“Nation building” has about it the sound of an engineering task, rather like building a transcontinental railroad or an interstate highway system or putting a man on the moon – that is to say, a task whose goal is clear, the underlying theoretical science for the achievement of which is known, and which requires no more than a mobilization of resources, an allocation of skilled workers, and a determination of will. Except that a nation is not a rail line, a network of roads, or a round-trip rocket journey.
I can see an argument for committing a relatively limited
measure of American economic and military resources to a permanent occupation
of Afghanistan for the purpose of giving the female half of that nation’s
population a chance at a decent life. I do not know whether I would approve of
such a policy but I could certainly see a reasonable argument for it. I can
also see a reasonable argument for refusing to make that commitment,
understanding full well the avoidable human misery that such a choice would
entail. What I cannot imagine is a politically prudential argument for the
total operational disaster, easily foreseeable, that we are now observing.
Say what you will about Biden, he has until now conducted
his presidency with a quite unusual measure of operational skill and foresight.
Since he has for two decades been opposed to the policy whose total failure we
are now watching, it is a mystery to me why he permitted things to play out as
virtually any reasonable observer,
himself included, could have predicted and did predict.
My heart weeps for the women and girls now being raped and
taken from their homes and condemned to miserable lives. As I said in a
previous post, I do not think Biden will suffer very much politically from this
disaster but in a better world he would deserve to.
52 comments:
I wonder if all the people on the left who are now at least suggesting or hinting that the U.S. should have stayed in Afghanistan to resist the Talibans and to protect women would have the same position if there were still a military draft in the U.S. and if their sons or grandsons were in the age group which is drafted instead of the current U.S. Army which is not in general composed of people who are closely related to white U.S. progressives.
The only options Biden had was the present course or a brand new war. The WP has an article which confirms my suspicions that the Taliban sweep wasn't sudden but was the result of actions that began way over a year ago - before the deal with the Trump Administration was finalized. Green Lanternism is a fantasy - inertia is real.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/08/every-battle-is-won-or-lost-before-its-ever-fought-2
Another factor: It's impossible to conduct large scale evacuations without creating panic and a self-fulfilling situation. It would have taken years to get tens of thousands of people out without creating a panic.
We should also bear in mind that the State Department was severely damaged under Tillerson and Pompeo.
One thing activities like surfing, skydiving, and skiing teach you is that some decisions are irreversible.
[off topic]
Professor Wolff,
Lars Syll has an article out today which is an interesting quote from you. Link below:
How to do philosophy
I just finished watching Pres. Biden’s address to the nation regarding the situation in Afghanistan, and I found it disappointing, even though I have supported his campaign from the get go, and believed from the outset that he was the best candidate to defeat Trump.
The issue is not whether we should have stayed in Afghanistan another 2, 3, or 4 years in order to try to establish a viable democracy there. Pres. Biden correctly said that our initial goal was to defeat al Qaeda after the attack on 9/11. We accomplished that goal 10 years ago, and then stayed. In so doing, we relied on the assistance of Afghans to help us fight the Taliban; we made promises to them; they depended on those promises. And now they are being deserted. The problem is not that we decided to withdraw, but that we did not plan how it was going to be done in an efficient manner in order to evacuate those Afghans who helped us fight the Taliban. This required careful, daily planning, like the invasion of Normandy was planned, and it appears not to have been done. How this could not have been anticipated by the Pentagon and the State Dept. is beyond me.
Reports indicate that the Taliban control the one road leading to the Kabul airport, and they are only allowing American nationals through. Afghans who helped the U.S. military fight the Taliban are stranded in their homes, unable to get to the airport, and they expect to be slaughtered once the final plane leaves the airport with the American nationals. This is the evacuation of Saigon all over again, and I am sorry to say that it is a stain on Biden’s administration.
This morning I read (again) the first three chapters of NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS: AN AMERICAN SLAVE and I not only felt deeply sad for the enslaved African-Americans of the 19th century, but also for those Afghan women who are now basically chattel slaves again. Ostracism & oppression has its various forms throughout the human timeline, from cancelling some famous person out, to wearing the scarlet letter, to it's worse form consisting of human slavery. I'm waiting for someone like Pakistani Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai to rise up and call out to the Taliban saying: 'Have you know decency, sirs? Have you no decency?!'
