The old strategy has been repackaged and it is just as unlikely to succeed. Worse, it demonstrates that this Administration still doesn’t understand the conflict in which it is engaged. In an op-ed piece in the Las Vegas Sun published 18 October 2001 I noted the necessity to define the war. To this date, the opposition defines the parameters of the conflict and the US responds. That is a fundamentally flawed policy. At the heart of the matter is that the conflict is not about Iraq, or any other territory for that matter. Still, we cling tenaciously to the anachronistic concept of wars based on geographic boundaries. The ongoing struggle is about religion and irreconcilable competing belief systems. It did not start with Saddam or when the US led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, rather the genesis dates back thirteen hundred years. The impetus for this strife was exacerbated over a century ago when the Europeans divided up the Middle East at the end of the Ottoman Empire. The prime concern for establishing borders was interests of the European countries, not those of the inhabitants of the area. As […]