The Quran Should Be Required Reading For All Political Leaders

IN THE NYT article, Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan, we read that the U.S. is working to target specific leaders of the Taliban. This is their new strategy. Also, they're working to lure Taliban fighters away from fighting by using money. The U.S. is trying to negotiate peace agreements with Taliban leaders, and maybe even give them a say in the Afghan government.

This all seems so stupid. According to Islamic doctrine, any truces or agreements will be considered to be temporary by the Muslims — long enough to gain sufficient strength to remount an attack, or they're just stalling until U.S. troops depart.

A lack of understanding of basic Islamic principles makes these American higher-ups seem like innocent, ignorant, naive morons. It's hard to fathom that people in those positions can possibly be so uneducated about Islam.

The military is tiptoeing around the source of the problem: Islamic doctrine. So every "solution" they come up with doesn't stand a chance.

The best solution I have heard so far would be difficult, and couldn't be done unless all the higher-ups understood Islam. Robert Spencer proposed it. He said we might be able to use the model of what happened in Japan after World War II. Apparently the provisional government allowed anyone to worship as they wished in the Shinto religion, but Shinto would not be allowed in schools or in the government.

Islam has a political element. It's actually a large percentage of Islamic doctrine. But it also has a religious element — methods of worship and prayer, rituals of purification, fasting, etc. If you don't separate the political part from the religious part, if you allow it in the government, and if you continue to allow madrassas to indoctrinate the young in pure Islam, you will get an unending stream of new jihadis, you will get unending war, and you will have an unending stream of idiots on our side frantically trying to find out "what it would take them to stop."

Sorry to rant, but this is so frustrating. The Quran is not that hard to read!