Rampaging Afghanis as an Example of the Folly of Trying to Nation-Build in a Region that History’s Social Evolution Left Behind — the Strategic Argument for Avoiding Wars that Cannot Be Won — and a Defense of Our Troops’ Occasional “Diplomatic” Mistakes in Waging Them

© 2012 Peter Free

 

29 February 2012

 

 

Afghani mobs’ reaction to the Koran burning at Bagram Air Base illustrates why nation-building by Western occupiers in quasi-medieval portions of the Islamic world is unlikely to work

 

Although I have been critical of letting Korans slip into the burn pile at Bagram Air Base, the incident’s exaggerated aftermath illustrates the extreme difficulty that Western military forces face in dealing with archaic mindsets.

 

Note

 

Readers probably noticed that my use of the word “archaic” to describe at least some Afghani mentalities indicates that I am not a cultural relativist.

 

There is little spiritually or politically admirable about a society that depredates women, extolls deadly violence, perpetuates ignorance, enslaves free speech, enshrines governmental corruption, and flies off the handle at symbolic insults.

 

I agree with one of my (now deceased) life-wise, liberal, and politically tolerant feminist friends, who once said of the Taliban, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to be forced to squat in the sand, eating lard out of a goat scrotum.”

 

Her metaphor captures the essence of Western objections to being asked to ignore 1,000 years of social progress.

 

 

Strategically, forcefully “encouraging” people to become, what they have no reference framework for, is asking too much

 

Cultural change at the point of a gun is unlikely.

 

Iraq, for example — a much more sophisticated nation than Afghanistan — is already showing strong signs of reverting back to the sectarian authoritarianism that the American occupation there had hoped to reform.  Geopolitically, the Iraq War accomplished nothing other than to destabilize the region and hand Iran a worrisome military preeminence.

 

Expecting strategically beneficial things out of the American/NATO occupation in Afghanistan is even more foolish.

 

 

A premise — war is almost always unproductive

 

Offensive war is almost never a wisely chosen complement to diplomacy and geopolitics.

 

War’s chaotic ramifications exceed our predictive capacities.  Rage and cultural memories have a way of surpassing our ability to quantify and direct them.

 

For economically developed nations, war’s price usually far exceeds its gain.

 

 

In light of this “war is usually bad” premise — a defense of troops who make tactical and strategic mistakes in waging it

 

The most critical decision in war-making is whether to wage it.  Once begun, war mandates that (a) innocents will be killed and maimed and (b) cultures will clash.

 

There is no way to avoid collateral damage, when employing military force of arms.  The destructive impact zone of modern weapons is too broad and too deep — no matter what war-apologists pretend with their falsely taken emphasis on precision.

 

Culturally speaking, when the differences between societies are as extreme as they are between the West and Afghanistan, all manner of inflammatory things are going to happen.  War engenders rage.  Rage is almost never a political or spiritual positive.

 

Although the “clash of civilizations” label for the “war on terror” may have overstated the historical case on a global basis, it arguably did not in Afghanistan.

 

One goes to war with the acculturated military that one has, not the homogenous and diplomatically sensitive military that one might wish for.  In a sense, the people most likely to be productively skilled in dealing with “alien” cultures are those temperamentally least likely to possess the combat abilities that are necessary to successful military engagements.

 

The Koran-burning at Bagram, combined with numerous instances of civilian deaths, were predictable accompaniments to invasively waging war in Afghanistan.  On the one hand, the U.S. military appears to have done an outstanding job in trying to minimize clashes between competing cultural sensibilities.  On the other, rage-provoking incidents were statistically unavoidable.

 

The aftermath of the Koran-burning at Bagram may be an indicator that the totality of these misfortunes now comprises a virtually insurmountable obstacle to America’s graceful exit from Afghanistan.

 

The no-win characterization of this war’s eventual outcome appears to be more likely than not.

 

It is sad that (a) the no-win situation was foreseeable from the war’s inception and (b) more people will die, as we try to extricate ourselves from a deteriorating situation.

 

 

The moral? — Get real before making war, not afterward

 

That said, I agree with Americans who see a gross disproportion — and culturally relevant indicator — between (a) Afghani extremists’ murderous reaction to the burning of the Korans at Bagram and (b) the act itself.

 

This perspective marks me as a “developed world” Westerner.  I make no apologies for it.  As President George W. Bush once (impolitically) said, “Bring it on.”

 

My disagreement with President Bush lies in the difference between (a) inviting one’s enemies to do their worst against our defenses and (b) our preemptive, imperialistic, and nation-occupying attacks on their home grounds.

 

In the first instance the wrong is theirs.  In the second, ours.  This is one instance in which geopolitical realism accords with elementary morality.