Ep. 5561 – Ron Enzweiler: Requiem for America's Ineffectual War State – 7/16/21

Ron Enzweiler discusses the unlearned lessons of America's wasteful and doomed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. First of all, he says, we should have known that the only thing keeping Iraq together was Saddam Hussein's stranglehold on power, which prevented a civil war from breaking out. After the United States deposed him, explains Enzweiler, those tensions were going to bubble over no matter what. The best thing to do now would be to leave Iraq as soon as possible, but stubborn superstitions like the "safe haven" myth and the idea that President Obama pulled troops out too quickly make it hard for anyone to push withdrawal even today. In the case of Afghanistan, Enzweiler says that some fear the Taliban will not only take over that country, but will also try to export their vision of Islam to other nations. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of who the Taliban are and what they want. They aren't jihadists, says Enzweiler—they just want to spread their way of life within their own country and keep out foreign occupiers who try to change that. Social progress and cosmopolitanism may come to Afghanistan eventually, but we cannot force those things at the point of a gun.

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