Kristol calls killing of US soldiers by uniformed Afghans ‘little incidents’
The recent deaths of US servicemen at the hands of uniformed Afghanis, our supposed allies, over the destruction of Korans was a topic on the panel on the Mar 4 episode of Fox News Sunday.
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One of the regular panelist, editor and publisher of the Weekly Standard and one of the leading voices for the current US foreign policy, Bill Kristol was asked about the above topic by host, Chris Wallace.
Wallace: All right. I want to turn to Afghanistan and the continuing fallout from the burning of the Korean and the tragic killing of six U.S. soldiers by Afghans in uniform, by our supposed partners.
And as I discussed with the senators, there is a growing movement — not a groundswell, but you see people like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh talking about rushing to the exits.
Bill, how sensitive a moment is this now for the question of how committed the U.S. is going to be in Afghanistan?
Kristol answers in typical neoconservative fashion:
Well, I think it’s an awfully sensitive moment. And we’ll see if General Allen, two weeks from now when he testifies, can convince people that, in the big picture, we’re on a reasonable path, that President Obama hasn’t weakened so much with the announced drawdown, that we have a chance of success, a reasonable chance of success, and that these little incidents are just incidents and don’t reflect the broader pattern.
Wallace replies somewhat puzzled, “little incidents”?
Definitely a question we should all be asking of Kristol, his ilk and the foreign policy the country has espoused for over a decade.
It is always amazing how people like Bill Kristol can downplay these tragedies as “little incidents”. It must be easy for a man who has never donned a uniform or carried a weapon.
I wonder if the families of these lost service members consider the loss of their loved ones as “little incidents”.
The neoconservatives will never let “little incidents” ever get in their way of increased intervention and reshaping of the Middle East, regardless of lost blood and treasure.
There are many reasons why we should not be in Afghanistan risking one American life: we have no Constitutional authority to occupy a foreign land, our economy is totally in the tank and America is heading down the path of much of Europe and the American people in general are tired of it.
However, there is something else at play here, the “irrationality of Middle Eastern politics” as Republican icon and former President Ronald Reagan once said in his autobiography.
Explaining the pulling of troops out of Lebanon after the killing 241 troops at the US barracks there Reagan said:
Perhaps we didn’t appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle. Perhaps the idea of a suicide car bomber committing mass murder to gain instant entry to Paradise was so foreign to our own values and consciousness that it did not create in us the concern for the marines’ safety that it should have.
In the weeks immediately after the bombing, I believe the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave. Yet the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there. If there would be some rethinking of policy before our men die, we would be a lot better off. If that policy had changed towards more of a neutral position and neutrality, those 241 marines would be alive today.
Are we to believe that the politics in that part of the world are any more rational? The “little incidents”, that Mr. Kristol so callously calls them, are certainly going to continue for one reason or another. Most certainly more men and women will die for reasons we find totally irrational.
