Lesson 2: Remember Why You Are There

America went to Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda, deny terrorists a safe haven, and capture Osama bin-Laden. Yet, seven years later, US and NATO forces are still in Afghanistan, trying to disarm warlords, create a liberal democracy in Kabul, and stop opium production. America went to Iraq to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Yet, five years later, the coalition is fighting Sunni insurgents and Shia militias, trying to counter Iranian influence, and building a liberal democracy in Baghdad.

The French experienced “mission creep” in Naples and Spain, as well. In Naples, Napoleon wanted to topple the Neapolitan regime and place his brother on the throne. Yet, a year later, they were embroiled in a bloody counterinsurgency to quell a territory that even the previous monarch had been unable to control. In Spain, Napoleon wanted both a military presence in the country and a pliable king on the throne to ensure Spain would not side with Britain. Yet, Napoleon spent seven years trying to compel Basque farmers to obey French authority.

Why did the French stray so far from their initial intent? In his seminal work, The Fatal Knot: The Guerilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain, author John Lawrence Tone offers an answer. He says, “French troops behaved as if they were charged with the de-Chrisitianization of the province.” An ugly side-effect of the French Revolution in Catholic France was a fanatical anti-Catholic sentiment in the newly liberated French society. Wherever the French army travelled, it felt compelled to “liberate” the “oppressed” peoples it found from the “superstitions” of the Catholic Church.

Why has America strayed so far from its initial intent in Afghanistan and Iraq? What compulsions do Americans carry with them into foreign lands?

Lesson 3: Idle Hands are the Devil’s Playground
Why did the French have so much more trouble with the Montaña region of Navarre than the Ribera region? For that matter, why did they ultimately lose in Navarre when they prevailed in Calabria? There is a multitude of reasons, cultural and geographic. However, one important reason Montaña was the most difficult region to quell was the ready supply of unemployed, disenfranchised men from which the guerillas could draw replacements. In Ribera, most men were wage laborers; they had to work at their jobs in order to survive. In Calabria, nearly everyone was subsistence farming; simply scratching enough food out of the rocky soil to survive required every available man. In Montaña, by contrast, there was plenty of excess produce to maintain a high standard of living in the society, and plenty of excess men, disenfranchised because they were not firstborn, who could be spared to prosecute a guerilla war.

One can see the same phenomenon today. Across the Middle East, unemployed young men, fired by religious zeal and disenfranchised by their own repressive regimes, are flooding into Iraq and Afghanistan to kill Americans. Inside Iraq, dispossessed, unemployed, young Sunni men with no industry to support them have taken up arms to attack the government and the Coalition they feel is responsible for their plight. Young Shia men, out of work and driven from their homes by al-Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni insurgents, are taking up arms and joining militias.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7