Beg pardon, Madame Secretary and Mr. President, this is who we are. If we really cared about Afghan children as much as our own, surely we would not have so quickly turned to war as our habitual first resort. No doubt Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama dearly want to wind down our feckless venture there. But the main reason war in Afghanistan has not worked is because official policy so closely resembles, especially from the perspective of the Afghans, the cool murderousness of the deranged sergeant.

For this to change, we must look much more closely at ourselves and our militarism. We prefer the platitudes, the easy stereotypes of “us” as good guys and “them” as bad guys. And so, our first and most arrogant rationalization for invading Iraq or Afghanistan is that we know best. We know more about democracy. We know “our” oil somehow ended up under “their” sand, and we have the right to control it.

But two things completely undercut and negate this “superior” knowledge. First, we remain abysmally ignorant about the culture, customs and languages of the countries we invade. Second, in order to rationalize the subjection of distant peoples no different from ourselves to our campaigns of shock and awe, we have to think of them as subhuman — less real than ourselves. Inevitably and tragically, this means not valuing their children as much as our own.

General Petraeus wisely required his officers to read Greg Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea.” Through building schools for girls in the outposts of the AfPak region, Mortenson provides an alternative model for turning adversaries of America into friends. But building schools and occupying a nation by force never will work in concert, however much our well-intentioned military leaders might wish.

Winslow Myers, author and board member of Beyond War