Accepting Reality Is No Vice, and Being Oblivious Is No Virtue By Ivan Eland - Independent

March 10, 2008

America is an amazing place—one of the wealthiest and freest nations on earth. Yet because Europe has so many more cultures and languages in one contained area, Americans, compared to their European brethren, seem like country bumpkins in their knowledge and understanding of what is happening in the world. Unfortunately, this tin ear for global affairs sometimes afflicts U.S. leaders and media, too.

The obliviousness of the American people, politicians, and press is especially acute when it comes to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the media, always concerned that they might be branded as “liberal” or “unpatriotic,” portray dramatic improvements in Iraq because of the U.S. troop surge orchestrated by the heroic Gen. David Petraeus. In fact, this portrayal has been so rosy—and so accepted hook, line, and sinker by the American people—that the Republicans will attempt to use progress in Iraq against the Democrats in the 2008 election! In Afghanistan, the press coverage has been more accurate concerning the worrisome resurgence of the Taliban, but the media and the Democrats seem to think that the United States could still win if more troops—U.S. or NATO—are inserted, or if the U.S. were to get its meek allies to put more of their existing forces into battle against enemy fighters. If the American public is deluded over the surge in Iraq, it is simply ignorant of what is going on in Afghanistan.

At the risk of being a “nattering nabob of negativity,” I would argue that the United States is still losing—and ultimately will be defeated—in both of these brushfire guerrilla wars. Others are pointing in the same direction. In an important new book, Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq, William R. Polk, who has experienced insurgencies in the field, concludes from history that in the mid- to long-term—absent genocide by counterinsurgency forces—insurgents almost always prevail.

Even after spending $650 billion, more than 4,000 U.S. and allied lives, and tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi lives on these two wars, many U.S. politicians and most of the media and American public still prefer to avoid the stark reality that it has all been in vain—that is, that the United States is likely to lose both of these never-ending wars.

In Iraq, the violence has declined from peak levels, but actually started dropping even before the U.S. troop surge, primarily because severe ethnic cleansing had separated the warring Sunnis and Shi’a into homogenous ghettos, and because the United States had begun to pay off the Sunni guerrillas to police their local areas and fight the excessively bloodthirsty (and therefore incompetent) al Qaeda in Iraq. More important, evidence exists that the militias in Iraq, like all good guerrilla forces, have patience and are merely waiting until the United States leaves. Even with the surge, violence—although reduced—is still high, and no national reconciliation among the mutually suspicious groups has been achieved.

And it’s likely that none will be. Decades of wars, including the U.S. invasion and occupation, and grinding international economic sanctions have further widened the deep social fissures in what was already one of the most fractious countries in the Middle East. Had the obtuse Bush administration bothered to consult Arabist scholars before launching its ill-fated invasion and occupation, it would have learned that the faction-ridden Iraq, an artificial country dreamed up by the British after World War I, was the least likely of practically any nation in the Middle East to accept a liberal, federated democracy. The level of incomes and social cooperation are too low for a liberal democracy to be sustained. Even if the Iraqi government manages to pass all of the benchmark laws that the Bush administration wants (unlikely, since the president’s council just vetoed a law to hold local elections), the underlying social fragmentation will render such laws mere paper exercises, because no one will honor them. The U.S. troop surge is merely a finger in the dike, temporarily holding back these titanic social forces from clashing in full-blown civil war.

Afghanistan, like Iraq, is naturally a decentralized tribal land. Continued U.S. and allied occupation is merely fueling a resurgence of the Taliban there and radical Islamic elements in Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons. Coercive U.S. and Afghan government anti-drug efforts are further exacerbating the Taliban’s rise, as poppy growers pay the Taliban for protection. Really, President Hamid Karzai’s role is only mayor of Kabul; warlords control the rest of the country. The media, the American public, and even the Democrats think Afghanistan is a “must win” in the war on terror. Yet Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, the leaders of al Qaeda, are probably in Pakistan—not Afghanistan. To have the best chance to capture or kill these terrorist kingpins, perhaps, for once, the U.S. government should concentrate its efforts and vast resources where they are likely to be.

