The Obama Administration has begun to take shape, I am reminded of the haughty arrogance of Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy, two of the intellectual powerhouses that led us into Vietnam. McNamara has to a large degree repented for his sins. So too has Bundy, to the extent he was able.
I’m thinking of Vietnam, of course – a catastrophe given us by Kennedy’s Whiz Kids, David Halberstam’s “Best and Brightest“, the leaders of academia and industry whom JFK recruited to give his administration a spit-shine unlike any before.
As I watch Obama assemble his team, I’m looking for parallels to Camelot, and I don’t have to look far. The haughtiness of high intellect is there, the star power, the ability to make grand mistakes in a grand way.
And the playing field is also there – Afghanistan. I don’t know what we are fighting about over there – the origins of 9/11? Maybe so, maybe not. But I do suspect that if we were to pull out now, just leave it be, we’d be far better off. The place is a desolate wilderness whose most meaningful contribution to improvement of the human condition is the annual poppy seed crop.
Afghanistan is some sort of power vacuum – a place that will be occupied by others if we don’t. It is strategically situated between Pakistan and Iran – I suppose that matters. But I wonder what the worst would be – what if the Taliban took over? Will the people suffer? Of course. But the U.S. is not concerned with the suffering of ordinary people, aptly demonstrated in Iraq. There is something more at stake here. I wonder if, as in Vietnam, our leaders have given exaggerated importance to the place as egos slowly displace strategy.
Where Alexander failed, where the Russians failed, we will succeed. We are the exceptions.
Succeed in what? Devastation of an already impoverished citizenry? A massive display of industrial firepower on an agrarian countryside? Sounding familiar? What is there to prove?
Obama, during his campaign, had to appear hawkish to avoid the perception of a weak-kneed conflict-adverse liberal. Iraq was unpopular, Afghanistan supposedly the “good war”. So he staked his phallus on it – that’s where he chose to be a man. My fear is that he will follow through, fearing a legacy of retreat.
That’s the Vietnam mindset.
We can only hope that calmer, lesser minds prevail – that the Obama Administration is also stocked with people of vision and humility who know enough not to spend our youth in an unwinnable quagmire.
Piece of Mindful 
The following is from Bill Moyers’ 12/19/08 interview at PBS.org. The interview, blog and discussion is worth a look.
Guest Blogger: Sarah Chayes on Negotiating with the Taliban
(Photo by Robin Holland)
There was one issue Bill and I did not have time to address in our interview today: the notion of negotiating with the Taliban.
It has been startling to witness the parade of international policy-makers, not to mention members of the Afghan government, now opining that way out of that country’s gut-wrenching situation is to cut a deal with those who are victimizing its population. For, make no mistake, no matter how this prospect may be packaged, “reconciliation” with Taliban, at the level at which exploration is now underway, will involve some kind of power-sharing.
The proponents of this approach rest their case on a couple of fallacies. One is that “no insurgency has ever been defeated without negotiation” — one of those assertions that takes on the force of truth by dint of repetition. It ignores all the diversity in texture and outcomes of insurrections down the years. Not to mention the question of whether what is happening in Afghanistan can really be called an insurgency.
This is not just a matter of semantics. The second fallacy, which I have heard perpetuated even by some Kabul-based Afghans, is that the Pashtuns in the Afghan south generally favor the Taliban. I live in Kandahar, the former heartland of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. I have lived there since the week he was chased out. I can attest that the support for the Karzai regime and its international backers at that time, and for the next several years, was unanimous. Kandaharis suffered the worst punishment at the hands of the draconian Taliban regime, and were delighted by its demise, and filled with hope for the new chapter in their nation’s history that opened in December 2001.
Two things have happened since then. One is that the Pakistani military intelligence agency has been diligently reconstituting the Taliban which it first created in 1994. The injection of this newly reconstituted Taliban back into Afghanistan represents something closer to an invasion by proxy than it does an insurgency. And secondly, Afghans, including Pashtuns in the south, have been bitterly disappointed by the behavior of the Karzai government. The word “corruption” does not do justice to the scale of the phenomenon.
It is the people’s objection to their treatment at the hands of government officials that explains the headway the Taliban “invasion” has made. In some cases, Afghans are making a calculated judgment: the Taliban are threatening all those who collaborate with the Afghan government, and the Afghan government is abusing the people. So why take the risk that allegiance to Kabul entails? In other cases, the Taliban are actually providing services in a more respectful and equitable fashion than the government. In other cases, people are turning to the Taliban simply out of a sense of outrage, as a kind of protest vote. None of these adds up to a groundswell of ideological support for the Taliban movement or an active desire for its return to power. More like acts of desperation by a population that has no means of recourse.
We, the international community — led by the United States — have never called to account any of the Afghan officials we ushered into power back in 2001, and have backed with our money, our weaponry, and our moral support, ever since.
Sarah Chayes poses the following questions. What do you think?
Why, after seven years of effort, are we thinking about inflicting the Taliban, again, on the long-suffering Afghan people? Why does that seem like a solution to this problem?
Why is it so hard to imagine that Afghans, like most of us, wish to be governed by a respectful, educated cadre of people who are open to suggestions and to whom ordinary people have access for the redress of grievances?
Why has it come as such a surprise that when we empowered known and previously repudiated criminals, providing them an unfettered and unchallenged grip on power and public resources, Afghans became disaffected? Why is that disaffection seen as a sign of the Afghans’ inveterate tribalism and resistance to government of any kind, rather than as a sign of their attachment to basic democratic principles?
LikeLike
History is filled with this kind of stuff. It doesn’t start with Vietnam or Kennedy and it won’t end with Obama. I have been doing some reading lately that invites comparison with the 19th century and the unraveling of the British Empire amidst revolutions in the colonies. Afghanistan and Africa were serious problems. Gandhi was a terrorist. World War I was in formative stage. The British economy was in the tank. And, of course, before all of that there were the Romans, and before that Alexander, and before that Persia (Iran), and now….
LikeLike
Bob,
…which demonstrates we commoners can learn from history’s successes and failures. The question remains: Can our leaders? If not, why not?
LikeLike
It takes a lot of oppression to motivate a Gandhi or an Iraqi shoe-thrower. Americans do not yet feel that oppressed, despite the current “depression.” I think of the sassy message of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller via The Coasters precisely 50 years ago:
Take out the papers and the trash
Or you don’t get no spendin’ cash
If you don’t scrub that kitchen floor
You ain’t gonna rock and roll no more
Yakety yak (Don’t talk back)
Just 7 years later, though, in 1965, someone did talk back: “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more.”
Now people are obsessed with Britney Spears. Will she make a comeback? A comeback to what?
LikeLike
Total hotness.
LikeLike
Mark the Snark! (In addition to Markist-Lennonist!)
LikeLike