Taliban’s resurgence by 2017 – so much for helping a nation

The Washington Post, among many other news outlets, revealed leaks on a national intelligence report concerning Afghanistan. Here are the highlights:

A new American intelligence assessment on the Afghan war predicts that the gains the United States and its allies have made during the past three years are likely to have been significantly eroded by 2017

The National Intelligence Estimate, which includes input from the country’s 16 intelligence agencies, predicts that the Taliban and other power brokers will become increasingly influential as the United States winds down its longest war in history

The report predicts that Afghanistan would likely descend into chaos quickly if Washington and Kabul don’t sign a security pact that would keep an international military contingent there beyond 2014

“In the absence of a continuing presence and continuing financial support,” the intelligence assessment “suggests the situation would deteriorate very rapidly,” said one U.S. official familiar with the report.

That conclusion is widely shared among U.S. officials working on Afghanistan

 

Granted,

“I think what we’re going to see is a recalibration of political power, territory and that kind of thing,” said one U.S. official who felt the assessment was unfairly negative. “It’s not going to be an inevitable rise of the Taliban.”

A senior administration official said that the intelligence community has long underestimated Afghanistan’s security forces. “An assessment that says things are going to be gloomy no matter what you do, that you’re just delaying the inevitable, that’s just a view,” said the official. “I would not think it would be the determining view.”

The Obama administration has sought to get permission from Kabul to keep troops that would carry out counterterrorism and training missions beyond 2014. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has so far refused to sign a bilateral security agreement with the United States and has made demands that Washington calls unrealistic.

 

If Afghanistan is better off with the Taliban and the US should do everything to keep them down – as US policy will tell us – then perhaps there is a need to reevaluate. Of course, that requires dealing with the American public….

 

From the Washington Post

Hero Worship

This past Monday, 11/11, was Veterans day, an American federal holiday which originated as Armistice day, a day to remember the end of the first world war. Veterans day is a day to remember the veterans of America, the heroes who put their lives on the line to protect the freedoms we Americans take for granted. The only problem I see with this is that we haven’t had to protect our freedom for more than sixty years, we have been the dominant force in the world since World War II and we have used that position to bully and push our “freedom” on countries not seeking it. Of course, we have done great things for the world, but most of it doesn’t involve invading countries on the other side of the world or killing democratically elected leaders who happen to not be willing to bow to American feet, and those invasions and assassinations have done little than to show us as a bully that believes itself above the rules.  All of this isn’t to say that we should blame our troops for mistakes, but it is to say that the soldier worship so evident in america is unhealthy, and altogether unhelpful, it glorifies war and makes questioning the government nearly treasonous. We should consider who benefits when we consider every veteran a hero. Not the veterans, no, they have record numbers of suicides, they make up 13% of the homeless population, despite only accounting for less than 1% of the total population, they have mental illnesses that often go untreated, or even get them dishonorably discharged, preventing them from even trying to get treatment. No, the people who benefit the most from this hero-worship are the policy makers, the leaders, the public sees the veterans as heroes, and heroes couldn’t be fighting an unjust war, no,  the war has to be right, or else why would we be involved. The American public hasn’t exactly enjoyed the two wars we have been involved in for the past twelve years, but despite the ridiculous length of the war, there has been no movements, nothing even approaching the feelings felt during the Vietnam war, but what gives, the world is now more connected than ever, we can see images and names from the war whenever we want, why isn’t there the reaction that Vietnam incurred, where is the outrage, we have been at war for 12 years! Finally we are withdrawing, but still, the policy makers managed to declare war against an IDEA! the idea of terrorism, and they fought it, to little success, despite what they will tell you, yes, we got Osama, congrats, what about the billions spent in the war, what about the lives lost, what about the countries destroyed and destabilized, was the cost worth it in the end? according to the government the answer is yes, and we should just stand their and pledge ourselves to the flag and weep with patriotic pride. We commemorate the lost heroes and sanctify men and women who did a service, who fought a brutal, useless, war, who put their lives on the line for the not quite so honest leaders of this country who lead them into battle for little reason. We should always think before we consider such as brutal profession as inherently heroic, as its insults the true heroes, and benefits the wrong people.

Afghanistan before the Wars (PICS)

It is amazing how war can change so much…

I Know why the Terrorists Terrorize (Part 3)

Continued from Part 2

The social causes of terrorism are aggregated by the historical situations of the Middle East. The political destruction the Islamic World has faced are due to a wealth of reasons, and only some of which will be discussed. Much of what I say here is drawn from the book Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis. I have written a review on that book if you would like to check it out. The political chaos in the Middle East today is due to both interior and exterior reasons, and all too often the Middle East fails to recognize the problems it has created for itself while the outside world fails to recognize the problems it has created for the Middle East. Both of these forces have worked to destroy the political, social, economic, academic, and cultural fabric of a civilization equally rich in history and tradition as ours.

We can empathize with the problems the Middle East has unwittingly been forced into, but we must caution ourselves from forgetting the problems it has caused on its own. We must also caution ourselves from removing the blame of terrorism from the perpetrators to the victims, like America. Certainly, this country has seriously failed in Middle Eastern foreign affairs when it comes to the field of terrorism, but we cannot forget who did the bombing on whose soil.But that was before the real warring started. The real warring started with our 43rd President, and I’ll talk about him later.

