President Obama: Look for a New Massoud
President Obama: Look for a New Massoud
by Cora Sol Goldstein
Download the Full Article: President Obama: Look for a New Massoud
It is often said that foreign powers are condemned to fail in Afghanistan. This is an over-simplification — the ancient history of Afghanistan is the history of successive and successful foreign occupations that radically changed the country and its prevailing ideologies. It is true that in modern times imperial powers have systematically lost their Afghan adventures. In all cases, the invading armies tried to deploy a reduced number of troops and attempted to keep their casualties low. They relied on their technological superiority in their efforts to impose a central government that could be controlled from afar. The U.S. is losing Afghanistan because it is adhering blindly to this model.
It is imperative to free American policy from the straitjacket of misconceptions that shapes U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.
Download the Full Article: President Obama: Look for a New Massoud
Cora Sol Goldstein is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach. Goldstein received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2002. Her book, Capturing the German Eye: American Visual Propaganda in Occupied Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) discusses the U.S. experience in postwar Germany. Her recent publications include “2003 Iraq, 1945 Germany, and 1940 France: Success and Failure in Military Occupations,” Military Review, July 2010 and “A Strategic Failure: American Information Control Policy in Occupied Iraq,” Military Review, March-April 2008.
