Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Talibandages
You can say we left Iraq
and Afghanistan too soon, and that’s why there are al Qaeda and ISIS forces
(and their loving compatriots) with such abiding power, why the Orlando
shooting took place (thank you Senator John McCain for explaining that to me).
You can say that we shouldn’t have been in either of these wars in the first
place, and that our presence caused the rise of al Qaeda and ISIS in the first
place. And frankly, both positions have validity… to a point. Having spent 4 of
my teenaged years living in the Middle East, when Americans were wildly
popular, and steadily thereafter observed the constant erosion of American
credibility with some dynamic socio-cultural changes shattering political
realities, it merits asking, once again, “what went wrong?”
For those who think we
left way too early, be advised that the peak “boots on the ground” numbers for
US forces in those combat zones peaked in 2008 at just shy of 190,000 (number
courtesy of the Congressional Research Services). Factor One:
Misunderstanding the Impact of Western Power over the Forms of Local
Government: We definitely controlled Iraq but imposed, for whatever absurd
reason we believed was a good idea, a representative democracy. This
notwithstanding the animosity of three rather divergent and hostile factions –
Kurds in the north, a 60% majority Shiites in the east and south and a 20%
minority of Sunnis (brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was Sunni) in the western
reaches – slammed together in 1916 by selfish British and French diplomats
carving up the spoils of the crushed Ottoman Empire.
By the majority vote we
shoved at them, Shiites took control… brutal control. The Kurds effectively
pulled out and created their own world in the north, and Sunnis turned to face
the wrath of the formerly-oppressed Shiites, now in power. The Shiites beat the
crap out of the Sunnis, disenfranchised them at every turn and lurched heavily
into the Iranian (almost entirely Shiite) sphere of influence and control.
Sunnis retaliated, with suicide bombers and sporadic gunfire at first, until
the most radical Sunnis – al Qaeda, ISIS, etc. – “came to their rescue” with
sustained insurrection. This easily spilled over into Syria, where a minority
Shiite (10%) dictatorship played hob with a majority (80%) Sunni population.
But there were
undercurrents that ran throughout this. Take Shiite Iran, for example. It was,
literally, all about the oil. When a democratically elected government
nationalized the oil industry in Iran, the US and the UK killed that government
and replaced it with the old monarchy, the infamous (and securlar) Shah (Mohammad
Rezâ Šâhe Pahlavi) took over, a brutal dictator in his own right. “The 1953
Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was
the overthrow of the democratically
elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953,
masterminded by the United States (under the
name TPAJAX Project) and backed by the United Kingdom (under the name ‘Operation
Boot’).” Wikipedia. He in turn fell to Ayatollah-led revolution in 1979. And
they have always hated us for what we did to support the Shah.
We backed Iraq’s brutal
dictator, Saddam Hussein, until the Cheney/Bush administration needed a war to
justify asking Congress to restore presidential military power (under the
Patriot Act), and then we turned on him under the false “weapons of mass
destruction” premise. Bottom line: we lost all semblance of credibility with
these “regime change” missteps, failed political strategies, a complete lack of
understanding of local tribal, religious and cultural divides, all amplified
with waterboarding, humiliation and bullying.
If we really wanted to
maintain American control of Iraq, we probably would have needed a military
force two or three times larger than we actually deployed (even with our NATO
allies) and willingness to stay there for decades. Would that have worked? We might
have been even more wildly unpopular than we are now, but with enough troops,
we could have suppressed opposition… until the day we left… in one year, ten
years or fifty years. We would have had to make Iraq our colony, at a cost of
trillions of dollars and tons of American (and local) lives. And are really,
really, really bad at regime change, as recent history has so fully
illustrated.
Factor number two: Creating
false expectations. The 1960s were a pivotal time in the Middle East.
Western lifestyles and values were heavily depicted on television and on the
big screen. Lots of locals, particularly the young, were enchanted with the
potential of living that way and that well. But when their corrupt leaders
(almost all supported by American/Western military and civilian government aid…
bribes against competing bribes from the Soviet Union) siphoned all the money
that would have funded better schools, hospitals and higher-end job creation,
the people turned against both their brutal leaders… and the world power that
kept them in office: the United States of America.
Knowing that their
getting a better life in this world was a false hope, betrayed peoples found
solace with Islamic fundamentalists, Shiite and Sunni, now promising that
poverty and piousness in this world would lead to peace, abundance and
fulfillment in the next. The affluent and seemingly irreligious lifestyle of
the West became the false path, and those who fostered and lived that Western
lifestyle became the enemy. As American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq
repeatedly ran roughshod over locals, humiliating prisoners, and
calling the shots, they became the symbols for everything that these religious
leaders opposed. Religious fever grew. Anti-Americanism exploded.
