OPINION:
Insurgency is the action stirred by those who see foreign troops in their homeland as enemies (“Muddled thinking on Afghanistan,” Opinion, Oct. 30). The United States was founded on insurgent action against the very Colonial power from whence the rebels came. They wanted no part of England, mother country or not, and so they fought to establish independence from it.
Matthew P. Hoh’s position - that our troops in Afghanistan are perceived as enemy occupiers whose presence advances the cause of insurgency - is not an academic one, nor is it an editorial comment from the safety of an office thousands of miles from battle. He served our country in the military and the Foreign Service and speaks from firsthand involvement in Afghanistan.
His view of the Vietnam War is exactly the same as that espoused by the late Robert S. McNamara, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s secretary of defense. In the award-winning documentary “The Fog of War,” Mr. McNamara says the Vietnamese people were engaged in a civil war that posed no threat to the United States but cost 58,000 American lives. The lesson of that experience is this: Whether a sovereign nation’s politics are in line with our own model of democracy is not a proper basis for waging a war.
It is time to establish a new paradigm for America’s place in the world. We lose our balance, wasting lives and treasure, when we pursue the objective of remaking the world in our own image. Too much remains to be righted here at home.
JOAN SALEMI
West Springfield
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