Michael,
Unfortunately, appealing to the decency of religious zealots, who have none, is a futile effort.
AA,
I know. But it would be a start & you've got to start somewhere.
AA, the only way this could have been accomplished would have been to have given a special visa to these folks as an immediate benefit when they met the requirements without them having to go through a complex application process. This would have allowed them to exit as individuals over a period of months without fanfare. Had the Biden Administration started a full scale ramp up on the afternoon of January 20, 2021 it would have been too late as the Taliban had already been spotting cadres all over for the past year.
One thing that you also aren't considering is that among the folks who would have been necessary to accomplish a mass evacuation are those who really, really don't want to end the mission. Sand in the gears, etc.
It would have been nice to not get distracted by Iraq which allowed the Taliban to reform.
I think the villains in this piece are three:
(1) The Afghan government, such as it was, which was reminiscent of our great and glorious ally of the 60’s and early 70’s, the government of South Vietnam. Their corruption knew no limits. Reuters has are report that the president of Afghanistan escaped in a helicopter full of cash; in fact, Reuters says, he had to leave some behind because there wasn’t room for all of it in the helicopter. Both the Afghan and South Vietnamese armies were so corrupt that officers were pocketing their troops’pay. According to what I’ve read, the Afghan troops made up for their lost pay by selling their weapons and ammunition.
(2) The US military. Think of what 20 years in Afghanistan has done for military careers: the more units that were dispatched, the more captains and majors and colonels and even generals were needed. They wanted it never to end. They sweet talked this thing for at least 12 years (Obama’s eight and Trump’s four) arguing that all would be well with just a few more troops and little longer—and besides, you don’t want to be the President to “lost” Afghanistan do you? I even blame the military for the mess there right now. They certainly didn’t anticipate it. All of it shows what a fraud any idea of an effective Afghan government was. It was a house of cards propped up by the US military, and it collapsed even before all of them could leave.
(3) The Taliban for obvious reasons.
So, more than 2,000 Americans killed, more than 20,000 wounded, billions of dollars spent—for what?
I have said my piece regarding the Afghanistan debacle.
I have a separate question for the music aficionados who read this blog.
Tonight I was watching a concert performed by Andrea Boccelli on PBS.
The songs were taken from his album “Believe.” One of the songs he performed is “Oh, Madre Benedetta,” by Albinoni.
The tune sounded exactly like Samuel Barber’s “Adagio.” Did Barber steal the tune from Albinoni?
(Ironically, Barber’s Adagio was the theme music in the movie “Platoon,” and could also serve as the music for the soon to be made movie “Escape from Kabul.")
Here is Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMbvcp480Y4
This is Barber’s Adagio for Strings (start listening to it at 6:40 – doesn’t it sound exactly like the beginning of Albioni’s Adagio? Or am I tone deaf?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3MHeNt6Yjs
I followed the Afghanistan situation on and off for much of its duration, and wrote about it with some frequency on my no-longer-active blog, Howl at Pluto, without pretending to any deep regional expertise, which I don't have. If I cd change one stance I took it wd be to be less wishy-washy or ambivalent about the 2009 surge, which in hindsight seems a mistake. At the time I was concerned that sometimes facile analogies to Vietnam were preventing a judgment of the surge policy on the merits, but as I say it think in retrospect it was a mistake.
F. Logevall has a review of two recent books on the war in NYT. Too tired to link it rt now or write more, though much more cd be said.
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/debacle-in-afghanistan
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/16/20-years-invasion-afghanistan-unnecessary-post-imperial-fantasy
*************
No one asked me my opinion—but then no one ever does. Still. I listened to Biden’s brief report on the Afghan situation, and did so with mounting disbelief and disgust. I thought it utterly shameful on several grounds, not least, the painting of the useless Afghanis as the cause of their own problems and the clearly sham assertion that many of those who wanted to be rescued would be rescued. All in all, it was an exercise in making Americans feel good about themselves: ‘nothing is our fault and we’ll continue doing good.’ (It’s a perverse sort of version of “the white man’s burden’ and “the civilising mission”—we’re laying it down and giving it up because they’re all useless and don’t deserve us.)
