The first decade of the 21st century will be marked by our two failed wars.
Iraq and Afghanistan failed, in fact, for similar reasons: We went in without a clear goal for victory or conditions for leaving the country, and found ourselves drawn into a protracted conflict with a nebulous, ill-defined enemy that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Even more, they have cost America its standing with the rest of the world. These wars will be remembered for torture in prisons like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and for the deaths of civilians in wars with no clear enemy.
And what have we achieved? In Iraq, an uncertain peace and a “democracy” bearing more similarity to an Iranian-style theocracy than a true democracy — already Iraqi women have fewer rights than they did under Hussein. In Afghanistan, stability and democracy for urban regions, but many rural areas remain vulnerable to Taliban control. We have damaged our relationship with Pakistan and left ourselves without the resources to combat possibly greater threats in the region, such as Iran.
The blame for both can be given to the Bush administration, whose belief in the absolute power of the American military left us trapped in an unwinnable situation. But the Bush administration does not bear all the responsibility.
President Barack Obama has kept Guantanamo Bay open and expanded the use of prisons for enemy combatants in places like Bagram Prison in Afghanistan.
President Obama may have drawn down the war in Iraq, but he has remained too long in the Afghan quagmire.
We, the American people, also bear some responsibility for these wars. Support for the war in Afghanistan was overwhelming in the wake of Sept. 11 and support for Iraq quite strong. It isn’t the first time America has supported a failed war: Support for the Vietnam conflict was equally strong.
The lesson to be learned from these conflicts is not isolationism. We should not cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. But it is proof that overwhelming military might is not enough to win any conflict. The face of warfare has changed. America has the greatest military in the world, but that may not mean what it used to. We need to start pursuing non-military solutions to our conflicts. We need to fight ignorance and fear not with our own fear and violence, but with diplomacy and education.
Our strength has failed us. After decades of being the world’s military superpower, we need to realize strength alone will not carry us in modern-day conflicts. There are other ways to fight and protect ourselves. Violence begets violence. Every civilian killed in drone strikes creates more terrorists. Every enemy combatant tortured in American prisons creates more terrorists.
We cannot win the War on Terror with might alone. America needs to turn those trillions of dollars toward fighting the poverty, fear, ignorance and desperation that are the root causes of terrorism. It’s time to find a new way to fight.
Max Bartlett can be reached at [email protected]