For seven years, I’ve been telling you that the war against Afghanistan is every bit as illegal and immoral–and probably less winnable–than the war against Iraq. Now, slowly, people are starting to notice.
Given that I’ve been almost alone as an American opposing the Afghan war, the CityBeat chain of Southern California alternative newsweeklies asked me to take a look at the situation as it stands now. The result is a lengthy cover story in this week’s CityBeat newspapers.
You can find it in Los Angeles CityBeat as well as San Diego CityBeat.
17 Comments.
Great article Ted, too bad your insight will be portrayed as defeatist.
Who cares about afganistaN?
:changes channel:
Afghani Quarterback
The coach is putting together the perfect team for the New Orleans Saints. The only thing missing is a good quarterback. He had scouted all the colleges and even the Canadian and European Leagues, but he couldn't find a ringer who could ensure a Super Bowl victory.
Then one night, while watching CNN, he sees a war-zone scene in Afghanistan. In one corner of the background, he spots a young Muslim Afghan soldier with a truly incredible arm. He throws a hand-grenade straight into a window from 80 yards away. Then he throws another from 50 yards down a chimney, and then hits a passing car going 80 miles per hour.
"I've got to get this guy!" the coach says to himself. "He has the perfect arm!"
So, he brings the young Afghan to the States and teaches him the great game of football. Sure enough, the Saints go on to win the Super Bowl. The young Afghan is hailed as a hero. When the coach asks him what he wants, all the young man says is he wants to call his mother.
"Mom," he says into the phone. "I just won the Super Bowl!"
"I don't want to talk to you," the old Muslim woman says. "You are not my son!"
"Mother, I don't think you understand," pleads the son. "I've just won the greatest sporting event in the world!"
"No! Let me tell you!" his mother retorts. "At this very moment, there are gunshots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and I have to keep your sister in the house so she doesn't get raped!"
The old lady pauses and tearfully says, "I will never forgive you for making us move to New Orleans!"
Hi Ted, Your article seems perfectly clear and well substantiated. The obvious question to be asked of all the other "progressive" journalists (who favor this war) is how often they have been in Afghanistan (other than within a US military base). That would point out why you're the only one who gets it.
By the way, speaking of fuel exports from central Asia, I'm sure you saw the announcement of the new railroad between Turkey and Azerbaijan. I found a mention at this blog from Korea:
http://mithridates.blogspot.com/2008/08/turkeys-trt-radio-on-strategic.html
Good luck, Bruce in Arizona
Hey, I sent an e-mail message directly to you at some point when Prez. Kharazi narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, asking you to revisit the Afghanistan situation. Your CityBeat story answered me in spades!! And I wouldn't call it "lengthy" at all, at least not in the bad sense. It was straight-to-the-point. Well done!
Ted,
Well said. As a Darryl Hammer school former sovietolgy guy at IU, I gotta tell you you are spot on. I have been telling my friends similar things for the past 7 years and get called everything from a pinko commie bastard to a traitor who should be on the first plane to france to hang out with those faggy french guys. I am not sure when it happened, or why, but it seems that people who have heard of places like Tashkent are seen as egg-head intellectuals who should be ignored and that Asia and Middle East policy should be decided by real men who played football at Ohio State and couldn't find the Black Sea on a map if somebody pointed out Tiblsi for them. At least there is one guy who gets published occasionally who actually understands what is going on post-soviet in south and central Asia.
I have to arrest you on one point: "Throughout the 20th century, no nation has ever successfully occupied another one. It may have taken time, not to mention bloodshed, for citizens of a nation-state to force out invaders. In the end, however, occupying armies have always been forced to withdraw."
You forget: Germany was successfully occupied and a puppet regime, the "BRD", the Federal Republic of Germany, was set up only some 4 years after German army surrendered. Even though some hardline nationalists have violently opposed the presence of massive U.S. military bases there, the effect havs been neglible compared to the resistance shown in Iraq and Afghanistan, to mention some places. In all three places the population were exhausted after years of sanctions or wars, and in all places suffered under the first years of occupation: Look up the "Morgenthau Plan" if you think Germany had it easy. But in Germany the population and the occupiers were largely united against a common enemy, the USSR.
As a Canadian, I know the feeling of being the only person in the room who doesn't regard the Afghanistan occupation as the "Good War". Canadians polled on this subject are, if anything, more credulous of the ongoing success and moral superiority of this conflict than even the poor, misled people of the USA.
This, of course, is largely due to the endless Canadian hobby of convincing ourselves that we are somehow better, smarter and more ethically pure than Americans, even as we continue to act and live exactly as they do.
We Canadians were too smart, you see, to believe the lies the perfidious George W. Bush told to seduce us away from our noble fight into the quagmire of Iraq. We stayed the course and held the line with the grateful appreciation of the Afghani people.
Conveniently forgotten are the perfidious lies that got us into Afghanistan. Osama was holed up in Tora Bora like a supervillian in the last reel of the movie. We were going to "smoke him out". His voice was on the walkie talkie and everything. Only later, when this turned out to be as much a part of reality as the Iraqui WMDs, did it become about helping the poor oppressed Afghani people.
To date, significant numbers still actually believe our troops are over there building schools and exhanging burquas for graduation gowns, as opposed to dodging morter attacks and losing limbs to IEDs. Our idiot Conservative government urges more troops. Our spineless Liberal opposition looks at the polls and utterly fails to stop them. Sound familiar, America?
Keep up the good work, Mr. Rall. History has vindicated the relative few who stood against the Iraq war in the face of massive opinion control. The same is bound to happen with Afghanistan eventually.
Hi Ted,
I got linked to your article. Good insight from someone who has actually been there as a traditional journalist (a dying breed!) before and after 9/11, as opposed to a Pentagon stenographer.
On the other hand, lamenting the paucity of American help while advocating NATO withdrawal seems contradictory.
Supposing it's the right option, withdrawing from Afghanistan is unsalable (in America, though not Europe). The only play the war is getting in the election is by the Democrats, as a counterpoint to the media-generated success of the Surge and a source of more troop deployments. What alternatives exist? Deploying the suggested half-a-million troops is also impossible, even abusing the National Guard as Bush has done.
BTW, Russia picked a great time to invade a country! Right smack in the middle of the Olympics media blitz.
Cliff
This article was the only reason I've read San Diego citybeat in months.
I really and truly wish that our (eventual?) withdrawal from Afghanistan teaches American politics a very necessary lesson: that colonialism and the racism inherent in it, even when done "with the best of intentions" is not something our country should strive towards.
anonymous@8/8/08 1:02 AM should be righting those supposedly funny op-eds that Maureen Dowd inflicts us in the NYT. But this has to be the best part of the joke:
"I've just won the greatest sporting event in the world!"
Now, for Ted's bold(-faced) assertion about being almost alone in opposing the Afghan war, I've got this to say:
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2001/cr112901.htm
Oh, wait, this guy is a nobody, a wacko, a racist, an add-your-pet-insult here, speaking in a trivial and unimportant place and not an enlightened, relevant, cartoonist cum journalist speaking in a widely-read web log.
Hey Ted!! Does Georgia have nukes??
Georgia gave up it's Soviet-era nukes in the early 1990s, as did a number of other slavic ex-Soviet republics.
I'm sure the Georgians wish they still had them.
– Strelnikov
Thanks for keeping attention focused on this and being right for all these years.
it also appeared in the Ventura Country Reporter
Hey Ted, have you noticed we are winning in Iraq? Nice call on that one.
Winning in Iraq? Al-sadr's just on vacation. He left a message saying that he'd start it up again if the Americans don't leave soon. Dorme bene.