Bolton: ‘We Will Fail in Afghanistan’

Human Events:

America will lose the war in the AfPak region if Barack Obama continues his plans to remove troops there starting in July 2011, John Bolton told HUMAN EVENTS. “I worry, because of the overall worldview of this administration, we will fail in Afghanistan, despite the best efforts of our military” and “despite what General Petraeus might do.”

The former UN ambassador stressed that Obama’s counter-insurgency objectives are ideologically misplaced, deriding him for trying to turn Afghanistan into the Switzerland of Central Asia.

It’s not going to happen, says Bolton: “This is a grim and unappealing conclusion, but it is the destruction of the Taliban and al Qaeda that is our strategic objective, not improvement of the everyday life of the Afghan population. I’d love to see that happen, for their benefit. But we’re dealing with a form of religious fanaticism. It is not an economic problem. It’s not a problem of poverty. It’s a problem of ideology.”

“We need to hope, at best, it’s a one-term administration.”