The hearts-and-minds myth

[Administrator]

Mastering the languages, cultural nuances, beliefs and taboos that prevail in a theater of war, area of operations or tactical environment is vital to military success. It's much easier to kill people you understand.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/09/1947271

[bezgin]

And much easier to know how they are going to react once you start to kill.


You are there to kill. We all knew it. From the very beginning of this unjust war.

[Jeremy Adam Smith]

"Violence arising from differences of religious confession, race or ethnicity is profoundly different — and far more difficult to quell. Generally, such struggles are brought to an end only through a great deal of killing. One side — or all — must be bled out."

"Generally..." but not always. Take South Africa. There was a conflict with no shortage of legal and extralegal violence, which was resolved in largely peaceful fashion through democratic mechanisms and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I'm not suggesting that South Africa is useful for us in understanding a way to victory in Iraq, but it at least suggests that genocidal bloodshed is not as inevitable or necessary as some would have us believe.

I also think that if you're really going to use history as a guide, it's important to see clearly that though "a great deal of killing" may solve a limited problem in the short term, the killing can later lead to even greater bloodshed.

[BenBenson]

Peters' article, "The hearts-and-minds myth," is seductive and dangerous. I pray readers recognize it as the definition of the path we must never take.

Peters mingles truths and partial logic into a disturbing soulless conclusion. Fully disregarded is who we are and what we stand for. We are THE founding nation of the Enlightenment he mocks. We can not reduce ourselves to the barbarity we face. Our strategies and tactics must be different. Giving in to barbarism may win a war only to destroy what we are.

While I abhor using the cliché of Nazi Germany, their madness is what Peters presents. It was logically right that Germany could win much by coldly extinguishing its neighbors and Jews. This madness, however, brought them the opposition of the world and fundamental identity questioning anguish to generations of its children.