Mark LeVine: Understanding the Muslim World
[Mr. LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies at the University of California, Irvine.]
What does it say about the chances for American success in Afghanistan and the larger global 'war on terror' - which despite the Obama administration's official name change to "Overseas Contingency Operations" remains deliberately far removed from any contingency that might hasten its end - that the wives of the military's most senior commanders better comprehend the reasons for the continued difficulty in pacifying the country than do their husbands?
The military wives, it seems, have as a group given their stamp of approval to the now ubiquitous bestseller Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Renin. Many of their husbands have also read the book at their urging, and according to The New York Times, recently cashiered General Stanley McChrystal met with Mortenson several times.
Mortenson's message is as simple as it is eloquent: build schools, not bombs. The idea fit well with McChrystal's civilian-focused counterinsurgency strategy; but despite the obvious logic, not to mention economy of such a concept - the cost of keeping one soldier in the country for one year could pay for 20 schools - the Obama administration is committed to further militarising rather than deescalating the war.
They fail to grasp that you cannot win the "hearts and minds" of a people when you are not merely occupying them, but supporting a massively corrupt and violent elite while killing a significant number of civilians on a routine basis.
More broadly, it was recently announced that the Obama administration is trying to loosen export controls for American-made weapons so that the US - whose weapons sales, by some estimates, equal if not surpass those of the rest of the world combined - can expand its dominance of the international arms market even further.
So much for the changes in the US' relationship with the Muslim world promised by Obama last June in Cairo. And needless to say, if the Italians, French, Russians, Brits or Chinese could get a bigger piece of the weapons sales pie, they would demonstrate as little scruples about what they sell to whom as has the US....
Read entire article at Al Jazeera
What does it say about the chances for American success in Afghanistan and the larger global 'war on terror' - which despite the Obama administration's official name change to "Overseas Contingency Operations" remains deliberately far removed from any contingency that might hasten its end - that the wives of the military's most senior commanders better comprehend the reasons for the continued difficulty in pacifying the country than do their husbands?
The military wives, it seems, have as a group given their stamp of approval to the now ubiquitous bestseller Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Renin. Many of their husbands have also read the book at their urging, and according to The New York Times, recently cashiered General Stanley McChrystal met with Mortenson several times.
Mortenson's message is as simple as it is eloquent: build schools, not bombs. The idea fit well with McChrystal's civilian-focused counterinsurgency strategy; but despite the obvious logic, not to mention economy of such a concept - the cost of keeping one soldier in the country for one year could pay for 20 schools - the Obama administration is committed to further militarising rather than deescalating the war.
They fail to grasp that you cannot win the "hearts and minds" of a people when you are not merely occupying them, but supporting a massively corrupt and violent elite while killing a significant number of civilians on a routine basis.
More broadly, it was recently announced that the Obama administration is trying to loosen export controls for American-made weapons so that the US - whose weapons sales, by some estimates, equal if not surpass those of the rest of the world combined - can expand its dominance of the international arms market even further.
So much for the changes in the US' relationship with the Muslim world promised by Obama last June in Cairo. And needless to say, if the Italians, French, Russians, Brits or Chinese could get a bigger piece of the weapons sales pie, they would demonstrate as little scruples about what they sell to whom as has the US....