Why they keep fighting

I want to share an excerpt with you from an article called "Boundaries, Benchmarks and Bright Lines". Here's the part that really caught my attention:

Wars are successfully won when armies surrender, insurgents lay down their arms and civilians give up. Our policies of bombing civilians, checkpoint killings, prisoner torture and secret detentions, and our lack of military discipline that allows soldiers to kill or mistreat prisoners and civilians doesn’t make surrender tempting – just the opposite. People who expect to be killed regardless of whether they attack, run away, or give up, see no reason to surrender and easily conclude that the best option is a suicide mission.

In the Revolutionary War General George Washington commanded that prisoners be decently treated, both from humane sentiment and from understanding that the British and Hessian troops would be more likely to surrender or lay down their arms if they saw a better future. It worked – many "enemies" stayed on to become citizens in the new nation that treated them humanely.

The "war on terror" in Iraq created by the Bush administration is now so monstrously asymmetric that it is hard to imagine any possible resolution. It has destroyed any hope of a decent life for everyone in Iraq – Sunnis, Shias, insurgents, civilians alike, and is rapidly quashing such hopes for Iranians and Afghanis.

It’s not just moral authority that we have lost. By being the biggest, strongest and most terrifying terrorists in history we’ve lost the war on terror, and we’ve lost our national security. We’re not safer now from terrorist attack – or even consequences of natural disaster – than we were five years ago.

John Glenn used to say that the best part of the Pledge of Allegiance was the ending, "with liberty and justice for all." Not just for a few, not just for the deserving, not just for Christians or patriots, or white people, but "for all."

You'd think this stuff would be obvious. I'm bewildered as to why it isn't.