Flawed Policies

JENNIFER ANDREW

In her marvelous book-The March of Folly-Barbara Tuchman talks of the 25 long years for which the US persisted with a flawed and disastrous policy in Viet-Nam. The torture and killings ended with a defeat for the US. Defeat at the hands of pajama and slipper clad small men whom the US soldiers contemptuously called 'gooks'. Of course US soldiers are called 'grunts' probably because that is the only response they can make.

In Viet-Nam US soldiers said-'if it's dead and if it's Viet-Namese then it's a Viet-Cong' (VC or Viet Cong being the North Vietnamese whom the US was fighting). This is how the body counts were inflated and how brutality became the preferred and easy option. The question is that are they now saying in Afghanistan that-'if it's dead and if it's Pashtun then its Taleban' because death, destruction and numbers killed is what dominates the US strategy in Afghanistan. This is evident from the 'mistakes' in Southern Afghanistan that have killed hundreds of innocent Afghans including women and children. The emphasis is on body counts, kill ratios and death and destruction graphs.

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