Australian Journalist, Mungo MacCallum, Sums the American Experience in Afghanistan Rather Well

© 2012 Peter Free

 

23 April 2012

 

 

We Americans probably spend too much time alone in our bubble

 

As a result, we seem to make bad foreign affairs choices.  Leave it to a the delightfully named Australian journalist, “Mungo MacCallum,” to see us for what we have become.

 

After a very brief discussion of regime change after World War II, MacCallum observed that the last 67 years have essentially proven that to impose democracy on a foreign nation, one has to “nuke” or nuke-equivalent  it first (like Japan and Germany in 1945):

 

And every attempt since to export the American way by force of arms - in South America, in Asia, and particularly in the Middle East - has ended in tears.

 

Both sides will eventually turn against the interlopers, becoming what are quaintly described as 'insurgents' . . . until the foreigners leave – at which point, of course, they become freedom-fighters, liberators.

 

In fact, the foreign forces may well do more to upset the progress towards democracy than to help. Arguably, that has been another legacy of Afghanistan.

 

© 2012 Mungo MacCallum, 10 years in Afghanistan - what did we achieve, Drum TV – Australian Broadcasting Corporation (23 April 2012)

 

MacCallum goes on to point out that the American intervention in Afghanistan, over time, has made Pakistan less stable.  Being a nuclear power, Pakistan is more dangerous than Afghanistan ever was or is likely to become.

 

And for the regime change part, once NATO leaves, Afghanistan will most probably degenerate into tribal warfare.

 

 

Maccallum’s conclusion?

 

He says, correctly:

 

A grim prognosis, and one that hasn't really changed in the last 10 years . . . which have seen 32 more Australian sacrificed to ill-thought-out American adventurism.

 

Next time we might look past all the pseudo-patriotic bombast, the sanctimonious blather, and realise that there was only ever one sensible way to support our troops in Afghanistan: bring them home.

 

© 2012 Mungo MacCallum, 10 years in Afghanistan - what did we achieve, Drum TV – Australian Broadcasting Corporation (23 April 2012)

 

 

The moral? — Adventurism says a lot about stupidity and the death of the American dream

 

Mr. MacCallum’s emphasis on “ill-thought-out American adventurism” is an apt characterization of American foreign policy since the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam.

 

One wonders whether we would best be served by pleading (a) stupidity or (b) self-interested imperialism in our defense.

 

Unfortunately, neither concept lives the American dream.  Which, I naively once thought, was the product that we were ostensibly selling.