The Afghan Speech

Former Argentine beauty queen dies
from plastic surgery, friend says she
“wanted to have a slightly firmer ass.”

I have just listened to President Obama’ speech about Afghanistan. I did not turn on the TV early as I did not want to hear what all the newspeople were going to say about what they thought he might say, or what might or might not have been leaked, and so on. Similarly, when the speech was over, I turned off the TV because I did not want to be told over and over again what he just said (or their particular interpretations of what he just said). So the following comments are strictly my own.

I thought it was a terrible speech. In fact, I found is so excruciatingly awful and embarrassing I had to fight myself to keep from turning it off. The speech had a weird kind of fairy tale quality about it, as if President Obama had swallowed some strange kool-aid, or had been smoking something he shouldn’t have. First of all, he seemed to accept the idea that it was necessary to start a “war” to deal with what was/is in reality just a small band of international criminals. The “war” was hardly a war of necessity, contrary to what Obama seems to believe. Even now there aren’t many al Quaida. He also seems to accept the idea that the attack of 9/11 was somehow planned by al Qaida in Afghanistan, whereas it was also planned in Berlin and the United States (and further attacks could be planned from virtually anywhere on earth). He also didn’t bother to mention that the attackers were all Saudi Arabians, not Afghans. Nor did he bother to mention that the Taliban do not represent all of Afghanistan, but are, in fact, a minority of that population. Nor did he mention that the Taliban are our “enemies” now only because they want us out of their country, nor are they a threat to the world in any way (they may be a slight threat to Pakistan, but remember Pakistan helped them in Afghanistan because they were bringing stability to that country). To say that al Quaida or the Taliban are a threat to world security is a terrible exaggeration. Al Quaida might be a terrorist threat around the world, the Taliban are surely not. He also did not mention there are in reality only a small number of al Quaida, mostly now in Pakistan, and cannot be a terrible threat to the U.S. or anywhere else. Their chances of getting their hands on a nuclear weapon are very remote, and their chances of mailing it or smuggling it into the U.S. is even more remote (and probably not even possible). Thus his insistence that what is happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a dangerous threat to the world is little more than the same old fear mongering we have come to expect from the Bush/Cheney years.

His claim that we are going to train an efficient Afghan army and (maybe, perhaps, possibly) leave Afghanistan after 18 months (or whatever) is no more than pie in the sky. First of all, Afghanistan is not truly a “country” in any ordinary meaning of that term. It is a huge collection of tribes and clans that have managed their own affairs and their own territories for more than a thousand years. It is unlikely there will ever be an Afghan army representing the entire country as there are few Afghans that proclaim loyalty to a nation rather than to their tribe or clan, and, as only about 10% of the country is literate that also creates a problem in trying to establish a viable military organization (to say nothing of the fact they probably couldn’t afford it). It is also not very accurate to describe Afghanistan as a country that has constantly been in turmoil and fighting and unable to survive without outside help. It is the outside meddling of Britain, Russia, and now the U.S. that has caused all the turmoil and strife, not the inability of the Afghans to manage their own affairs (which, left on their own they will no doubt do fairly well, including taking care of the Taliban problem). There is a form of stability in a tribal and clan-based society, whereas tribes and clans join and separate depending upon the particular enemies or problems they face. They are mostly joined now in a common effort to rid themselves of foreigners who are occupying their country. The U.S. wants greater stability only because we want to build a pipeline through their country, bypassing Russia, something else Obama neglected to mention. If he mentioned Osama bin Laden at all I have already forgotten it.

There were other things about the speech that I thought were mostly rhetorical. For example, we do not want to occupy their country (we only want to have bases there to protect our interests). The U.S. does not seek hegemony (empire) over the world (that is why we have some 1000 bases all around the world). The U.S. has fought for freedom and liberty for others everywhere (as long as they have oil or something else we want). We have been the world’s policeman for sixty years (only when it suits our interest). We are withdrawing from Iraq (maybe) because we will leave them with a viable and democratic government (highly questionable). I found the entire speech to be little more than one fairytale after another, with the same underlying themes of the “white man’s burden,” American exceptionalism and benign motives, that you might have expected from Bush/Cheney, St. Ronnie, or even Teddy Roosevelt. To me, at least, it was a terrible disappointment. Let’s see how it plays out with the neocons and others.

I do not believe that sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan is, in fact, “vital to American interests.” What is vital to American interests is to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible, get out of Iraq as soon as possible, and let them manage their own affairs, while we attempt to manage our own here at home (if we are even able to do that any longer). If the Afghans or Iraqis ask us for help for specific problems, we should be seriously obliged to try to accommodate them as best we can. But, you say, what about all that oil? How much oil do you think we could have bought from them for a trillion or more dollars, all the while helping them improve their economies?

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Rudyard Kipling