Soft efforts in Afghanistan causing U.S. to lose battle

Editor,

While most of the electorate is focused on Iraq, what it fails to realize is why we are losing the war on terror. Our soft efforts in Afghanistan are a great example of why the U.S. will continue to lose this battle.

At one point, we were told that Afghanistan was a success and that the U.S. would be victorious. We were told that Afghanistan would become an ally. Evidence is proving to the contrary. The legions of undefeated Taliban and al-Qaida soldiers, along with thousands of jihad supporters, have renewed their efforts against the U.S. and NATO. They are being flushed with money, amassing recruits and arming themselves to the teeth, all for their fight to regain power and install the caliphate. The Taliban trounces around southern Afghan villages daily, fearlessly assassinating clerics, firing rockets at schools and instilling fear in anyone too friendly to the new government.

Why are we so unsuccessful in the Middle East? In the words of President Bush, our military was ordered to show compassion to our enemies - to avoid hitting holy shrines and mosques and to give out thousands of food packages. The U.S. deployed forces not to crush our enemy, but to be used in a compassionate way to reconstruct, regardless of whether Afghanistan accepted Western ideals. A sensitive Bush administration declared that the U.S. had no right to impose our beliefs on Afghans, with little recognition of the countless Islamic leaders declaring a jihad against the U.S.

Had the U.S. led the Islamists and other threatening countries to believe that we would destroy those who opposed our ideals of individual rights, we would not be facing an emboldened enemy.

The failure in Afghanistan is a result of our foreign policy. Despite lip service to the goal of protecting America's safety, the war on terror has been waged in compliance with the prevailing moral premise that self-interest is evil and self-sacrifice a virtue. Instead of trouncing the enemy for the sake of protecting American lives, our leaders have sacrificed our self-defense for the sake of serving Afghans.

Let's hope that our next generation of leaders will have the moral certitude to protect our most valued American principles. Let us show them that the ideal of Islamic totalitarianism is a lost cause, rather than stoke their enthusiasm.

Damian Erasmus

UNM alumnus