The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Why are we in Afghanistan?

    By Barth on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 5:22pm |
    I do not know what to do about Afghanistan. Though I was in high school when this question arose about another war, I did not know what to do about Vietnam either, but I did learn a few things watching what happened and reading about it for many years since.

    And it is this: deciding what to do is not helped by politicians announcing what they would do or suggesting that anything other than saluting and doing exactly what some field commander is treasonous, wimpy or surrender.     What follows is not for those of you, admirable though your sentiments may be, for whom war is never warranted. This is not for those who believe---who still believe---that the United States should pretend the rest of the world has nothing to do with us. It is definitely not for those who think there is nothing about Afghanistan that should be of concern to those of us living safely over here.

    You are entitled to your opinion and in some ways I respect how you come to these views, if that is anything other than simple reflex. I do not agree with them, anymore than, had I been alive in the 1930s, I would like to think I would have urged American involvement in the European mess before our involvement was forced upon us. (That reminds me to note, by the way, that Pat Buchanan, mirroring the views of his 1930s counterparts, is one of those who see nothing of importance for us in Afghanistan. That should be enough to convince you how wrong a view it is, but suspect it does not.)

    Well before 9/11 we knew what the Taliban were all about. We heard about ancient Buddhist shrines being destroyed. We knew of the systematic torture of their opponents, and the gross subjugation of women. We saw the evil there, but as in Darfur and Serbia and Cambodia well before that and so on, we did nothing. There was no oil in any of those places. We have our own problems. We can just look the other way, turn the page, tut-tut-tut, if we would like, and think about Ryan Secrist (whoever he is).

    Since then, we have read and loved The Kite Runner but the ugly story it tells about life with these thugs does not seem to resonate here in a country once the haven for the oppressed but now obsessed with how to punish "illegal aliens."

    Even after 9/11, when there were, apparently, next to nobody involved in these matters who did not know that those attacks were launched by people who were permitted to exist, and train and recruit and plan by the Taliban which controlled Afghanistan, many in the United States government, including, tragically, the throughly incompetent President of the United States and the shortsighted Secretary of Defense, had no interest in ridding Afghanistan of these evil people. Richard Clarke tells us that the Defense Secretary wondered what purpose there was in making the rubble bounce, and the President grabbed Clarke by the lapels to tell him, in essence, I don't care about Afghanistan; I want Iraq.

    So half-heartedly we marched off to Afghanistan, largely abandoning it, as is our custom, as soon as we could pay attention to something else: the phony, immoral, pigheaded and racist insistence that Muslims are Muslims, and an attack by Afghani harbored Saudis can be fought by attacking Iraq.

    So the Taliban are back in parts of Afghanistan, and spreading into Pakistan. We are told that we can fight Al Qaeda, but let the Talib back into control of Afghanistan, a terrifying prospect, it would seem to me. Yes, we know that Afghanistan is impervious to foreign invaders. In fact, it appears that there really is no "Afghanistan" at least in the terms of what was established in the aftermath of World War I but simply many ethnic groups with an antipathy toward those who are different from them (sort of like pockets of this country, but worse.)

    In 1967, Norman Mailer published a book called Why are We in Vietnam. It was not a polemic, nor did it debate the issue of the day (at least overtly). It was a novel about a hunting trip in Alaska, including an American businessman who wanted to shoot a grizzly bear and apparently thought of little else. But though the book used the word Vietnam once, and on its last page, it was about war for the sake of proving one's masculinity rather than for reasons of true security. In 1967, Norman Mailer was in a gross minority, swimming against a strong national tide in the opposite direction. 

    And yet so many of the heirs of that permanent blight on our national history, that blow to our national psyche that torments us today and makes rational discussion of the prospect of war so difficult, engage us in the same foolish approach to this issue: that what the general says is what we must do, our honor is at stake, the men and women who have given their lives deserve as much, we can't just run and turn tail, blah, blah, blah.

    Just read some of this prattle:

    Sen Lindsey Graham (R-McCain Land):

    If you send troops in, we'll have a second chance at governance. You need to put Karzai's feet to the fire, or the next government's feet to the fire, to do a better job. But it's impossible to bring about better governance without security.


    Sen James Inhofe (R-Global warming is a hoax):

    At a time when the sacrifices of our American and allied forces in Afghanistan are increasing, we should give the utmost priority to listening to our commanders on the ground. We owe it to all those who have lost their lives, the thousands who are fighting there today, and all the families, to provide our forces with the adequate number of troops to accomplish the mission that they set out to do....

    Politics, indecision, or ambivalence has no place in this process when we are clearly at a crucial stage of the war where time and decisiveness are critical. As many have recently said, time is not on our side in Afghanistan. Indecision and delay only embolden our enemy while losing the support of our allies and those we are there to protect.


