One of the problems with unleashing the big military stick to solve thorny geopolitical issues is the wave after wave of unintended consequences. Despite our lettuce bowl of cultural diversity, the United States appears loath to engage in deep cultural and historical analysis with Americans from the lands we are threatening to attack because we are suspicious that they may in fact “be the enemy” or worse, we find former locals with an agenda or an axe to grind and use them to set our policies. For example, Afghanistan’s incredibly corrupt President, Hamid Karzai, was our secret CIA contact during the Soviet Afghan war, a man whose father was murdered at the hands of Taliban-supported al Qaeda operatives. As we fomented our post-9/11 anti-Taliban strategy, he was our key advisor. We listened to him and helped him achieve that presidency where, to this day, his government has almost no sway outside of the capital city and its immediate environs.
Black sunglasses-wearing American-engaged security “contractors” operating in Iraq blemished our country with callous and unthinking use of their weapons against innocent civilians. A few bad apples in our military provided Taliban recruiting posters as our soldiers humiliated and tortured al Qaeda prisoners at Abu Graib in Iraq in 2004… and took pictures of their efforts, photographs that were published all over the world. In January of this year, a video of U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan provided more recruitment fodder for Muslim extremists. “Collateral damage” to civilians from drone attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s Western Tribal District has pretty much turned Pakistan into little more than an enemy sympathizer for the Taliban cause in Afghanistan. We installed a Shiite majority-controlled government in Iraq, and in a world where only 15% of Muslims are Shiites (most are Sunnis, and the two sects do not get along), it should come as no surprise that immediately after the U.S. forces in Iraq, that country slid instantly into the pro-Iranian (Shiite) camp.
It was bad enough that 2010 a misguided Florida evangelical preacher (Terry Jones) thought it would be a good idea publicly to burn the Qur’an, but late February brought another – purportedly inadvertent – Qur’an-burning incident to the global stage: “Afghan laborers at the sprawling Bagram airfield spotted bags containing copies of the Koran among trash that was bound for the installation's giant incinerator. They managed to prevent some of the copies from being burned, but showed the scorched remnants of others to people living near the base, prompting a groundswell of outrage.” Los Angeles Times, February 22nd. Americans were just cleaning up and preparing to leave the country, explained the military leadership, getting rid of masses of stored materials as part of the process.
Demonstrations followed the Terry Jones incident; twelve people including seven U.N. workers were killed when protestors overran their compound. And of course, demonstrations followed the recent inadvertent burning as well: “In demonstrations that spread to several sites across the country, hundreds of Afghans burned tires, threw stones and chanted ‘Death to America!’ At least a dozen people were reported injured, and foreign embassies and organizations urged Westerners in the capital to keep a low profile.” LA Times. That we were just careless with the holy books only seemed to make things worse: “President Hamid Karzai has long chastised the NATO force for what he calls a persistent failure to respect Afghan cultural norms… Even some Afghans who said they believed the action had been the result of error, not malice, found it difficult to accept [a U.S. military] apology… ‘They are careless with our holy things, and they are careless with our country,’ said a grim-faced Wali Aziz, who closed down his shop early, fearing crowds might try to march on the nearby complex housing the U.S. Embassy.” LA Times.
We’re good at blowing stuff up, deploying high tech weapon systems and inflicting damage with pretty scary accuracy. We are terrible at implementing regime change – the more we are involved with setting up replacement governments, the less effective we are – and even worse containing unintended consequences when we deploy “boots on the ground,” particularly when we linger. The longer we stay in an offending country these days, the more we are perceived as bullies and invading conquerors, and the less we accomplish any semblance of winning over hearts and minds. In fact, the longer we stay, the more negative our image, the more enemies we cause to be recruited and the more hated we are. Our “hanging on” appears to defeat the very policies we are trying to pursue, providing incentives to extremists to join the cause against us.
We have little choice when we are attacked than to strike back at those who have perpetrated against us, but why oh why do we really believe that retaliation should always be followed by boots on the ground and forced regime change? And why or why are we so often the country that proposes military solutions in countries so far from our own. Isn’t there a lesson in China’s hyper-accelerating rise to power without once the modern regime’s engaging in military intervention outside of her own territorial claims?
And if we think that Iran’s recent cutback of exports to European nations and the resulting spike in oil prices could kill our recovery, think long and hard how expensive oil would be if either the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran. Iran has also seen to it that its nuclear facilities are sufficiently spread out that Israel probably lacks the capacity to mount the necessary strike (involving massive refueling of jets over hostile neighbors) without our direct involvement. If that is our only option, so be it, but know that there will be even greater consequences than our most strategic planners foresee.
I’m Peter Dekom, and this “global policeman” mantra has serially gotten the United States into a whole heap o’ trouble, decimating our deficit with unnecessary costs.
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