Why 'Surge Light' won't work

By Richard Cohen The Washington Post

Between World War I and World War II, Britain fought all across the Islamic world, battling insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name just two, and usually losing. This caused a fair amount of worry, introspection, angst and the usual commissions to determine why history was being so unkind. What the British discovered was what Pogo could have told them: They had met the enemy and it was them.

Nowhere is Britain’s interwar predicament better stated than in David Fromkin’s brilliant and invaluable book about the creation of the modern Middle East, "A Peace to End All Peace." He writes, "What Britain faced in the Middle East was a long and perhaps endless series of individual and often spontaneous local rebellions against her authority. The rebellions were not directed by foreigners (as Britain usually suspected); they were directed against foreigners" — in other words, Britain herself.

The lesson that Britain learned the hard way now has to be learned all over again. The trick for the United States in Afghanistan is to eradicate al-Qaeda and suppress the Taliban — and do both in such a way that it does not go from self-proclaimed liberator to perceived oppressor. Can this be done?

Read more at The Washington Post