Factor number three:
Humiliation. I cannot overemphasize the relevance of humiliation in the
average Middle Eastern culture. As much as “disrespect” can get you killed in a
US prison or on the streets of the inner city here, humiliation can
drive masses of people in Islamic nations to seek revenge, to define their
mission and their enemies with precision and clarity. Think about how Donald
Trump’s message plays to just about everyone in the Middle East. The lack of cultural
sensitivity combined with the legitimate plight of decimated peoples fleeing
bombs, bullets, torture and genocide… with a strong dose of starvation and loss
of livelihood and home… engendered in biased speech increasingly justifies acts
of violence against the West, particularly the United States, as a growing sense
of duty among the faithful.
Factor number four Global
Warming. Vast tracks of land, particularly in Sunni-dominated regions,
have gone from agriculturally productive farm to irretrievable dust over the
past decade. As farmers sequentially lost their livelihoods, as Shiite
governments in Damascus and Baghdad refused to respond to their plight, well
over a million human beings were forced to find subsistence elsewhere… and
these Sunnis had absolutely nothing left to lose. Easy pickings for Islamists
offering food and hope. They became the backbone of the new insurrection.
Ignorance of and Ignoring
Cultural and Religious Sensibilities. We seem to suffer from the same
noblesse oblige that justified European colonialization for centuries. Although
essential to operating in the Middle East, almost no Americans have the
slightest understanding of the differences between Shiite and Sunnis and why
they are so incredibly fractious. If you really want to understand the
differences, I strongly recommend you read my explanation, set out in my
October 20, 2015 blog.
We tread heavily on
Muslim, tribal and cultural values, slam the violent passages in the Qur’an (as
if our Old Testament didn’t contain equally horrific admonitions) and have this
hoity-toity notion that our Judeo-Christian values trump (sorry) their
deeply-felt religious and cultural values. So much of what we “hate” are not so
much Islamic mandates as holdovers from tribal values.
The reality remains that
much of this part of the world, particularly Afghanistan, is comprised of
deeply conservative and religious illiterate subsistence farmers who would
prefer an oppressive regime that creates stability over an “elected” government
that cannot stop the chaos. That the Afghan government we imposed on this
rugged land is listed as one of the three most corrupt regimes on earth (by
Transparency International) again reflects on our rather bleak recent track
record of regime change.
We do not appreciate how
deeply felt the opposition to our Western concepts is. The Taliban have moved
from waiting us out to crushing the local “elected” government wherever they
can. According to our own Afghan theater commander, General John W. Nicholson,
today the Taliban control the largest swath of that country than at any time
since that government was toppled in 2001.
Other than the region
immediately around the capital city of Kabul, the rest of the country is up for
grabs. Kabul wants more training and lots of sophisticated weapon from us now.
“Since all foreign combat troops pulled out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014,
leaving only an advisory and training contingent of international forces
behind, the Afghan military has struggled in leading the fight, its
195,000 soldiers learning as they go.
“The 9,800 remaining U.S.
troops in Afghanistan are scheduled to drop to 5,500 by the end of this year,
but the pace of that decline has yet to be decided. One factor in determining
future troop levels is the extent to which NATO allies are willing to remain
involved in training and advising the Afghans…
“The United States has
arguably already stepped up its involvement in the Afghan war, with the drone strike that killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar
Mansour as he was driving through neighboring Pakistan's Baluchistan province
last month.
“But Mansour was replaced by hard-line cleric Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who
is as opposed as his predecessor to joining any peace talks with the Kabul
government.
“Across southern Helmand,
Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces where the Taliban have stepped up the fight,
local community leaders and politicians say that rather than relying on foreign
advisers every step of the way, they prefer a permanent solution: a
well-equipped Afghan army able to fight alone.” MilitaryTimes.com,
June 16th.
What are the odds of
maintaining a pro-US elected, stable government in Afghanistan absent a
massive, and I do mean massive, build-up of US combat troops: nil, zero.
Remember when the Soviets fought their Afghan war – 1979-1989 – draining their
national budget and losing nonetheless. The Soviet government, wracked with
failure and its coffers drained, fell almost instantly after that failed
mission.
When will we ever learn?
We do have to deal with the rising tide of militancy and radicalism
in the Islamic world, but we most certainly aren’t going to have a clear
military victory (they are all over the Middle East, Africa, Asia, etc. with
sympathizers everywhere). We need to look carefully at the above-cited Soviet
failure. Perhaps we should truly appreciate that what we have done is the past
is an abysmal failure. One popular definition of insanity is “repeating the
same behavior and expecting different results.” It will take decades, if not
generations, to correct the damage. At this point, there are absolutely no
quick fixes.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and as long as peoples have reached the point of “nothing left to
lose,” we are going to hit a wall of hatred and stiff resistance against us for
our failed policies.
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