Define "Win"

by Dick Mac

Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it, Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote in a five-page Commander's Summary.

The enemy we are fighting in Afghanistan is not the Afghan people, nor is it really al-qaeda; the enemy we are fighting is the people of the Middle East who fund Islamic jihad that results in terrorism (crime).

We are not fighting a military, we are fighting a notion, an idea. If we want to squash that idea (an idea I believe is worth squashing), we have to go to war with the nations that fund, support, and promote that notion: Saudi Arabia and the other sheikdoms that Texas oilmen consider their closest allies.

If we funded the overthrow of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we would further the cause of peace, further women's rights by nearly a millennium, and help sensitize the world to the plight of homosexuals whose lives are criminalized by theocratic rule.

Sure, sending more troops to Afghanistan will result in more dead people and more conquered regions that can be displayed as "victories"; but, until the sheikdoms of the Middle East are forced into the 20th Century, and their theocratic rulers dethroned, killed or imprisoned, there is no "win" possible in Afghanistan.

See you at the gas pumps!