No Military Solution

Five years after 9/11, it's very clear that Bush's "War on Terror" has failed miserably. An article in the Boston Globe outlines why:

The truth is that, for reasons that go far beyond questions of technique or tactics, history shows that countries like the United States and Israel just don't do protracted unconventional war especially well. It requires patience, self-restraint, bureaucratic agility -- qualities not found in abundance in modern liberal democracies. In a strictly military sense, we're about as likely to beat the Islamists at their game as Nasser or Saddam Hussein were to beat us at ours.

For both the United States and Israel, the real issue is not how to defeat the Islamist way of war but how to circumvent it, rendering it irrelevant. This implies resetting the terms of the competition.

[...]

[One] approach to circumventing the Islamist resistance, premised on a more sober appreciation of war's efficacy, begins with admitting the possibility that the problem posed by radical Islamists has no military solution. (Emphasis added.)

The article goes on to suggest a five-point strategy for changing the way we interact with Islamist resistance fighters. Above all, I sincerely believe we must shift our attention from hard to soft power: endeavoring to cultivate liberalization and democratization over decades, not mere months or years as this trigger-happy administration advocates. Until ideas like this are taken seriously by the American people and reflected in the governmet's policies, this unending and unwinnable War will continue on its bloody path to the benefit of no one.