"For Filkins, as for General McChrystal, success or failure in Afghanistan appears to pivot on domestic political resolve. The rest is just a matter of patience. Send in more ground forces, verse them in the kid-glove precepts of counterinsurgency and all will be well. Slowly but surely Afghan hearts and minds will be won. But why should we share this optimism? The history of counterinsurgency warfare provides no reason to do so. Consider the case of Malaysia, valorized in the new “U.S. Army Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual” as the one knockout success among a litany of failures. British forces prevailed in a 12-year campaign against “communist terrorists” not by winning over wary villagers through acts of beneficence but by forcibly relocating the rural Chinese population into fortified encampments, by deporting suspected insurgents en masse and by promising to leave once a privileged ethnically based elite had been installed. These expedients won’t work in Afghanistan; nor should they be tried. Escalating a war that can’t be won doesn’t improve the odds; it merely deepens the catastrophe.
SUSAN L. CARRUTHERS, PH.D."
PS For Filkins to cover cover US wars, is like `Uday Saddam Husayn covering Saddam's wars.