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The Afghan Dilemma
On learning that he was from Afghanistan I asked my Afghan taxi driver his opinion about the situation in his country. "Americans don't get it," he said. "They are not going to succeed in Afghanistan. My father was a warlord who fought the Russians, so I now the situation there," he told me. And he added, "I have a lot of respect for the Russian soldiers, who fought us fiercely. But I don't have the same respect for the coalition soldiers who always overprotect themselves. They don't seem to understand that we have fought for centuries against foreign occupation to my country, and we have always succeeded."
In 2001, U.S. writer Philip Caputo offered a unique insight into the Afghan psychology. He had spent a month in Afghanistan with the mujahedeen as a reporter, during the Afghans' decade-long war with the Soviets.
At some point in the 1980s, he was accompanying a platoon of mujahedeen who were escorting 1,000 refugees into Pakistan. They had to cross a mountain torrent on a very primitive bridge, consisting essentially of two logs laid side by side. In front of him was a 10-year-old boy separated from his family, his feet swollen from several days of barefoot marching.
When Caputo realized that the boy was terrified thinking that he could fall into the rapids below, he carried him to the other side. With the help of his interpreter he found the father and handed the boy to him. The father, rather than thanking him slapped the boy in the face and poked Caputo in the chest, shouting angrily at him. Caputo was obviously shocked.
He asked his interpreter about the boy father's reaction and the interpreter explained to him, "He is angry at the boy for not crossing on his own, and angry with you for helping him. Now, he says, his son will expect somebody to help him whenever he runs into difficulties."
Caputo concludes, "Well, that little boy probably learned. I don't know what became of him, but in my imagination, I see our troops encountering him: now 31, inured to hardship and accustomed to combat, unafraid of death, with an army of men like him at his side."
In a few words, Caputo magisterially captured the strength of the Afghan soldier, able to fight with the most primitive weapons against the greatest empires on earth. When these soldiers feel their land usurped by foreign forces, their strength is multiplied. And this is just one of the obstacles confronting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Matthew Hoh, a former Foreign Service officer and former Marine Corps captain who became the first U.S. official to resign in protest over the Afghan war, had declared, "Upon arriving in Afghanistan and serving in both the East and South (and particularly speaking with local Afghans) I found that the majority of those who were fighting us and the Afghan central government were fighting us because they felt occupied."
As July has proven to be the deadliest month for US troops in the nine year old conflict, there are increasing calls for a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. For the U.S., the real dilemma is to persist in what increasingly seems like an unwinnable war or continue fighting a "war on terror" and also, a war for a strategic advantage on a natural resources-plentiful country.
This also begs the question: Can any foreign army subdue a naturally proud and intensely nationalistic people? Those who have failed in the past should be a sobering reminder to the troops now fighting in that country. Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires. It should more properly be called the graveyard of illusions.
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Show AllObviously, the RIGHT was granted to George Bush by God. The USA is on a sacred mission to liberate Afghan women from male chauvinist Afghans. God, however, in her mysterious ways, has not yet granted victory. This is probably because the USA still needs to purge male chauvinists from its' own soil. Only then will it be granted victory in foreign wars of female liberation. And then...on to Iran!
A Russian veteran of his country's occupation of Afghanistan, Nikolai Lanine, also ponders the implications of that question in an audio interview:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/21754
"Can any foreign army subdue a naturally proud and intensely nationalistic people?" Of course. The fact that the political map of the world has changed somewhat since Hammurabi's time proves it.
There is now a widespread myth about Afghanistan, which goes like this: It is a large, rugged area. The inhabitants are inured to hardship and well practiced in war. They will fight any invaders from beyond this area at least as enthusiastically as they normally fight each other, and they are now armed with the latest in man-portable anti-personnel weapons. They are therefore unconquerable.
I remind readers of CommonDreams that in the second half of the 19th century Americans conquered exactly such "unconquerable" people over an area that was much larger and in places equally rugged -- the American West. They did so with these policies:
• Make treaties of peace with the various tribes to keep them quiet, and break these treaties later when the tribes can be subdued by force.
• Hire or ally with some natives and use them against others.
• Populate the frontier area with well-armed settlers. Blame all resulting frictions or violence on the natives. With this excuse, send in the armed forces to push the natives back. Repeat as often as necessary.
• Promote the belief that the acquisition of the natives' territory is in the national interest, and that it is theoretically possible for any American citizen to benefit personally from it.
• Promote the beliefs that it is in the natives' own interest to be assimilated into America, and that natives who refuse to assimilated may legitimately be dispossessed or killed.
• Use all available weapons against the natives, including biological weapons.*
• Invade, conquer, and annex a large chunk of a neighbouring country, thereby eliminating that area as a potential reservoir of unconquered natives.
