Somewhere in the back of the world section of the local paper, and on the air between stories about high gas prices and low stock prices resides a story that no one seems overly anxious to talk about. The battle for Afghanistan appears to be going badly, and perhaps increasingly badly. While Iraq continues to improve markedly and the media and public shift their respective attentions to Barack and JohnnyMac, no one appears to have the energy to tackle the implications of another dose of Taliban barbarity.The implications here should be instructive. For too long Afghanistan was "the good war." The struggle to exact revenge on al-Qaeda in a remote, land-locked "something-stan" started in 2001 with the incredulous scene of U.S. special ops forces mounted on horse back leading a rag-tag band of Afghans in the overthrow of the Taliban, and has been something of a dove's national defense poster boy ever since.
However since that time, it has provided an historically unprecedented dichotomy by which anti-war politicians, journalists, nation states, and members of the public could compare and contrast the Iraq War. Afghanistan: a war of necessity. Iraq: a war of choice. Afghanistan: about the people who attacked us on 9/11. Iraq: about oil. Afghanistan: about rebuilding a war ravaged land. Iraq: about occupying and controlling sovereign territory. Afghanistan: popular in Europe. Iraq: a national embarrassment. And so on, and so on. One was free to be as big a dove as could be found, so long as one offered the caveat that of course he supported the war in Afghanistan. Some politicians even doubled down: Not only is Afghanistan the Good War, but the U.S. should be spending its blood, time, and treasure there in greater quantities, rather than in Iraq.
Well now an inconvenient truth (liberals are big on inconvenient truths I've heard), Iraq is for the while going fairly well. Violence is down dramatically, provincial elections are due by the autumn, the prime minister is gaining popularity and respect at home and abroad, and Iraqis are beginning to dare thinking of tomorrow. Meanwhile, Afghanistan is short on food, long on opium, and increasingly slipping back into a Taliban world. Europe refuses to step-up despite their lip service to the importance of the NATO mission there. Canada is acting nobly but in over her head. Pakistan is AWOL in the border hotbed that nurtures bin Laden to this day. The good war seems to be going bad in a hurry.
Before turning to what this ought to mean to U.S. policy and whether the American give-a-damn has any remaining endurance, let's consider what Afghanistan is about. First, by way of contrast, I would frame Iraq as being about traditional geo-politics and economics. It was about a form of government and the conduct of that government vis-a-vis other nation states in the world. It was about the ability of a henchman like Saddam to potentially hold the world's oil supply hostage by repeatedly threatening instability in the Middle East. Whatever else one might conjure up as motives, there were and are clearly discernible national interests at stake that may or may not have required a war to resolve. At present, Iraq is about reforming a country.
Afghanistan is different. That struggle is not about a change in government; it is about a change of millennium. It is about dragging a piece of geography (country may be overstating it) through 1,000 years of human history in a decade. It is about globalization's impact on the forgotten places, and more importantly about the impact the forgotten places can have on a globalized world.
Oddly Afghanistan has been trampled by the boots of every power from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan to Imperial Britain and the Soviet Union, but has through it all somehow avoided the civilizing influences of any of them. Rory Stewart describes in his compelling book "The Places in Between" a fascinating land that has been touched by a dizzying array of peoples and traditions, but has brought all of them to ruin. The great Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban shortly before that group's own overthrow are but one spectacular example of a land perpetually at war with its past, barely able to endure the present, and mystified by any notion of the future. From the story we see a land where each village literally knows little of the world beyond its gates. Tribal, language, religious differences (some areas have only been converted from paganism to Islam in the last 100 years), and a shocking lack of modern technology and conveniences, contribute to misunderstandings, mistrust, and all too often armed conflict. A point made poigniantly clear in "The Kite Runner." It is closer to the Europe of Charles V than it is to even today's Iraq.
As the world's powers occasionally stumbled through, the remote patch of central Asia ultimately reverted to its ancient ways. The modern world, and the increased connectivity of globalization make the old cycle untenable. Today we know only too well how a lawless patch of real estate is a welcome sign to a nation-less fanatic and his motley band of disaffected fools. "The Looming Tower" describes how truly spartan and tenuous was bin Ladens base in Afghanistan. But in a land of little, little is all it takes. So the modern world is forced to confront the ancient, and forced to do something to bring it up to speed.
Unfortunately this isn't as easy as it seems. You do not modernize a people by showing them electricity and flying machines and expecting they will learn to love it. At stake is a fundamental conflict in systems of organizing society. Afghanistan continues to revert to its tribal instincts. It exhibits the characteristics of a pre-modern society organized on rigid traditions, tried-and-true customs, and an inherent distrust of the Other.
All peoples on earth can trace their history to such a culture. In fact, we have a widely available tutorial in the Old Testament. Just read Leviticus to get a sense of the ancient Jewish purity rules which are simply anachronistic and bizarre to the modern ear. These were the peculiar rules that had developed among the tribes of Israel. These rules gave them certain practical benefits, but they also gave them something very important in this type of culture: identity. This foreign system of clinging to civilization is the one most likely to pervade in Afghanistan. Sadly, the only modern influence they have received may be our weaponry.
It is important to understand that so that we can accept this: Afganistan is a much more challenging and transformative project than Iraq. Iraq has at least 100 years experience in the modern world. It has a history of a highly and technically educated population. It has a healthy history of secularism and multiculturalism. The recent conflict between groups is an illustration of what happens when civilization breaks down and returns to its darker instincts. Iraq was reverting, Afghanistan has never verted!
Anyone who argues our project in Iraq is too imposing, too ambitious, and too culturally ignorant should be running from Afghanistan like a camel with its tail on fire. To understand each country is to understand that what we are attempting in Afghanistan is far more imposing, far more ambitious, and far more culturally normative than anything we've dreamt of in Iraq.
I wonder then, will the cynical liberals who used Afghanistan as their "good war" stand up for the Afghans, fund our troops, and dig in their heels for the long run? Will they continue to see Afghanistan as the only legitimate fight of this new era? I doubt it. Perhaps Afghanistan will emerge from their American experience much as they have from every other great power dalience. We should hope not.
1 comment:
Good point, though sometimes it's hard to arrive to definite conclusions
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