The truth of the matter is, of course, that but for “the West,” the USA in particular (for the other western collaborators in international carnage would do little or nothing on their own) there would be no moment of crisis in Afgahnistan of the sort we see so many crocodile tears now being shed over. I’m not claiming it would be a place to be envied or celebrated (I can’t think of any country that is). But I am claiming that it would be less of a miserable, dangerous place if the US and he rest had stayed well out of it.
But beyond the shame of it all—the worthless, useless Afghanis and the great pseudo ‘rescue effort—there is the shame of Biden’s misrepresentation by gross omission of the history of the US’s engagement with that part of the world. He could at least have helped the American public come to understand that the US’s role there since at least the Carter presidency has been outrageous and doomed. But to explain that today’s sad events can be traced back to at least Brzezinski’s policy of setting the mudjahadin loose in order to satisfy his own deep anti-Russian bigotry would have left too many Americans feeling guiltily responsible for the people hanging onto and falling off planes.
But I won’t go on. There’s a clear need for some people to come forward to try to lead the USA in the direction of some sort of sane, sensible, less arrogant, less self-righteous foreign policies respecting others in the world. Unfortunately, there are seemingly no Democratic or Republican politicians who show any signs of filling such an educative/political role.
PS. Since the fate of Afghani females under the Taliban has again made it to the top of the list of concerns of those proclaiming something must be done, it ought to be recalled that that same concern was manipulatively exploited to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan in the first place, It is therefore worth pondering what Tariq Ali says about all that in the piece referenced above.
As we lament the fate of Afghan women under the return of the Taliban, we might want to keep in mind the thousands of women in this country, in our own neighborhoods, who find themselves locked in abusive and exploitative situations. Any chance that our collective intellects might work to find some solutions to help them out?
David Palmeter makes an excellent -- but rarely considered -- point of how the two-decade Afghan conflict has served as a major boon to the U.S. military -- all those "captains and majors and colonels and even generals." Followed by AA's comment about music in relation to these unfolding events, I was immediately reminded of XTC's great anti-war song, "Generals and Majors."
David's final sentence: "So, more than 2,000 Americans killed, more than 20,000 wounded, billions of dollars spent -- for what?" I would also include the Afghans who died in conflict during the last 20 years.
A reminder from Edwin Starr: "War (What is it Good for?) Absolutely Nothing."
Billy Bragg's more honest answer: "War (What is it Good for?) It's Good for Business!!"
Jim,
Thank you for that reference to XTC. Frankly, I had never heard of them. I don’t believe they got much play in the U.S., compared to Britain. They were part of the punk/new wave movement, with interesting politically motivated lyrics.
Another superb anti-war song is Eric Bogle’s “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.” You can hear it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFzCmAyOp8
Any answers to my Albinoni vs. Barber comparison?
Another anti-war song by Eric Bogle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxkhBvO8_kM
Michael, here's the answer to your suggestion that you've got to start somewhere.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
With some people, starting somewhere, like having a Nobel Prize winner lecture then about decency and humanity, is a non-starter. Some people - who believe that they are God's spokespeople on Earth = have neither decency nor humanity.
At some point, someone draws a line under the calculation and forms a sum. What is now showing up in Kabul is the accumulated sum of all the deceptions and self-deceptions, the misinterpretations, the conscious or unconscious misinformation, over a period of almost 20 years. And to be clear, it is absolutely no fun to be right. But at all times there have been people who have pointed out over and over again the enormous divergence between the reality in Afganistan and the content of the discourse as it has been conducted by the policymakers of the states involved in ISAF. Why the highly paid military and political analysts and specialists responsible for implementing UN Resolution 1386 got it so glaringly wrong is surely due to many reasons.
Of these many reasons for failure, I believe I can name one. There is not space here to elaborate. Therefore only briefly:
wrong "self-perception" with regard to the centuries in which very slowly and within very specific contexts and not without accidental constellations, with many catastrophes, what we call today enlightened societies developed. The term "nation-building" perfectly expresses this hubris arising from this false self-perception. As if it were only a question of the right construction with the help of the right well-dosed elements to achieve this.
ps.
and as we must recognize from the specter of fascism, which is unfortunately still alive, even these "enlightened societies" are highly labile entities.
I wish to clarify what I have written in order to distinguish my position from others which I see expressed here.