The real warring started when Britian betrayed the Arab nations . The real warring started when France and Britain occupied the Arab states. The real warring started when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, or when the United States supported Saddam Hussein. The real warring started was when the United States supported a coup in Iran, or when Nasser came to power in Egypt.  These things that happened in the Middle East, that traumatized the masses  and angered the intellectuals, are what brought the violence and the despair in the region. The regimes that oppress the people of that world day by day are practically puppet regimes implemented by western powers.

And thus the terrorism took root. It took root in an anti-western ideology that stemmed from the oppression of regimes and colonial powers. The soviets invaded Afghanistan  – and lost -,  and collapsed soon after. This wasn’t all too correlated, but the masses of the middle east saw that as the hidden power of its people. These strong armed, violent revolts brought down a superpower, in their mind. USSR was a paper tiger, in their perceptions. The US has now inherited that role. As we have adopted a new idol of the “other”: Islam, to replace Communism, the Middle East has adopted us as the enemy likewise. We are wrapped in a chaotic, complicated world, in which we adopt a dualistic worldview just to satisfy our simple minds. The Axis of Evil that Bush so delightfully remarks about, is nothing but scared nations trying to survive in a chaotic world of dangerous bullies. Thus they bully their people, an d load themselves with weaponry and military strength in the hopes of survival. We as a nation eliminated Iraq, one of the three nations of the axis. It is not surprising North Korea and Iran are attempting nuclear weaponry: for fear of elimination too.

The warring continued when we bombed Iraq day after day, massacring hundreds of thousands of people just like us. We criticize the Boston Bomber’s face on the Rolling Stones Magazine, and yet we turn a blind eye when Bush shows up in our newspapers and our books. The warring continued when we bombed Afghanistan day after day, massacring just like we did before. The warring continued when we drone attack Yemen and Pakistan day after day, killing teenagers as “collateral damage” for their parents. The warring continues day after day. The terrorist ideology is like the Greek Hydra: every one of them we kill a number grow in his place. We must get to the root of the ideology, this anti-Western contempt, and fix that, for a long term solution. Else we are just beating around an ever growing burning bush.

How we deal with the people around us is how they deal with us. To treat Muslims as crazy and their regimes as hostile is for them to treat us likewise and for them to become hostile. To be hypocrites day after day by preaching democracy while funding dictatorships isn’t something no one realizes. The people of the Middle East remember the coup in Iran, or the support of Saudi Arabia, and the current lack of action in Syria. When we terrorize people, they terrorize back. Sometimes worse, with more violence, and more ruthlessness. In our own interests, we must stop. We cannot kill ideology with bombs – only with ideology. We terrorize them day after day, and they terrorize us likewise. That is why the terrorists terrorize.

Continued with Part 4/4.

Crisis of Islam

Bernard Lewis is an interesting Middle Eastern scholar who I will surely talk about more when I get into Orientalism. This book, Crisis of Islam, is about the utter chaos the Islamic World has experienced in the last century. The book explores the history of the Islamic World and the modern context it is now. The book discusses the various edge groups and their opponents in the modern world – from the Salafis to the hidden secularist liberals. This is an extraordinary read that is well worth, insightful, easy to understand, and scholarly.

Professor Lewis is quick to explain that Islam is not inherently linked to terrorism. He goes through the historical roots of terrorism and the history of violence in the Islamic World, and thoroughly demonstrates the lack of relationship between the two. Terrorism has “no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.” Nevertheless, the terrorist of the Muslim World justify themselves through their religion in an incredulous way. Dealing with the Middle East has thus become so difficult – that the fanatics believe wholeheartedly that they are correct, and that killing them is only good for them.

The crisis of the Islamic World and the rise of extremism can be attributed much to the decline in Islamic thinking, which occurred a little before colonialism  and after the fall of the Mongols as a reaction to the Renaissance (the public perception suddenly became that the roots of Islamic decline are because of too much thinking and too little dogma, and this led to only more decline). This was not helped by colonialism centuries later, which destroyed the academic institutions (theological, philosophical, and scientific) forever. In modern times, oil has both been crucial and destructive to the Arab world in particular. Lewis has a famous quote where he flips the common American quote: “No representation without taxation”. The oil rich gulf states have traditionally had almost no taxes on its citizens- the wealth of the nation was generated entirely by oil resources. Their was no need for a parliamentary system to develop a taxation system, and thus the monarchies established themselves permanently, and are only replaced if ever by ruthless tyrants.

His book after explaining what I have said so far in much more details concludes with a solution. The purpose of the text was not really to provide a solution, so it doesn’t focus too much on it, but his conclusion is that the only solution to the Middle East is non-secular democracy (secular preferably, but that is asking for too much too quick). America is a necessary component for reviving the Middle East (Lewis was a big advocate of the Iraq war…before it happened). I won’t comment on what I think about his conclusions, but I am content to say that his identifying of Middle Eastern and Islamic problems was excellent, and his analysis of their roots essential.