Colin Powell famously echoed Tom Friedman’s Pottery Barn Rule: You break it, you own it. But Powell was wrong. We broke Iraq and Afghanistan, and now they own us. The main effect of our intervention in both places is that endemic conflicts (which predate our presence) are now being fought with unimaginably more lethal firepower.
Let me be clear, this is idiocy. Even with one or two degrees of separation, it is idiocy.
We did not break Afghanistan and Iraq. Saddam Hussein broke Iraq. And then Islamo-fascists of both the Sunni and Shia variety tried to break Iraq even more.
In Afghanistan, jihadis broke Afghanistan, making it a launching pad for 9/11. Jihadis still try to break Afghanistan.
Let me repeat, we did not break Iraq and Afghanistan. We turned hostile regimes into admittedly imperfect allies, and we give them hope of a better future for their people.
And by continuing to fight the enemies who broke Iraq and Afghanistan, we fight to keep these places from reverting to enemy status.
These countries don't "own" us--they fight with us rather than against us. Would "fixing" them really consist of getting out and risking enemy forces regaining control of those countries?
It always disturbs me to read advocacy for retreat masquerading as sophistication.
