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America Has Been Here Before
We should hang a huge neon sign over Afghanistan: "CAUTION: DEJA VU."
Afghanistan's much ballyhooed recent election staged by its foreign occupiers turned out to be a fraud wrapped up in a farce -- as this column predicted a month ago. It was as phony and meaningless as U.S.-run elections in Vietnam in the 1970s.
Canada played a shameful role in facilitating this obviously rigged vote.
Meanwhile, American and NATO generals running the Afghan war amazingly warn they risk being beaten by Taliban tribesmen in spite of their 107,000 soldiers, B-1 heavy bombers, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, Apache and AC-130 gunships, heavy artillery, tanks, radars, killer drones, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, rockets, and space surveillance.
Washington has spent some $250 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. Canada won't even reveal how many billions it has spent. Each time the U.S. sent more troops and bombed more villages, Afghan resistance sharply intensified and Taliban expanded its control, today over 55% of the country.
Now, U.S. commanders are begging for at least 40,000 more U.S. troops -- after President Barack Obama just tripled the number of American soldiers there. Shades of Vietnam-style "mission creep." Ghost of Gen. William Westmoreland, rattle your chains.
The director of U.S. national intelligence just revealed Washington spent $75 billion US last year on intelligence, employing 200,000 people. Embarrassingly, the U.S. still can't find Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar after hunting them for eight years. Washington now fears Taliban will launch a Vietnam-style Tet offensive against major cities.
This week, in a wildly overdue observation, U.S. military chief Adm. Mike Mullen told Congress, we must rapidly build the Afghan army and police."
'Vietnamization'
But the U.S. record in foreign army-building is not encouraging. Remember "Vietnamization?" That was the Pentagon's effort to build a South Vietnamese army that could stand on its own, without U.S. air cover, supplies, and "advisers." In early 1975, it collapsed and ran.
Any student of Imperialism 101 knows that after invading a resource-rich or strategic nation you immediately put a local stooge in power, use disaffected minorities to run the government (divide and conquer), and build a native mercenary army. Such troops, commanded by white officers, were called "sepoys" in the British Indian Army and "askaris" in British East Africa.
America's attempts to build an Afghan sepoy army of 250,000 failed miserably. The 80,000 men raised to date are 95% illiterate and only on the job for money to feed their families. They have no loyalty to the corrupt western-installed government in Kabul. CIA's 74,000 "contractors" (read mercenaries) in Afghanistan are more reliable.
But the biggest problem in Afghanistan, as always, is tribalism. Many of the U.S.-raised Afghan army troops are minority Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara who used to collaborate with the Soviets. They are scorned by the majority Pashtun tribes as enemies and foreign stooges. These U.S.-paid troops also know they will face death when the U.S. and its western allies eventually quit Afghanistan.
The Soviets had a much better understanding of Afghanistan than the American military, which one senior British general recently called, "culturally ignorant." Moscow built an Afghan government army of around 240,000 men. Many were loyal Communists. They sometimes fought well, as I experienced in combat against them near Jalalabad. But, in the end, they smelled defeat and crumbled. The Soviet-backed strongman, Mohammad Najibullah, was castrated and slowly hanged from a crane.
The American command, deprived of men and resources by the Bush administration, only managed to cobble together an armed rabble of 80,000 Afghans. The Afghan army, like the post-Saddam Iraqi army, is led by white officers -- in this case, Americans designated "trainers" or "advisers."
Afghanistan keeps giving me deja vu back to the old British Empire, and flashbacks to those wonderful epic films of the Raj, Drums, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and Kim. The British imperialists did it much, much better, and with a lot more style. Many of their imperial subjects even admired and liked them.
25 Comments so far
Show AllThis is the best commentary on the war in Afghanistan I have seen in a long time. Margolis nails it when he describes the elections as "a fraud wrapped up in a farce"...
Here in Germany the big news is that "Al Qaeda" has apparently released a video in which Germany is threatened with terror attacks after the upcoming elections if it does not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan..
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,649987,00.html
Meanwhile politicians try to convince the public (in talks shows) how much the Afghans have profited from the German military presence ... (as proof they showed Afghan women playing football and that girls were now able to attend school...)
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"Why do we cling to the peculiar notion that the white man is less savage than the other savages?"
Mark Twain
America's problems in Afghanistan (and throughout the world) stem from its widely held belief in exceptionalism, the idea that the American way of life is superior to all others. As a student of history, I see the belief going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century (if not before) as evidenced by the country's various wars of conquest, the pronouncements of its leaders, and in its popular culture.
Perhaps exceptionalism was just a way to engender a sense of nationhood in a country with such a diverse population. In any case, it plays itself out now in American's ignorance of other languages and ways of life, as well as in its lack of appreciation for other cultures generally. All of these deficiencies contribute to America's involvement in most of the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A wiser country would have found diplomatic means of dealing with most of these conflicts.
An excellent assessment by Eric Margolis. Yes, americans are culturally ignorant and obtuse.
Good post Tocqueville.
And I say that Our country and all that it presently stands for is a fraud wrapped up in a farce.
It's time for a change--DC 1st week Oct./ National strike
THANKS Eric Margolis
The USA has always been here! Our republic is founded on the dispossession of Native Americans, what historian Richard Drinnon describes as our "defining and enabling experience," what historian William Appleman Williams describes as "Empire As A Way Of Life."
Thanks for mentioning Drinnon. His book "Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building" should be required high-school history reading. Read it!
