More Troops in Afghanistan = Angrier Insurgents

Doesn't US remember how our country began? Or how Vietnam ended?
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 22, 2009 9:56 AM CDT
More Troops in Afghanistan = Angrier Insurgents
Soldiers from the US Army's 118th Military Police Co., based at Fort Bragg, NC, take up positions at their combat outpost in the Jalrez Valley in Afghanistan's Wardak Province.   (AP Photo)

The United States was born from a nationalist insurgency. “Given that history, you’d think we might be more sensitive to nationalism abroad,” writes Nicholas Kristof. “Yet the most systematic foreign-policy mistake we Americans have made in the post-World War II period has been to underestimate its potency.” It was true in Vietnam, in Latin America—and now in Afghanistan.

The Pashtun insurgency doesn’t appear to have responded favorably to the 21,000 troops we added earlier this year, Kristof writes in the New York Times. “It’s difficult to see why 40,000 more would help either.” There’s often a backlash when Pakistani troops meddle in Pashtun areas. “If Pashtuns react that way to Punjabis, why do we think they will react better to Texans?” The $10 billion to $40 billion a year needed for the surge could be better spent at home, Kristof writes—and not on spilling more American blood while “inflaming Pashtun nationalism.” (More Nicholas Kristof stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X