“War is the unfolding of miscalculations” – Barbara Tuchman.
Folly seems to be confounded by sheer stupidity. Therein lies the paradox. What are the circumstances in which very intelligent people behave stupidly. Perhaps, talking completely out of school, there is the proposition, the unspoken assumption, that military violence can impose a just system, or at best fair compromise, when we should know that justice has nothing to do with the politics of war and the social formation it creates. Then again it might be a truer generalization, for example compare post-invasion Germany, or Japan, and Iraq, that the social formations created are not so much the product of war but of historical context. Still war and violence seem to beguile even the best minds which perhaps suggest a cultural foundation and social conditioning. Thus imperialism translated directly as cultural violence.
Norman Solomon at Common Dreams reflects Barbara Tuchman’s, March of Folly with respect of the a “process of self-hypnosis”, cognitive dissonance as the refusal to consider alternatives and egotism. Among the parallels of the Afghan-Pakistan War and Vietnam include not only mission creep but the reliance on counter insurgency, which is very direct cultural violence with a history of practice in Afghanistan directed against the Soviet support for a previous Kabul Government. Counter insurgency is not just the exercise of violence against the lesser people but the corruption by money and militarization, sometimes taking the form of arming “insurgent groups”, but always training the police and military into the modes of operation of the invader.
Still it seems to me that too much can be made of the similarities without observing the differences between Kennedy and Obama, and between Afghanistan and Vietnam.
David Kaiser has a historical appreciation of the similarities:
President Obama has often been compared to John F. Kennedy, and with good reason. Both are young, striking in appearance, and accompanied by beautiful wives and captivating children. Both are keenly appreciate being the first Presidents of their generation. Both put together consensus cabinets–Kennedy’s, in a more non-partisan era, included Republicans as Secretaries of Defense and Treasury and as National Security Adviser–and both favor calm, relatively unemotional rhetoric that takes care to say no more than what they mean. And having written most thorough account of Kennedy’s Vietnam policies ten years ago in American Tragedy, I am struck by the similarities between the situation that Kennedy faced in Southeast Asia in 1961 and the one President Obama faces in Southwest Asia today–and I ardently wish Obama could get some of the same kind of advice.
Kennedy, as I discovered, did not quite inherit a full-blown war in Southeast Asia, although the Eisenhower Administration seemed on the point of intervening in a civil war in Laos when he came into office. In Laos the Eisenhower Administration had used its favorite weapons, covert action and military aid, to maneuver a weak pro-western government into power in 1957, but it was now under attack from neutralist forces and the much smaller Communist Pathet Lao. In Vietnam the Diem government–another Eisenhower legacy–had raised questions about its inability to govern, and now faced a growing Viet Cong insurgency. More importantly, the Eisenhower Administration had laid the bureaucratic foundation for war by laying down policies, approved by the President, that committed the US to fight, alone and with nuclear weapons if necessary, if Communist aggression threatened either Laos or Cambodia. Kennedy’s Cabinet officers and NSC staffers unanimously accepted those recommendations and in the first half of the 1961 he was deluged with recommendations for intervention in Laos, and, shortly thereafter, for combat troops in South Vietnam.
David Kaiser then describes the advice that Kennedy received from De Gaulle. There is no similar figure to offer Obama advice. Fortunately, American prestige is not involved in the Afghan-Pakistan War since it has now been trashed along with Iraq. In one sense, this provides the context for the unrestrained use of brutality and violence.
President Obama, sadly, has inherited a more difficult situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan (not to speak of Iraq) than President Kennedy inherited in Southeast Asia. Had a de Gaulle–or even a George H. W. Bush–been able to talk to the second President Bush, he might easily have made the point that limited American military intervention in the Middle East had done much to create Al Queda and make Osama bin Laden a significant figure, and more military intervention would only make the situation worse. So it has, and not only in those countries. Since 2001 Hezbollah has become far stronger in Lebanon, Hamas has taken over the political leadership of the Palestinian people (in fact if not in name), a new Israeli government is set to repudiate the peace process, and Iraq is fragmented and vulnerable to American influence. Worst of all, the long-term presence of American troops and American firepower in Afghanistan has not only allowed the Taliban to make a comeback there, but the attempt to enlist Pakistan as an ally–despite the longstanding alliance between the Pakistani government and the Afghan Taliban–has led to a Taliban insurgency that has gained control of large parts of Pakistan, while the Pakistani government gets weaker and weaker.
