Armed social workers don't win wars

Sen. Ted Cruz spoke at the CSP Defeat Jihad Summit this week, recounting an exchange he had with the secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs when they came before Senate Armed Services Committee several months ago.

Sen. Cruz said he asked the following question:

"What would be required militarily if the objective were to destroy – not to degrade, not to weaken, but to destroy ISIS in 90 days?"

Cruz continued:

"The response from General Dempsey: I'm sorry, that is simply not possible.

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"Now my response was OK. Perhaps that time frame is unrealistic. You tell me, from the military perspective, if the object is to destroy ISIS,, what is required to do so?

"The response was we cannot destroy ISIS until we change the underlying conditions on the ground that make young men in poverty susceptible to extremism."

At the time, Cruz described this as the response of a "social worker," not the nation's top general. He's right. Welcome to the United States Military, Sen. Cruz. "Social work" is one way to describe the rotten basis of counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) that led to American defeats in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Make that "armed social work," as described by a COIN commander in 2009.

Actually, make that armed social work with tea. No, armed social work with tea and without ballistic glasses.

No, make that armed social work with tea, without ballistic glasses, with reverence for the Quran, without spitting in the direction of Mecca and with looking the other way at sex crimes against children.

I could go on.

I don't think it is too harsh to call this a noxious phase of postmodern (Marxist) madness, long chronicled at my website, as The Great Society Goes to War. What we have witnessed is an tsunami of unsustainable programs as a means of Afghan pacification (read: bribery) as delivered by U.S. troops ordered to accommodate if not submit to central tenets of Islamic law, including blasphemy law, which prohibits criticism of Islam.

In the process, thousands of lives have been lost and ruined. Treasure squandered. And no one is held accountable – or even asked questions by Congress.

For example, from a 2011 column:

"If Congress were worth the bother, it would demand change on behalf of these and all of our fallen young Americans from a military in denial, a government in thrall to a policy with more in common with the utterly failed ideas of the Great Society than with national security strategy. I am talking about COIN theory, which holds that if you sink enough money, enough public works projects, enough nation-building, then somehow, some way, these alien cultures bridged by Islamic law and custom will adopt essentially un-Islamic law and custom and – presto – become an ally in the war on terror."

I can think of no greater duty than the Senate Armed Services Committee has to this nation than to set out to find out how deep this rot goes.