I have referred to the situation in Afghanistan as a debacle. I am referring specifically to the lack of preparation for the withdrawal which Pres. Biden ordered, that not enough preparation was done in advance in order to ensure that we would be able to extract all of our personnel, embassy officials, and, most importantly, the Afghans who assisted us in our conflict with the Taliban. Last month when I expressed in this space concern for a repeat of what happened in Saigon, one commenter assured me that the U.S. would not repeat that disaster and was going to make sure all of the Afghans who provided assistance to the U.S. would be provided safe passage to the U.S. It looks like that is not going to happen, and that, in my opinion, is a stain on this administration.
With regard to the Afghanistan conflict itself, do those who are criticizing the military effort maintain that we should not have invaded Afghanistan to begin with? We invaded Afghanistan because the 9/11 attack was perpetrated by Al Qaeda, which was being harbored by the Taliban in Afghanistan. I do not believe that the decision to invade Afghanistan itself in order to rid Afghanistan of Al Qaeda and capture Bin Laden was a mistake. The question is, after Al Qaeda was defeated, was it a mistake to stay in Afghanistan in order to rid it of the Taliban. This is where I may differ with others who have been commenting here. I do not believe it was unreasonable to conclude that unless the Taliban were defeated, they would provide a haven for the remnants of Al Qaeda or other groups of Islamic terrorists. When you add to that the religious oppression and the persecution of women which the Taliban were imposing on the Afghan people, I cannot say that it was mistake or poor judgment to stay after Al Qaeda had been defeated and continue the conflict with the Taliban in order to prevent their repeating harboring Islamic terrorists who might attack the U.S. again. Christopher Mulvaney indicated in his comment that such an endeavor was likely to fail because Pakistan continued to provide the Taliban an escape route and safe haven in Pakistan. Why then, did we continue to provide Pakistan financial aid? Why didn’t we tell Pakistan that if it continued to protect the Taliban, we would impose sanctions on it by ceasing our financial support?
So, in sum, I do not condemn the effort to defeat the Taliban. I believe the U.S. had valid reasons to do so. It was the failure to withdraw our aid to Pakistan for harboring the Taliban that I criticize.
@Another Anonymous,
you would have to explain here what it means when you say: "to defeat the Taliban"? How does that look concretely? I don't want to claim to be a connoisseur of Afghanistan, but with a little imagination you have to ask the question how you can stop a whole ethnic group in a country from enforcing their religious ideas by force, if these people for example don't need a clearly defined territory to be able to live or just put their Kalashnikov in the corner in the evening and then be a loving family man. What does "win" mean then? Killing them all? Or apply China's strategy in its treatment of the Uyghurs? The problem with saying A is that you might be forced to say B, even though you know B won't solve the problem.
Achim,
If one accepts the premise that having defeated Al Qaeda, it was in the interests of the U.S. to ensure that the Taliban did not regain control of Afghanistan in order to allow elements of Al Qaeda or other radical Islamist groups to operate out of Afghanistan to again attack the U.S., and one realizes that when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan with the primary objective of defeating Al Qaeda, in the process the U.S. did in fact dislodge the Taliban from governing Afghanistan, the question then becomes, how does the U.S. continue to sustain the status quo, keeping the Taliban at bay.. Afghanistan was free of the Taliban during the initial years when the U.S. was seeking to defeat Al Qaeda. The Taliban, to my understanding, had retreated into Pakistan.
There are two ways to sustain that status quo: (1) keeping a substantial American presence in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from regaining control; or (2) training the Afghans themselves to maintain the status quo, allowing the U.S. to leave. The U.S. opted for (2), which some have referred to as nation building. But the nation building aspect – i.e., creating a democratic government in Afghanistan – was secondary to the main objective of keeping the Taliban from regaining control of Afghanistan by training the Afghans to defend themselves. This did not require hunting down and killing every member of the Taliban. It entailed training an Afghan army to maintain the status quo after the Americans left. The U.S. military was in the process of doing so, and thought that they had achieved that objective, as it began withdrawing U.S. troops.
