The Afghan surge can’t defeat terrorist ideology, experts say. According to Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, ‘President Obama should have used his speech to declare victory and announce the start of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan instead of an escalation. Even if the surge achieves its immediate mission—at huge cost—the operation won’t achieve its goal of making the US safer from terrorist attacks because al-Qaeda can easily set up shop in states like Somalia or Yemen.’

He adds that ‘Al-Qaeda’s murderous ideology can erupt anywhere, including on a military base in the middle of Texas. The ideas and techniques behind terrorism simply can’t be defeated by force of arms. “George W. Bush chose a path toward a more or less permanent state of costly, deadly, low-level war. Barack Obama should have taken a different course”.’

The very recent bomb attacks in Mogadishu, where a suicide bomber infiltrated a university graduation ceremony and killed at least 19 people, including three ministers of the Somali government, is proof that al-Qaeda is in other places apart from Afghanistan. Time and again, the US government has justified its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan as efforts to make sure that the al-Qaeda will not ‘reestablish a base of operations and plan new attacks against the United States and other targets.’

The Islamist ideology is wont to spread in ‘a failed state where the ideology of violent, fundamentalist Islam’ can succeed. And if the US justification is to be used, the surge will not erase Islamist ideology off the face of the earth.

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Via The Washington Post