Wow, Mr. Margolis! How refreshing to read the real truth about Afghanistan! Accolades and attaboys to you!
The people running this nation, beginning with Obama, are exactly as Chris Hedges described them: venal mediocrities. They are also, and again, this includes Obama, just plain STUPID!
Yep.
"The British imperialists did it much, much better, and with a lot more style. "
Maybe because they sucked Gin and Tonics out of each others rectums, not cheap vodka....
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Eric Margolis is mostly correct except for a few things: the Pashtuns, while the most numerous people in Afghanistan, are not in the majority (over 50%). Margolis also ignores the long-held belief amongst the Pashtuns that it is their god-given right to rule all of Afghanistan as they see fit (a Pashtun version of Manifest Destiny). The Taliban were the latest and most extreme expression of this, as evidenced by the massacre carried out when they captured Mazar-i-Sharif. Margolis also buys the fiction that the Pashtuns were the main actors in the struggle against the Soviets (a myth promulgated by the Taliban's creators, the Pakistani ISI), when it was the forces of Ahmed Shah Masoud (a Tadjik) whom were the most militarily effective. Margolis is also wrong when he asserted that the Hazaras (the most put upon people in Afghanistan) cooperated with the Soviets: they did not. While Margolis is right about the absurdity of trying to prop up Karzai and his corrupt cronies, his piece reads like someone whom did not complete all of his homework on Afghanistan before writing this paper.
NateW, I think you are wrong. He referred to the Pashtuns as the "majority tribe," in a country with many distinct sub-groups/tribes, the Pashtuns at about 42 million people, and 42% of the population are absolutely the majority tribe. If there were only two, and ONLY 2, you're 50% logic would make sense. But not otherwise.
Logomachy is arguing about definitons. Not communicating. Best left back in college dorms.
Your post reads like an insult aimed at a fine writer; might be okay except it is radically factually and logically flawed.
I noticed you left unanswered my other points, which are much more important, so one can surmise that you have no effective counter-argument to them.
As for your counter regarding majorities, it is you whom are incorrect, as semantically, majorities need to be numbers that are over 50%. The correct term you are searching for is "preponderance." As for the numbers, you are completely wrong, as there are only 14 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan, the 42 million number you cite (which is an iffy one) is a total spread over several nations.
I was not insulting Margolis at all, just merely pointing gaps in his piece that smacks of someone not completing their homework. Misinformation should be left to the conservative wing nuts.
NateW, I went back and reread your post. It was your anti-Pashtun claims alongside smearing Margolis I reacted too. The Pashtuns, Western demarcations/borders irrelevant, rule much of AfPak. Your last statement was pretty denigrating, I respect that you see it differently. Some claims were "more important," than your initial one, really? They sound tangential at best to the important truth; the US is being driven out. By VC or NVA? Bro, it don't matter how you divide 'em up, we're history.
The AfPak and Iraq wars are succeeding magnificently in transferring the public wealth to the top fraction of 1% and keeping the world in debt to international bankers that finance all sides in war.
Must see film:
Clive Owen in "The International"
"They control your money. They control your government. They control your life. And everybody pays."
Afghanistan; when Bush started this war I saw a picture of some Taliban walking a ridgeline in sandals, tattered trousers and carrying their rusty Kalashnikov with all their worldy posessions wraped in prayer rugs. I thought that these are the ones who will prevail. They reminded me of Uncle Ho dragging cannon up mountains to encircle Dien Bien Phu. I wish I had saved that picture.
--"The British imperialists did it much, much better, and with a lot more style. Many of their imperial subjects even admired and liked them."
This just about sums up this old cold warriors inherent racism. Margolis' gurus Reagan and Thatcher would have had a similar take on British Imperialism. This is akin to saying people actually loved the Nazis because, you know, they were good fighters !! What a complete asswipe ....
Riddim, the sentences before the ones you quoted were important in establishing his meaning:
"Afghanistan keeps giving me deja vu back to the old British Empire, and flashbacks to those wonderful epic films of the Raj, Drums, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and Kim. The British imperialists did it much, much better, and with a lot more style. Many of their imperial subjects even admired and liked them."
His text says that the British were loved "in epic films." I think he's commenting on the fakeness of popular history, and not expressing any kind of preference for British-run gulags over American ones.
Hey commies,
If I could ask you to stop openly pleasuring yourselves at the thought of US soldiers dying and being Obama's bitch for a moment - how's all that hopey/changey stuff working out?
God what an utter ass.
Beyond the crass ugliness of your soul that you present in your comment...
You obviously have never spent any time reading what we write here in the comment section of Common Dreams.
95% of the commenters here DENOUNCE Obama. You idiot.
As i said to my co-worker last week, Obama is rivaling Bush as the worst President in the history of the United States.
But with your demented soul you will not stop for an instant to question yourself, only continue to lash out...
Nate W....How about some bibliography so we can learn more background?
As a general rule, citing yr sources helps discussion.
My own primary source on the region is Winston Churchill....
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/tribal/churchill.html
And I spoke w/ a guy who lived there during the period of Russian domination...probably the best government they ever had, certainly the best from the point of view of the women
I'd start with Robert Fisk's THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION.
Nanoo
Just why did the anti-war movement groups continue to support the troops?
Why the nostalgia for British thugs?
The Brits are there, albeit as hangers-on. Have they lost their spiff?
Is it possible, Mr. Margolis, that you read about the British empire before you matured as an analyst of such institutions?
Americans get nostalgic about their old killers, too. How does this look different?