Hence, Pres. Biden’s criticism of the failure of the Afghan army to put up the kind of resistance to Taliban aggression that they had been trained to do. I do not fault Pres. Biden for expressing that frustration. The majority of Afghans did not want the Taliban to regain power, imposing strict Shariah law, banning entertainment such as movies and music, and oppressing the women. The alternative was falling back on option (1), keeping a substantial U.S. presence in Afghanistan, as the U.S. has in South Korea. American public opinion was opposed to option (1). My criticism is not that the U.S. chose option (2), but that it did not adequately prepare for the evacuation of those Afghans who had assisted the U.S. military in the event that option (2) failed and the Taliban overran the country when the U.S. began to leave. Judging from the news I have seen this morning, I do not see how it is going to be possible to evacuate the some 30,000 Afghans whom the U.S. promised would be allowed to settle in the U.S.
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Another Anonymous,
Afghanistan isn't a poorer version of Switzerland. It's chaotic mess and I'm not sure that the evacuation could have been much more efficient.
It's just not the kind of place where you can send an email with a code to be scanned to everyone who is to be evacuated, indicating the hour of their flight and asking them to appear 3 hours earlier with no more than 40 kilos of luggage at a checkpoint where their code will be scanned by a smiling hostess.
s. wallerstein,
Yes, Afghanistan is a backward country, but all the more reason to have begun the planning sooner. Surely, with more planning, it could have been done better than it is, resulting in saving more lives.
The essence of being "backward" (a word which is probably politically correct to use) is that planning doesn't work. At least not "libertarian" planning. Stalinist or Maoist planning may function.
1. It seems to have been missed that most of the organs of the Afghan state had negotiated terms of surrender well prior to the afternoon of January 20, 2021. That was first signaled by the Trump Administration springing Baradar from a Pakistani prison in 2018. Rational Afghani actors read the writing on the wall and proceeded accordingly. The Trump/Taliban February 2020 agreement was a solid confirmation.
2. We are an overly emotional species that panics easily - note the universal reaction to any perceived threats or shortages (some of you likely still have a healthy supply of paper towels and toilet paper). There was no way short of a new invasion to have avoided the present situation. At most only marginal improvements could have been implemented with only a few months in which to act.
3. Once the Bush Administration made the decision to do Iraq, the loss of momentum in Afghanistan made now inevitable. If your enemy is disorganized and on the run and you fail to destroy them - that's on you.
4. The Taliban are evil, not stupid (mostly). Allowing elements that might pose a problem in the future to leave now makes sense as well as being a potential revenue source (hey, it's Afghanistan).
sw, planning (in a Stalinist/Maoist sense) doesn't work out well but certain things can be outright imposed if the seeds are there. When Federal troops occupied the former traitor states and the Klan was crushed, Freedmen made political and economic gains. Japan and Germany were completely crushed, a few malefactors were hanged and political changes imposed.
There are obviously folks in Afghanistan who want to build a good society but (and as with Reconstruction) we gave up in 2003 (as in the 1870s) and here we are.
I continue to be flabbergasted by knowledge claims based on what? E.g., the assertion that “The majority of Afghans did not want the Taliban to regain power, imposing strict Shariah law, banning entertainment such as movies and music, and oppressing the women.” Just how would that be known? (A reputable reference would be appreciated.) On the other hand, the collapse of the American puppet regime in Afghanistan, like the collapse of other puppet regimes elsewhere, at the least suggest that that regime didn’t have much support at all and that the Taliban have been rather better rooted in the society. (aaall’s first point seems to speak to this point.)
I also continue to be flabbergasted by the absence of much anti-imperialist argument here. Most of the comments seem to reduce to questions about how ‘we’ might have been better imperialists.
aaall,
Neither Japan nor Germany nor the U.S. south after the civil war could be described as "backward".
R McD, the "imperialist" argument fails because it's imperialism of one sort or another all the way down (after all we are dealing with a part of the world that hit its high point back in the original Silk Road days. Perhaps a better way to think of this is the divide between we cosmopolitan urban elites and our own evangelical, national conservative, populist Taliban in "fly over country" (don't bother, as I live in fly over country). Besides "imperialism" as an explanatory meme for everything is well past its sell - by date and the Saudis and the ISI are imperialists too.
The Taliban filled a vacuum and wore out their welcome. There was a window and we blew it.
Dear aaall, I was far from intending imperialism as an explanatory meme for everything; just for some things. (In fact, since I haven’t a clue how to use the currently fashionable word “meme,” I had no intention of saying anything ‘memetic.) As to imperialism being beyond its explantory usefulness, I beg to differ. Besides, I certainly wouldn't use the term "we" when referring to the actions of any of the governments I have any immediate links to.