President Obama’s Southwest Asia policies are in the hands of Secretary of State Clinton and Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke. The former seems to have become a very conventional foreign policy thinker, while the latter is nearing the half-century mark in his diplomatic career, during which he has consistently shown frightening self-confidence. There is no sign that either one of them has grasped what I and many others regard as the critical element of the situation: the poisonous effect both of American firepower and an excessively close American embrace on regimes in the Muslim world. As de Gaulle told Kennedy, military intervention inevitably carries with it the impression of a desire to rule, and too much money increases corruption. These, in my opinion, are the reason that we are faced with a crisis of historic proportions.
David Kaiser goes on to mention other differences in the situations. Pakistan is a nuclear war engaged as seen from Islamabad in an existential struggle with nuclear India, never mind their common history, and that India now is as large an Muslim nation as Pakistan. Indian intransigence on Kashmir has to do I suspect with geo-strategic concerns that will only increase with the effects of global warming to which both India and Pakistan are extremely vulnerable. Kennedy as Daivid Kaiser observes had the wisdom to avoid a war in landlocked Laos, whereas the need to bribe governments to get access to Afghanistan presents uncertainty, and points to the strategic importance of Pakistan in continuing the strategy to conquer Afghanistan.
The striking thing about Obama is that he completely inexperienced in foreign affairs or the power projection of the empire, or however that program might be accurately described. He has two years in the Senate, whereas Kennedy congressional career began in 1947 and included over six years in the Senate, during which time as an ambitious politician he was across the issues of his time. By keeping on Gates at Defence, Obama was maintaining the existing Pentagon agenda.
Noticeably the drone attacks and murder continued in the Pashtun country of Pakistan. The refocus on Afghanistan is evidence that the smash and grab of Iraq has been an almost complete failure. How has the empire benefited? Who will tell the American people about the opportunity cost? The story of 20th Century Afghanistan is about the struggle for modernization, an endeavour subject to the caprice of great power politics. Somehow the Taliban, in their role as government at the time of 9/11, and consequent of their overthrow and replacement by the Tarik Northern Alliance, has morphed into the Pashtun tribal resistance to both a imposed government and foreign intervention has become the enemy. Their brutality doubtless is real enough, but the imagery is that of the vicious Hun from the First World War, and the recent mass murder near Farah, even if the murderous drone attacks are forgotten, should allay the murderous work of the good guys.
Obama, and the American media (I imagine) largely assumes that the Afghan-Pakistan War is an American Imperial Project, which is largely true since the American treasury funds the Pakistan military, previously the dictatorship in that country, and maintains the Kabul setup and sets the tempo for military violence. The problem is that other countries have military contingents, playing alternatively subordinate and independent roles, as a United Nations force.
Vietnam and Iraq were began when the American coffers where full, and there were no competing domestic pressures, for example the insolvency of California, nor the problems of the global financial crisis. This appears to my eyes like a Marxist contradiction between the funding of the military-industrial complex using the traditional methods which given the scale of the American economy economy could be accommodated and current and growing budget deficit. It is not clear that the economic benefits to be derived from the Afghan-Pakistan War make it worthwhile, but I suppose that is the point at which the Tuchman morass takes hold.
Obama achieved his supplemental increase of 81.3 Billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the House of Representatives. As Norman Solomon notes John Conyers was among the few who opposed the appropriation. His words have been ignored, but it is something that they were expressed:
An opponent of the funding, Congressman John Conyers, pointed out that “the president has not challenged our most pervasive and dangerous national hubris: the foolhardy belief that we can erect the foundations of civil society through the judicious use of our many high-tech instruments of violence.”
Conyers continued: “That belief, promoted by the previous administration in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, assumes that the United States possesses the capacity and also has a duty to determine the fate of nations in the greater Middle East.
“I oppose this supplemental war funding bill because I believe that we are not bound by such a duty. In fact, I believe the policies of empire are counterproductive in our struggle against the forces of radical religious extremism. For example, U.S. strikes from unmanned Predator Drones and other aircraft produced 64 percent of all civilian deaths caused by the U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in 2008. Just this week, U.S. air strikes took another 100 lives, according to Afghan officials on the ground. If it is our goal to strengthen the average Afghan or Pakistani citizen and to weaken the radicals that threaten stability in the region, bombing villages is clearly counterproductive. For every family broken apart by an incident of ‘collateral damage,’ seeds of hate and enmity are sown against our nation. . . .
“Should we support this measure, we risk dooming our nation to a fate similar to Sisyphus and his boulder: to being trapped in a stalemate of unending frustration and misery, as our mistakes inevitably lead us to the same failed outcomes. Let us step back; let us remember the mistakes and heartbreak of our recent misadventures in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad. If we honor the ties that bind us to one another, we cannot in good faith send our fellow citizens on this errand of folly. It is still not too late to turn away from this path.”
It is speculation, but I suspect that John Conyers has been influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Dr Martin Luther King in a way that Barack Obama has not been.