A lot of explosions are taking place in the imperial hinterlands these days. No matter how optimistic you might be, it’s a little hard to convince oneself that things are moving in anything like a positive direction. Of course, we live in an era when people point to Iraq as if it were some kind of success story. The truth is, that country is simply blowing up a bit more slowly than it was a couple of years ago.  I suppose you could say that the success of counterinsurgency strategy was to help bring a full-scale fratricidal war down to 2003-04 levels of killing. That is a bit like an arsonist taking credit for helping to put out a house fire he himself started – one that resulted in multiple fatalities. (Note to our “leaders”: Don’t expect a good citizenship award any time soon… aside from the Nobel prize.) I must admit, I find the “the surge worked” crowd more than a little nauseating – most of them were in favor of this disastrous war in the first place. If Iraq is to be presented as a model for future interventions, I can see why the Iranians might want to be building bombs. We’ve, in essence, destroyed Iraq, killed perhaps a million people, permanently displaced several million more. Anyone want the same out there? Anyone?

My guess is that this is what runs through the minds of sane people in Pakistan pretty much every time they see American military hardware flying overhead. Or every time they hear our Secretary of State providing cover for our southwest Asia strategy. I have to think that their minds turn to those other fortunate nations we have “helped” over the decades. Afghanistan, of course, is the closest and most current example, its very borders a product of imperial hubris from a bygone era. Hostility among Pakistanis to the idea of American military involvement in their country must at least in part be motivated by a desire to have their homeland survive as a minimally functional state, as opposed to the kleptocratic basket-case to their west. They have seen where this type of relationship often leads, and they don’t want to go there.

So what are we attempting to accomplish in Afghanistan-Pakistan? Making our own nation safer? How, exactly? By brewing deep-seated hatred amongst millions of people on both sides of the Hindu Kush? (Old Joe “Wrong Way” Lieberman probably thinks it’s a good idea… and has he got a health plan for you!) Responding to media questions in Pakistan, Hillary Clinton referred to the war to “drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan” back in the 1980s and how we had, after that was over, turned away from that country and left it for the buzzards to fight over. (My words, not hers.) She might have mentioned that we had begun meddling in Afghanistan’s internal affairs prior to the Soviet invasion, and that that invasion was, in part, a response to the fanatical insurgency our intelligence agencies had helped to set in motion – you know, the one that later spawned the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and a few other organizations we’ve heard from more recently. International interventions of this kind have consequences, intended or not, that seldom redound to our benefit as a society (to say nothing of the peoples we subject to our policies).  

Hey, Barack-o…. One way you can make America safer is by not making the same mistake your predecessors made – i.e. relying on bombs, spies, paid assassins, etc. to force your will on the world. Not a good track record there.

luv u,

jp

There’s a pretty strong essay by Andrew Bacevich in the November issue of Harper’s (“The War We Can’t Win”) that looks at the impasse of the Afghan war and the fallacy of believing we can make America safe by continuing to occupy a foreign land. One would hope that Obama reads it – I have my doubts he’s hearing this point of view with any regularity. Bacevich observes that Obama is carrying forward the legacy of failure his predecessor established in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and while I don’t agree with every nuance of his analysis, he’s spot-on when questioning the general approach to the “War on Terror” that Bush took and which has since become a matter of conventional wisdom (or lack of same). The impetus towards revenge, stoked by the Bush team, that swept us into both wars has proven a dismal failure, as Bacevich points out. It is also a criminal abuse of power that has sowed the seeds of future disasters.  

The September 11 attacks represented a colossal failure of our political leaders, our commercial airline industry, our national security apparatus, and our intelligence community, as Jim Ridgeway so aptly described a few years ago in The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11  (note: not a “9-11 truth” work by any means). The problem wasn’t so much in Afghanistan as it was – and is – right here. The attacks were planned largely in Germany and in flight schools in the United States. So… are we planning to occupy Germany and Florida? Prolonging and expanding the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan is not going to make us safer – it’s simply going to inspire more people to try to take a shot at the empire that’s subjugating two Muslim nations and helping to oppress a third (Palestine). Bacevich contrasts our policy in Afghanistan to America’s relationship with Mexico, pointing out the absurdity of the notion that an army of occupation can be used to impose a more effective, less corrupt government and to disable international criminal networks operating within that country’s borders. To suggest this approach in Mexico would be to invite ridicule – even more so when you consider the degree to which our own trade policy has fueled the disintegration of the Mexican state and created a flood of economic refugees and illicit drugs across our southern border.

Truthfully, our policy in Afghanistan is the same as though we had allied ourselves with some of the worst drug cartels in Mexico in the hope that they might someday voluntarily adopt at least the pretense of virtue as not to embarrass us any further. The objective is not good governance for the Afghans – it is denying Al Qaeda safe haven, and we seem willing to do anything to bring that about… including a lot of things that seriously undermine that very goal. Like support for figures like the warlord Dostum and his ilk who would, I’m sure, tolerate their former jihadist allies if they saw benefit in doing so. Like killing senior Taliban leaders, so that younger, more energetic, more zealous militants can take their places. Like sacrificing some of the best among us for an unworthy cause.

Cheney and family are more than happy to trumpet this as some kind of triumph. Obama should know better than to follow in their footsteps.

luv u,

jp