Maybe I should just have referenced this:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/17/the-united-states-afghanistan-and-the-doctrinal-boundaries-of-permissible-reflection/
R McD,
I based that statement on the years of news reports of interviews with Afghans who reside in the rural provinces of Afghanistan expressing their fear of, and dislike for, the Taliban and their support for the U.S. effort to prevent their return. I cannot give you any citations to these interviews, since they were not reduced to writing. However, I can refer you to surveys which have been taken of the Afghan citizenry. See https://asiafoundation.org/where-we-work/afghanistan/survey/.
You will note that in this survey 85%-88% of the Afghans surveyed indicate that it was a primary concern that the rights of women be protected in any peace deal. Since the Taliban administration which controlled Afghanistan prior to 9/11 was primarily known for its abuse of the female population, these percentages would indicate that those surveyed were particularly concerned about what a new Taliban regime would do to the female population. One can extrapolate from that that the Afghan population generally would prefer a U.S. led government over a Taliban government. It is not much of a logical stretch.
Regarding the lack of support for the Afghan government in Kabul, this did not reflect support for the Taliban. The Afghan government was disliked because of its widespread corruption and defalcation of Afghan capital, for the same reason that the government in Beirut is currently despised.
Regarding your dismay at what you regard as a lack of anti-imperialist rhetoric in this thread, what, may I ask, imperialism are you referring to? The United States did not invade Afghanistan in order to reap the wealth of its natural resources, of which it has very little – it has no oil reserves; it has no diamonds; it has no gold mines. What it has are a lot of poppies, which have been used to make opium, and which was not the reason that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. The U.S.. invaded Afghanistan, in case you have forgotten, to retaliate against and defeat Al Qaeda, which had launched and planned the 9/11 attack on the twin towers from its refuge in Afghanistan, where it was being protected by the Taliban. Once Al Qaeda was defeated over ten years ago, the U.S. had good reason to leave, and many argued then, and are arguing now, that that is what the U.S. should have done. The U.S. military stayed for the reasons I have outlined above, not to impose its imperial will over an unwilling population, or to rape the country of its abundant resources.
sw, while Germany demonstrated how thin a veneer "not backward" can be, Imperial Japan seems inapt and the American South seems analogous with a Kabul/Atlanta vs. the rural parts of the respective nations (rural life in the south was really hard well into the last century and honor cultures are honor cultures).
R McD, CounterPunch is too often a perfect example of a stopped clock/if one only has a hammer..." I'm well aware of the gains women made prior to the chaos of the 1980s and the role of Saudi fundamentalism as well as our aiding the Mujaheddin in creating the vacuum that allowed the Taliban to come to power. My point is that there was a status quo ante that could have been restored and built on.
I’m afraid, AA, I find your notion of imperialism, especially the sort the US has engaged in since WW Two—or should you look south in the Americas, almost since its birth—a bit off. It isn’t just about extracting wealth. It’s basically about domination: let stand no one, no country, that defies our “leadership” and out will. But obviously we will have no meeting of the minds on this. So . . .
As to your comment, aaall, I take it that you find Counterpunch disreputable? I can’t say I find everything they put out to my taste. But that’s true of everything I read. So what?
R McD, the article you referenced reads like a parody of a far left piece. It's a sometimes interesting but unreliable source.
Imperialism, itself, has always been about the bucks and being rationalized by God, ideological anti-communism, King, Queen, Manifest Destiny, etc. Eisenhower intervened in Guatemala in the 1950's because United Fruit and unions (read about UF) with anti-Communism as ideological cover (ditto Iran in the same time period). Recall that the first of what turned into colonial ventures were entities like the Hudson's Bay Company and the East India Company (check out Hasting's story). Isabella fronted Columbus as a way around the trading advantages Portugal had established. Guys like Walker filibustered in order to establish plantation slavery.
R McD,
Conceding, for the sake of argument, that your definition of “imperialism” is accurate and that the United States fits the bill, I should think that you would also include in that definition Russia, China, and Iran, and perhaps Great Britain (though its role in that regard has vastly diminished since it gave up its Empire). As between those imperialistic nations, where would you prefer to live – in Russia, China, Iran, or the U.S., Great Britain? I strongly suspect, despite your distaste for both, that you would opt for the latter. Perhaps it is necessary in a world in which such imperialistic nations as Russia, China and Iran exist, it is necessary to have imperialistic nations of a more, shall I say, benevolent quality in order to counter the imperialistic programs of Russia, China and Iran. You disagree that the U.S. and Great Britain qualify as benevolent imperialistic nations? Perhaps, then, you should move to Russia, China or Iran.