To achieve such focus on the perpetrators of 9/11, the next president of the United States could actually take advantage of the American people’s apathy toward foreign affairs, cut U.S. losses, and withdraw U.S. forces immediately from both Afghanistan and Iraq—two quagmires that are creating new radical Islamic terrorists in reaction to the occupation of Muslim lands by non-Muslims.

Gabriel Roth, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, has pioneered scholarly work on market-based roads, parking, and transit.

William F. Shughart II is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Frederick A. P. Barnard Distinguished Professor of Economics, and holder of the Robert M. Hearin Chair of Business Administration at the University of Mississippi. A former economist at the Federal Trade Commission, Professor Shughart received his Ph.D.

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Alexander Tabarrok is Research Director for The Independent Institute, Assistant Editor of The Independent Review, and Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University.

Donald A. Downs is Professor of Political Science, Law, and Journalism at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Research Fellow at The Independent Institute.

Mike Moore is Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, former editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and author of the book, Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance.

John Semmens is a research fellow at the Independent Institute, a research project manager in the Arizona Department of Transportation Research Center, and contributing author to the Independent Institute book, Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship and the Future of Roads, edited by Gabriel Roth.

S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997).

Dr. James L. Payne is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Director of Lytton Research and Analysis and author of numerous books, including A History of Force: Exploring the Worldwide Movement Against Habits of Coercion, Bloodshed, and Mayhem,and he has taught political science at Yale University, Wesleyan University, Johns Hopkins University, and Texas A & M University.

Randal R. Rucker is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University, and co-author (with E.C. Pasour, Jr.) of Plowshares & Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture.

Charles V. Peña is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute as well as a senior fellow with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, senior fellow with the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, and an adviser on the Straus Military Reform Project.

William Ratliff is Adjunct Fellow at the Independent Institute, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a frequent writer on Chinese and Cuban foreign policies.

Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Full Biography and Recent Publications

Jonathan J. Bean is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor of History at Southern Illinois University, and editor of the forthcoming book, Race and Liberty: The Classical Liberal Tradition of Civil Rights.

Anthony Gregory is a Research Analyst at The Independent Institute. He earned his bachelor's degree in American history from the University of California at Berkeley and gave the undergraduate history commencement speech in 2003. In addition to his work with the Independent Institute, he regularly writes for numerous news and commentary web sites, including LewRockwell.com, Future of Freedom Foundation, and the Rational Review.
Full Biography and Recent Publications

Dominick T. Armentano is professor emeritus in economics at the University of Hartford (Connecticut) and a research fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. He is author of Antitrust & Monopoly (Independent Institute, 1998).

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is director of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. He is a native of Peru and received his B.S.C. in international history from the London School of Economics. He is widely published and has lectured on world economic and political issues including at the Mont Pelerin Society, Naumann Foundation (Germany), FAES Foundation (Spain), Brazilian Institute of Business Studies, Fundación Libertad (Argentina), CEDICE Foundation (Venezuela), Florida International University, and the Ecuadorian Chamber of Commerce. He is the author of the Independent Institute books The Che Guevara Myth and Liberty for Latin America. Full biography and recent publications.

Pierre Lemieux is an economist and co-director of the Economics and Liberty Research Group at the Université du Québec en Outaouais and a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

Alexander Tabarrok is research director at The Independent Institute, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, editor of the Independent Institute books, Entrepreneurial Economics, The Voluntary City (with D. Beito and P. Gordon), and Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime.

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute, author of Against Leviathan and Crisis and Leviathan, and editor of the scholarly quarterly journal, The Independent Review. Click here for a bio on Dr. Higgs, the noted economist and historian.

William Marina is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and Professor Emeritus of History at Florida Atlantic University.

David T. Beito is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama, and co-editor of the book, The Voluntary City: Choice, Community and Civil Society.

William Marina and David T. Beito belong to "Liberty and Power," a group blog at the History News Network.

For further articles and studies, see the Center on Peace & Liberty and OnPower.org.

Nicolas Heidorn is a public policy intern at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

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