support of the moderates in our fight against the radicals. But the fact is, he explains, that neither moderates or radicals like us, and because this ill-will is an essential component of their common religion, they never will like us no matter what we do.

First, let me say how refreshing it is to follow a healthy debate between people with strongly held disagreements. No games, no tricks, no ad hominem to marginalize the opponent. This is the kind of thing "debate" in a free society is supposed to be, an honest attempt to persuade and let the chips fall where they may.

But I have to disagree with Mr. McCarthy. In the first place, everything he says about Afghanistan and Muslims could (and were) said about Iraqi muslims. And yet, in fact, the local indigenous Muslims did side with the U.S. and fight against the al Quaeda insurgency. Are the Shia and Sunni in Iraq not as loyal to the Koran as other Muslims? That, I think, would be a difficult argument to make.

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I think the key is in the title to his post: "If you don't get Islamic Ideology, you don't get the problem in Afghanistan." His point is not really about Islamic Ideology, but any Ideology. Ideologues of whatever stripe, religious or political, are simply not people you can work with very easily. The Iraqi's were Muslims but not ideologues; they were able to perceive their own self-interest and act accordingly, in spite of their religious instinct to hate the infidel Americans.

The whole point of a counterinsurgency strategy is not to win friends and convert the Muslim world to a consumerist Western democracy, but to convince a local population that siding with the infidels is in their own best interests. This worked in Iraq; whether it will work in Afghanistan only time will tell.

For my money, I think it will. In general, history shows that when an entire country is gripped by some ideology, it is not the majority of the people that are ideologues, but only a small group of leaders with inordinate power over the population (cross-reference: Iran). Counterinsurgency is designed to bypass the leadership and go directly to the people in the trenches, living and dying in the misery of war while trying to eak out a living for themselves and their families. Common people in these circumstances, whether Muslim, Christian, Atheist or Agnostic, just do not have the luxury to be as ideological as the ruling classes.