Another Anonymous,
You hit a new low with your suggestion that R McD should move to Russia, China or Iran.
It's often the case that the most repressive nation is not particularly aggressive. In his history of the Pelopensian War Thucydides points that Athens, which surely was a more pleasant place to live than Sparta, was more imperialistic and aggressive than its rival, Sparta.
So too Iran has never invaded anyone as far as I know since it became an Islamic state while the U.S., a more pleasant place to live than Iran, since 1979, the date of the Islamic takeover, has invaded Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq and I'm surely leaving somewhere out.
s. wallerstein,
The point is that there are different forms of imperialism, some more benevolent than others. Clearly, Athens was a far more desirable place to live than Sparta, where female infants were killed and males were trained exclusively to be warriors. The United States and Great Britain, regardless the claim that they are imperialist nations – a description which I was willing to concede for the sake of argument – are far more respectful of individual rights than Russia, China or Iran. I assume that R McD agrees with this, and would under no circumstances prefer to live in the imperialist nations of Russia, China or Iran. And perhaps without the imperialistic opposition to the imperialistic aspirations of Russia, China and Iran, we would be living under their regimes rather than ours.
Regarding your claim that Iran has not invaded any other country, where have you been.? There are Iranian personnel in Syria, supporting Assad. They are promoting and financially supporting the destabilizing efforts of radial Islamists in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Gaza (Hamas). Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas do not support free speech or the right to choose the gender of one’s life partner. Where would you rather live? Your (and R McD’s) choice speaks volumes regarding which form of imperialism is preferable, especially when some forms of imperialism are the antidote which prevents the hegemony by less palatable forms of imperialism.
Sure, there are Iranis in Syria supporting Assad, but they didn't invade Syria. They were invited by Assad, who, like it or not, is the man in charge.
David Palmeter points out in the other thread that there are U.S. troops in from 70 to 150 countries, in general invited by whoever is in charge, some of them with no more legitimacy than Assad has at this point.
We have long since been put into neverneverland by our host who has started a new thread. And besides, we—and I plead as guilty as anyone else—have started quite a long sideline which others, including perhaps our host, may well find inappropriate. And for that too I apologise. Still, some points have been made that arouse my interest.
First, thankyou for your intervention on my behalf, sw.
Speaking for myself: I appreciate your suggestion, AA, that I might find other places than the USA or Britain more congenial as places to live. Unfortunately, being a linguistic idiot I am restricted by my preference to live an adult existence to English-speaking places. Unfortunately, such countries now, as I understand it, impose a point system to measure how fit someone might be to be an immigrant. Being of a certain age and unwealthy, though not poor, I fail the test. Besides, in the case of Australia, where I could for family reasons make a case for admission, I’m deathly afraid of their snakes and spiders, and as senile dementia overtakes me, I fancy i might imagine such creatures assaulting me on every side; even the comments I sometimes encounter here don’t really prepare me for that. So I can’t really see myself living there.
But more to the political thrust of your suggestion: I view your impolite suggestion as coming from a position which sees only a very narrow range of views as befitting residents of the USA. I hate to disillusion you, but I have a great many dear American friends who much of the time think as I do about the world. They would certainly regard your understanding of the state of the world and the USA’s role in that as something to be vigorously disputed. They would likely find your notion that there were any “benevolent imperialistic nations” out there just another self-deluding absurdity. (I was aware of that sort of absurdity, by the way, when I was still quite young, when I heard people around me, in the UK, going on about how ‘we’ were trying to do good in the world, so why were the indigenous people of Kenya going to war against us? My neighbours were, some of them, quite unaware of the sort of rights that were extended to the UK’s imperial subjects—something I have read Obama understood.) I have to add, having just read your response to sw that you seem to me to throw around a lot of utterly mistaken world history and an awful lot of mistaken analysis of what’s going on and what has been going on in various parts of the world. (I will try not to respond to the barrage I fear might follow these harsh but valid remarks.)
