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December 05, 2010

AFCECO Afghanistan
Ian Pounds

This post rightfully is not a platform from which to proselytize. I must almost always keep to the story of AFCECO and the children and my direct experience, but while the children have been taking their final exams, and while I prepare for the journey home to America with three of my students in tote, I have time to read and to think, and I must anticipate the scores of questions I will be fielding as I move about my country once again drumming up support for AFCECO and sharing my perspective on Afghanistan and its people and this war. So please bear with me and forgive my indulgence as I try to formulate some of my broader, philosophical opinions as regards the opinions expressed by experts in American newspapers. Invariably this gets me into trouble and I will regret it. Always, the truth is to be found in the voices of the children. But I am idle this week, I have not seen the children, and idleness can be a bit corrosive. One week from today we will be on a plane west, and this journal will take another turn in describing the unimaginable experience Pashtana, Manizha and Sahar are about to have. For today, I am compelled to respond to the op-ed piece in the Washington Post 12/3/2010, written by Robert Kaplan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303448.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

This opinion piece written by Mr. Kaplan is very well composed and convincing in its language, but it suffers from an initial devotion to a simple premise that the Cold War in an odd sort of way kept the world safer and more stable than the lack of empire that exists today. It also presupposes, between the lines, that the United States has a moral responsibility to maintain its control of the seas and geopolitical developments. (The writer also insinuates that the U.S. historically has been guided by moral truths.) A quick glance at the history of the latter half of the 20th Century does not quite bolster this stance. Here is a list of wars and in parenthesis the number of people killed:

1946-54: France-Vietnam war (600,000)

1947: Partition of India and Pakistan (1 million)

1947: Taiwan's uprising against the Kuomintang (30,000)

1948-1958: Colombian civil war (250,000)

1948-1973: Arab-Israeli wars (70,000)

1949-: Indian Muslims vs Hindus (20,000)

1949-50: Mainland China vs Tibet (1,200,000)

1950-53: Korean war (3 million)

1952-59: Kenya's Mau Mau insurrection (20,000)

1954-62: French-Algerian war (368,000)

1958-61: Mao's "Great Leap Forward" (38 million)

1960-90: South Africa vs Africa National Congress (?)

1960-96: Guatemala's civil war (200,000)

1961-98: Indonesia vs West Papua/Irian (100,000)

1961-2003: Kurds vs Iraq (180,000)

1962-75: Mozambique Frelimo vs Portugal (?)

1964-73: USA-Vietnam war (3 million)

1965: second India-Pakistan war over Kashmir

1965-66: Indonesian civil war (250,000)

1966-69: Mao's "Cultural Revolution" (11 million)

1966-: Colombia's civil war (31,000)

1967-70: Nigeria-Biafra civil war (800,000)

1968-80: Rhodesia's civil war (?)

1969-: Philippines vs New People's Army (40,000)

1969-79: Idi Amin, Uganda (300,000)

1969-02: IRA - Norther Ireland's civil war (2,000)

1969-79: Francisco Macias Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (50,000)

1971: Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war (500,000)

1972-: Philippines vs Muslim separatists (Moro Islamic Liberation Front, etc) (120,000)

1972: Burundi's civil war (300,000)

1972-79: Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's civil war (30,000)

1974-91: Ethiopian civil war (1,000,000)

1975-78: Menghitsu, Ethiopia (1.5 million)

1975-79: Khmer Rouge, Cambodia (1.7 million)

1975-89: Boat people, Vietnam (250,000)

1975-90: civil war in Lebanon (40,000)

1975-87: Laos' civil war (184,000)

1975-2002: Angolan civil war (500,000)

1976-83: Argentina's military regime (20,000)

1976-93: Mozambique's civil war (900,000)

1976-98: Indonesia-East Timor civil war (600,000)

1976-2005: Indonesia-Aceh (GAM) civil war (12,000)

1977-92: El Salvador's civil war (75,000)

1979: Vietnam-China war (30,000)

1979-88: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (1.3 million)

1980-88: Iraq-Iran war (1 million)

1980-92: Sendero Luminoso - Peru's civil war (69,000)

1980-99: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000)

1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000)

1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000)

1983-: Sri Lanka's civil war (70,000)

1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2 million)

1986-: Indian Kashmir's civil war (60,000)

1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500)

1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000)

1988-2004: Somalia's civil war (550,000)

1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000)

1989-: Uganda vs Lord's Resistance Army (30,000)

Other than the obvious cold war wars in bold (with, by the way deflated numbers of people who actually died in those wars) there are many wars listed as civil wars that were anything but. In fact they were proxy wars pumped with arms by the Soviets or the U.S., or they were pendulum swing, radicalized wars against U.S. or Soviet backed tyrants. This history, along with the ever-present imminent prospect of all-out nuclear war was not pretty, and it astounds me Mr. Kaplan seems to be almost nostalgic about it. In reality what he and most of us are nostalgic for is the era when we were the good guys, notably World War II. It was the Cold War and our penultimate rise to sole superpower, preemptive invader, torturer and ultimately hypocrite proclaiming all ends justify means wherein we find our good-guy status eroded, reduced to a cardboard cutout akin to the promotional cutouts of heroes we see in the lobbies of movie theaters.

Regarding America’s moral compass, I can only shrug and refer to the arrogant concept of Manifest Destiny, that we are in fact God’s chosen ones. This article smugly talks about China as immoral and self-interested and getting a free ride on the rest of the world’s resources, sweat and blood. I firmly agree. But it is important to understand that this is not unlike what a very large portion of the world has said about us. This article also contradicts itself by saying on one hand nobody will compare militarily with us for decades, but that we must keep pace and maintain our power: ie continue to build on our military might or we lose pace with the world. In a previous entry I highlighted the discrepancy between what we spend and what the rest of the world spends on military. More to the point, thus far this year the United States and its NATO partners dropped 4,615 Hellfire missiles in Afghanistan. Each costs $58,000. That comes to $267,670,000. What geopolitical stability did we get for this investment? An air strike is called in simply because we can, even though the target is merely two to a dozen supposed hostiles in a mud hut on a mountainside. Aside from dealing with the remoteness of the hut, taking it out reduces any chance of our own casualties, but is this reason enough to drop a bomb on it?  The official body count this year of insurgents killed in the entire field, ground assault and air assault runs at 4,437. What have over 4,600 bombs (precision bombs no less) accomplished? Is it morally right to spend this kind of money on this kind of war? While one in four Americans are unable to put food on their table tonight? With close to 10% of Americans out of work? Not to mention the fact that civilians are killed by these strikes, and just about every Afghan will tell you that we are creating the perceived Taliban monster and making it stronger with every bomb we drop.

The Wikileaks incident merely illustrates what we have all known in our hearts, that we rarely if ever get the truth. What kind of democracy is populated with people who have no bearing on the truth? What kind of power is wielded in the world by such a country?

Mr. Kaplan's article comes out of itself in the end, saying that we must not shirk our responsibilities abroad. There is a serious problem with this cart before the horse attitude, not the least of which is skipping over the debate about what it means to act responsibly in the world. To do this we must first cleanse ourselves of presupposing our moral high ground as a shining light, a Camelot that does not nor ever existed. It is people who demand morality, as they did when they demanded the end of slavery, the end of child labor, the vote for women, civil rights, the end of the Vietnam war, environmental protection and equality for all, regardless of sexual preference. I am not intimating that we as a country have never done anything good in the world. What I am intimating is that what good we do as a country only comes with self-reflection, which does not by necessity mean isolationism, but to know the truth about ourselves before we march across the human landscape with our supreme power and righteousness.

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