A very close acquaintance linked me to an editorial by Al Neuharth in Friday's
USA Today ("
Dollars and sense of 10 Afghan years") because he knows some of my thoughts on our adventure in Afghanistan and Neuharth seems to have expressed them for me. I agree. For example, Neuharth posits
the hopelessness of trying nation-building in Afghanistan. Three countries have tried, with these results:
- The British tried it three times — from 1839-42, 1878-80 and in 1919. They failed each time and lost 28,000 troops.
- Russia (then USSR) tried it for 10 years (1979-89) and failed, losing 14,000 troops.
- Our 10-year misadventure in Afghanistan has taken the lives of 1,795 of our military men and women.
In addition to the sad loss of lives, Afghanistan has cost us more than $443 billion.
My acquaintance was dejected from having recently heard that his wife's niece's husband's second son is eagerly about to head for Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine. "That misplaced eagerness just broke my heart."
I agree with the spirit of the post but want to point out that the British and Soviet occupations of Afghanistan were colonial. Nation-building, which entails much more good will, is a post-WWII phenomenon. Our goals may be misguided, but they are very different.
ReplyDeleteIt's also relevant to recall that we are there to disrupt, if not extirpate, Al-Quaeda activity in the region. We've done that clumsily, too, and found that Al-Quaeda owns only a share of the terrorism.
We have a better perspective, but will it translate into a more intelligent policy?
Received by email yesterday from a friend who must comment anonymously for professional reasons:
ReplyDeleteGraham Greene's novel, The Quiet American, aptly points out the naivete of this kind of thinking. "Nation building" is nothing but a euphemism for the American version of colonialism. We got involved in the Spanish American War to allegedly help free the Cubans from Spanish colonial rule and stayed on until we were as unwanted as were the Spanish. Ditto for the Philippines—except that "nation building" took even longer there. We have the arrogance to think we can make other people think and behave more like us more successfully than the European colonial powers (this includes the Soviet Union). Of course, that notion has been proven false in every instance—most prominently, until these latest Middle East adventures, in Southeast Asia. To call our goals "misguided" is to gloss over some very expensive and counter-productive policies. Our foreign policies in these places reminds me of the classic definition of insanity: to make the same errors repeatedly in the hope you will get better results. The invasion of Iraq was based on an outrageous lie which was justified on the basis that we would nation-build and have a beacon of democratic stability in the Middle East. Do we? Our invasion of Afghanistan was justified to wipe out al-Qaeda—then it morphed into nation building. But all we've done is turn the al-Qaeda philosophy into a region-wide movement. The sad difference between the situation in the Middle East and the former situation in Southeast Asia is that the Middle East War has been financed largely on the cuff and is vastly more expensive because of our use of contractors and a small volunteer army. No draft, no reaction from a jaded public—especially one fired up against "rag heads" and non Christians.