On to another matter: After you wrote what you did, aaall—“the article you referenced reads like a parody of a far left piece”—I went back and reread it. And I can’t for the life of me see how you can describe it that way (I presume you meant the one in Countepunch). But since the author’s point was that there were very severe limits in practice on what one might say regarding American governmental intentions and actions—I suppose one might claim that a sort of ‘cancel culture’ has been in operation for an awfully long time (in fact, as memory serves, de Tocqueville commented on how restrictive the limits were)—I’ll take your observation as but another example of that.
How about Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies all of which oppress their women?
Egypt?
There are currently no U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia (although the Saudis did allow U.S. military aircraft to fly out of Saudi Arabia during the Gulf war against Iraq), the Arab emirates or Egypt.
And providing financial aid to these countries does not equate to an endorsement of their treatment of women, nor does it equate to Iran's propping up Assad, who has used nerve gas on his own people.
Saudi Arabia Umm Al Melh Border Guards Airport[16] since 2011[16] bombing Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIL in Yemen[17][18] secret CIA base[17]
R McD,
Your explanation for not moving to Russia, China or Iran is, like s. wallerstein’s comments, is so much speciousness. You would not move to these countries even if you had the financial means, or the linguistic fluency, because you would not want to have wear a hijab if you lived in Iran, or have your career aspirations dictated by men; nor to Russia, where your ability to criticize Putin for his imperialistic aspirations would be severely limited, if not resulting in your death; nor to China, where you would face the same limitations on free speech as in Russia, and where extravagant consumerism exceeds even that whch exists in the U.S.
No, you prefer to live in the U.S not for financial or linguistic reasons, but because you are free to exercise those rights which would be denied you in Iran, Russia, and China, despite the U.S.’s imperialistic tendencies, as you put it, which help prevent Russia, China and Iran from exercising the hegemony they seek, imperialistic tendencies which you resist denouncing, preferring to take pot-shots at the U.S., which is preventing Russia, China, and Iran from succeeding at their imperialistic agendas, which could result in an hegemony over other countries which, in the long run, would threaten the freedoms you exercise in the U.S. In short, you are a hypocrite. The U.S., with all its flaw, many of which I, with you, denounce and criticize, is not the evil, imperialistic, world dominating nation you depict it as.
"The United States operates a global network of military installations and is by far the largest operator of military bases abroad with locations in dozens of nations on every continent, with 38 "named bases"[note 1] having active-duty, National Guard, reserve, or civilian personnel as of September 30, 2014. Its largest, in terms of personnel, is Ramstein AB, in Germany, with almost 9,200 personnel.[1][note 2] The Pentagon stated in 2013 that there are "around" 5,000 bases total, with "around" 600 of them overseas.[2] Due to the sensitive nature of the subject there is no comprehensive list of detailed information on the exact number or location of all bases, stations and installations as it involves highly classified information. The total number of foreign sites for installations and facilities that are either in active use and service or may be activated and operated and by American military personnel and allies is at just over 1000.[3]" [quoting wikipedia]
It’s always a pleasure to have an exchange with someone who is so well informed (even about my private life) and who spices his knowledge with so much delightful wit and humour.
Another,
If you don't believe that there are U.S. military personnel (not official bases) stationed in Arabia Saudi and the Gulf monarchies, you are very ingenuous.
And by the way, Iran has no military bases in Syria either.
As non. above notes, the U.S. has 600 bases overseas, most of them non-offical.
R McD,
It's not so private. You have made it public in prior comments on this blog.
My dear AA,
I can only repeat: It’s always a pleasure to have an exchange with someone who is so well informed (even about my private life) and who spices his knowledge with so much delightful wit and humour. I forgot to also say that your generosity of argumentative spirit should be a lesson to us all.
Having praised you, I’m afraid I must now put forward a small correction. To the best of my poor knowledge, I would not be required, indeed, i might even be punished in some places were I to do so, to wear a hijab. But perhaps I am mistaken as to my gender? It is true, but then it was true of almost everyone in my generation, both male and female, that my career aspirations were largely dictated by men. Yet I must insist—unless, of course, we have moved to the stage beyond that where we’re at liberty to define ourselves as we wish, to where others may define us as they wish—that I am not what you seem to think I am; but perhaps I misinterpret you. And perhaps you were being Swiftian and I am about to be proved dead?
Sincere best wishes.
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