Gates: We’re not leaving Afghanistan anytime soon

One way to accomplish that, McChrystal wrote, is to target insurgent networks “to disrupt and degrade” their effectiveness. Another is to expose what he calls the insurgents’ “flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran,” including indiscriminate use of violence and terrorism, and attacks on schools and development projects.

Or, in the full context of McChrystal’s assessment:

A more forceful and offensive StratCom approach must be devised whereby INS [insurgents] are exposed continually for their cultural and religious violations, anti-Islamic and indiscriminate use of violence and terror, and by concentrating on their vulnerabilities. These include their causing ofthe majority of civilian casualties, attacks on education, development projects, and government institutions, and flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran. These vulnerabilities must be expressed in a manner that exploits the cultural and ideological separation of the INS from the vast majority of the Afghan population.

As many readers will realize, a line like that can only mean one thing. It’s that time again — time to trot out our favorite despicable jihadist, Abu Qatada, whose words of wisdom have time and again helped restore a little sanity to a mad world.

And I’m not kidding. Back in 2003, the man sometimes described as OBL’s “spritual guide” castigated then President Bush, and rightly so, for expounding on the religion of jihad as the religion of peace:

“I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Koran that justifies jihad or violence in the name of Islam. Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Koran?”

Substitute “Gen ‘Islam is the Religion of Peace’ McChrystal” for “President ‘Islam is the Religion of Peace’ Bush” in the quotation and maybe we can start getting somewhere.

Is it just me, or does Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s increasingly pathological obsession with “the people we seek to protect” — Afghans — to the exclusion of everything else, including the body parts of his own troops, begin to resemble the pathological obsession of another famous, albeit fictional, commander (whistling begins … )? Key is the shared blindness to national interest and enemy strategy.

From the Washington Post today:

McChrystal is equally critical of the command he has led since June 15. The key weakness of ISAF, he says, is that it is not aggressively defending the Afghan population. “Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us — physically and psychologically — from the people we seek to protect. . . . The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves.”

McChrystal continues: “Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population.”

Notice what’s missing (Islam).

Coalition intelligence-gathering has focused on how to attack insurgents, hindering “ISAF’s comprehension of the critical aspects of Afghan society.”

I’ll tell you what hinders ISAF comprehension — clueless Gen. McChrystal and all our see-no-Islam leaders, military and civilian, who are making a hash of US foreign policy on global jihad — not to mention our troops’s lives.

The hard fact is that the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan “people” are not for sale! The descendants of “The Great Khan” and their tribal cousins have no interest in being Westernized in any way. And, the human sewers that serve as their political leadership can only be rented. Americans are interlopers in a land where interlopers generally have their heads lopped off.

Nobody read their Kipling. (I know, “who or what was Kipling?” Look it up.) Americans do not know their OWN history (except the spun trash that passes for “social studies” in our heavily socialistic high schools) much less the history of Afghanistan. And, this includes our political leadership! Ask an American on the street – or a congressman in the House – to point to Afghanistan on a map, and they will probably start with their finger cautiously orbiting somewhere over Rhode Island.

This writer spent thirty years listening to and deciphering military acronyms and idiotic jargon. The catch phrase today is “COIN” – Counterinsurgency doctrine. Our political and military leadership act like this is some sort of secret knowledge – Gnostic esoteric knowledge – that is now coming to light. That is crap. There is nothing new here.

The current crop of Afghanistan’s “Warriors” is almost exclusive to the opposition. The true believers are fighters – cowards too, but fighters nonetheless. By contrast, the bulk of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) are not fighters, nor are they “true believers”. They are simply cowards – frauds – corrupt to the core by any standard and an apostate to their own faith. They are slovenly, drug-addicted, dimwitted, and totally unreliable at any level. Like the Taliban, they are brutal to their own countrymen. They thrive on their petty powers and refuse to shoulder any burden or responsibility. Does this sound too harsh? Not for the Marines and Soldiers who have been killed by the treachery of ANA and ANP who have purposely led them into ambush.

According to the great military minds of our time, these ANA/ANP forces can be trained and formed to fight their own war. At what cost? How many American lives? How many taxpayer dollars? It would take decades if it were simply a matter of sophistication and military training. However, the obstacle is the way and philosophy of life in the Islamic world.