The appeal of history is the lessons to be learnt from it, even if often a long tie after an event. However, little reference is being made, apparently because they date back too far, to the particular conditions of the war in Spain during France's First Empire, with a view to drawing lessons for the current war in Afghanistan. Yet it would be worth our while pondering that experience to try to avoid repeating disastrous, costly mistakes that, as in the Spanish campaign, are based on false or inaccurate assumptions.
Afghanistan: waiting for Baylen
Now that the second Iraq war is on the point of being declared as won by the Americans, for the purpose of accomplishing the progressive withdrawal of their victorious troops, the global focus of the war against terrorism is about to switch to Afghanistan. American politicians and strategists, moreover, are not concealing their intention to reinforce troop strengths of the coalition fighting there, under NATO aegis, against the Taliban and other al-Qaeda assassins, constantly demanding increased participation from their allies.
It seems to us, as to many other writers, that this shows a poor appreciation of the nature and the motivations both of the adversary of Western troops and of the Afghan population. You do not, with impunity, and for seven long years, stir up the deepest feelings of the divided and heterogeneous peoples who constitute the population of Afghanistan without bringing to the surface a fierce desire for independence and rejection of all foreign occupation. Is there really any other national cement in the country?
It is always a mistake to underestimate the strength of popular instincts, and the Americans, who by virtue of their own history should be well placed to recognize their vitality, aren’t the first to commit this error. It is enough to remember the beginnings of the partisan struggle that was also the Spanish war.
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