• After the great majority of the natives have been killed, drive the demoralized, heartbroken remnants onto small patches of undesirable territory and declare these to be their homelands. Proclaim that this result is a great triumph for both America and Christianity.
In conclusion: The conquest of Afghanistan is entirely possible. What is not possible is to conquer Afghanistan humanely, from a long distance, and without a widespread sense of national interest in the project.
*It has been said that some American organizations (government or corporate) deliberately sent blankets previously used by smallpox victims to unconquered Indian tribes, in order to spread smallpox among them. Elliott West, in "The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), declares that this did not actually happen, and that some Army officers stationed in the frontier wished that something like this be done.
ANGRY: A very astute post. Thank you for spelling it out. Still, I sometimes think there are other factors that figure into the full calculus of war and conquest. For instance, a strange anomalous weather event may occur to block a foreign army or hurt its equipment. The land seems to carry its own spirits, and sometimes it is this force that can neither be explained, nor conquered, that makes THE difference. I'll refer to it as an attribute of The Great Mystery.
So true.
The first colonial governor of Conn. distributed smallpox blankets on the banks of the Conn. River.
Also the Wabash( as I remember) were given smallpox blankets near Illinios.
The Afghans were defeated by the British, Mongols and Moghuls.
The British split the Pastun nation in half with the Durand Line which the Afghans reject.
Technically the Pastun area of Pakistan should revert back to Afghanistan.
That presupposes that Pashtuns of Pakistan who are numerically greater than Pashtuns of Afghanistan would want to give up a relatively prosperous and peaceful country for one that is far more insecure and has hardly any infrastructure. Technically, the Hispanic areas of South Texas should also revert back to Mexico but I doubt most people in El Paso would want to share the fate of their relatives a few miles away under druglords and the corrupt politicians they keep in their pockets.
A significant difference is the the European invadeds were to settle in the American West; are Americans going to settle in Afghanistan?
The English had the same sorts of problems with Ireland back in the 17th century. After bashing hell out of them and insisting, no jobs or homes for those who will not change religion, they imported Scottish and French Protestants to sharecrop the farms, the era known as the Plantations. The English land owners didn't want to live in Ireland either.What the Americans could do would be to import a bunch of Israeli settlers. They seem to be running out of land and are used to interacting with hostile Muslim neighbours.
Or sell all those American bases and war materals to India, it has a huge army just over the borders in Kashmir. When those soldiers reach retirement age, give them a chunk of Afghanistan land to live on, farm, whatever. That's what Rome used to do.
(sarcasm)
Please read the latest from Gates as quoted from Christine Armanapour's TV show this morning.
Then ponder the question ' Why are we there?'
"We are not there to -- to take on a nationwide reconstruction or construction project in Afghanistan. What we have to do is focus our efforts on those civilian aspects and governance to help us accomplish our se -- our security objective. We are in Afghanistan because we were attacked from Afghanistan, not because we want to try and -- and build a better society in Afghanistan. But doing things to improve governance, to improve development in Afghanistan, to the degree it contributes to our security mission and to the effectiveness of the Afghan government in the security arena, that's what we're going to do."
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-pelosi-gates/story?id=11298444&page=3
Angry Kraut. Afghanistan could be conquered if enough neutron bombs where detonated over the country. There is no way that the conventional American army can triumph. After this army threatened to become uncontrollable at the end of the Vietnam war conscription was ended. The army was downsized to take account of the additional expenses of a professional force. Now it is so small that it couldn't impose order in New York
against wide spread armed opposition without killing most of the population. To make its use politically more acceptable American politicians changed the armies structure(and size). Changing its structure and size made large scale occupations impossible. An unresolvable contradiction unless you are prepared to do anything and become anything.
"Afghanistan could be conquered if ... you are prepared to do anything and become anything."
That was basically my point. I don't advise neutron bombs, though -- they make too much of a long-term mess. (In addition to its "signature" effect, a neutron bomb has the same effect as an ordinary nuclear weapon, although with a relatively small radius.) Also, bombs of any sort can't hold territory -- for that you need to bring in a friendly and combat-effective population. 15 million Afghans versus 25 million crackers ... hmmm. :-)
"After this army threatened to become uncontrollable at the end of the Vietnam war ... American politicians changed the army's structure (and size). Changing its structure and size made large-scale occupations impossible."
This points to two of the program elements I listed earlier that are missing from America's current occupation of Afghanistan: (1) The occupying was done by the settlers, not the army; (2) the country believed in the army and its mission.
There IS NO win...there IS NO triumph...fascist amerika IS the big loser...because their empire IS sliding into the abyss !
Was Obama faced with bridge to cross?