    Congressman John Boehner (R-Crazyville), House Minority Leader:

    "I am deeply troubled, however, by reports that the White House is delaying action on the General's request for more troops and questioning its strategy after the President endorsed 'an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy' six months ago. If these reports are accurate, and General McChrystal believes that without timely reinforcements our efforts in that country may end in failure, then the Obama Administration must act quickly to give him the resources he needs to achieve our goals. It's time for the President to clarify where he stands on the strategy he has articulated, because the longer we wait the more we put our troops at risk.

    "I also believe it's important that the American people and Members of Congress hear directly from General McChrystal about the situation on the ground, and soon. General Petraeus' testimony before Congress about his strategy for stabilizing Iraq and achieving success there was critical in helping Congress make informed decisions, and I believe testimony from General McChrystal would provide similar value regarding Afghanistan today."



    Yeh, that's a great idea. Let's have the military challenge the civilians elected to run our government and start yet another war in our country over who determines our foreign policy. And, here's another great idea: let's question the manliness of anyone who wants to carefully consider whether pouring more troops into a country theoretically governed by a corrupt group with little support among the people. Yes, General Westmoreland, I can see that light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, President Thieu, you can dictate the shape of the table before we begin to find a way out of this mess.

    Have we learned nothing?

    Apparently not:

    Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and former prisoner of war: 

    2003:
    "There has been a rise in al Qaeda activity along the border. There has been some increase in U.S. casualties. I am concerned about it, but I'm not as concerned as I am about Iraq today, obviously, or I'd be talking about Afghanistan. But I believe that if Karzai can make the progress that he is making, that -- in the long term, we may muddle through in Afghanistan."


    2009:

    "Despite our successes in Iraq and the hard won understanding we have gained about what it takes to defeat an insurgency, it seems we now, regrettably, must have the same debate again today with respect to Afghanistan. In all due respect, Sen. Levin, I've seen that movie before."


    Are you kidding me, Senator? I know you did not get newspapers while you were in North Vietnamese custody, but you have been back for awhile. Is that what you learned from Vietnam?

    Another Vietnam veteran in the Senate seems to have a different view:

    "Nobody is talking about just leaving. Nobody is talking about just a counterterrorism strategy," said Sen. John Kerry , D- Mass. , the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee .

    Kerry, however, like other Democrats, said questions about the honesty and legitimacy of the Afghan government in the wake of its tainted recent election and reports of widespread corruption demanded rethinking whether even more U.S. troops could win popular support against the Taliban and secure the country.

    "Until those questions are satisfactorily answered, it would be irresponsible to make a choice about committing troops to harm's way," Kerry said. "The troops deserve a strategy that is every bit as good as the sacrifice they're being asked to make."


    I am very proud of our President and, frankly, of our election of him to that office. As Rachel Maddow and the Times have explained, the Nobel Prize does not raise questions about whether the President "deserves" it, but demonstrates the extent to which the hopes and perhaps lives of so many around the world are wrapped up in his unlikely presidency, and the new direction he has put us on.

    I am grateful that he is in charge of the executive branch of our national government and that he will determine the basis upon which these important decisions will be made. There is no easy answer and almost anything we do will be the wrong thing in at least some respects. That is a given.

    That is why these decisions cannot be the product of political jockeying. Senator Vandenburg's famous iteration of the idea that politics stops at the water's edge is really misleading. It doesn't and shouldn't except that military decisions must be made by civilians, not generals, and they must be made with the best interests of the nation in mind, not the political capital that must be spent or may be reaped. The Bush administration's "roll out" of their war in Iraq just before off year elections is the modern proof of this. Senator Vandenburg's support for the President of a different party when he told Gen MacArthur that he would not be permitted to drag the United States into a war with China, is perhaps a more stark vindication of the rule. 

    Had President Kennedy allowed the military to determine how to respond to the Cuban missile crisis, it is possible there would be no world to worry about anymore. Fortunately, by then the President had learned the folly of just doing what the military suggests, since they steered him wrong at the Bay of Pigs.

    I do not know or have the answer and, frankly, I suspect there is none to be gotten. I think that American acquiescence in the return of the barbarous Taliban to Kabul is immoral and that expecting that Al Qaeda will not expand its writ in a Taliban controlled Afghanistan is a fool's errand. I agree that the scarier situation is in Pakistan and that the current governments in Kabul and Pakistan are not the best, or most trustworthy of allies. Our military is stretched very thin right now and its ability to protect us may be seriously compromised already, not to mention how much worse it will be by a prolonged fight in Afghanistan.

    So, what to do? 

    I don't know.

    All I know is that we have a wise man in the presidency and one element of his intellect is that he will listen to all the voices there are before deciding what he wants to do next. Presumably, Congress and the American people, such as they are, will have some input in all of this, unlike during the almost regal presidency we just ended where what the President said was supposed to be the law.

    But in that debate, the question cannot be how things will look, or whether our manhood has been vindicated, or General McChrystal repudiated.

    The question must be what is best for us, for Afghanistan, and for the world at large, knowing that whatever we do, it will be done to further those ends, whether it works or not.