I'm sure we've all seen the terrible news of the earthquake in Haiti. Right now the casualty figures are nowhere close to accurate. I'm sure the numbers will be dreadful. On top of that, tropical storms are heading that way, to population already hurt by poverty and this latest natural disaster.
And while we're at it, pray for the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban, made famous for its brutal terrorist regime and knack for destroying ancient statues and monuments, won't get the same bad press now as before. We'll have America's bumbling to blame, but trashing the Taliban for destroying statues and memorials? Hello. Plus the media will do its level best to avoid pinning the disaster on Biden. So coverage will be two here and one there, but that doesn't mean on the ground that millions aren't about to suffer unimaginable horrors in the years to come.
There is much pain in the world. For many years, Americans considered ourselves blessed for being removed from such things as natural disasters capable of killing Americans by the tens of thousands, or brutal regimes of terror and slaughter.
Now we've convinced ourselves we deserve both, all while still being happily removed from such global catastrophes, even as many Americans consider such disasters our fault. So in hindsight, pray for the lives of those in Haiti and Afghanistan, but for heaven's sake, make sure you pray for Americans' souls.
As for Afghanistan, the blame lies squarely with Bush. The reason the occupations of Germany and Japan went so well was because Germany had a huge amount of cultural overlap with us and Japan had a strong sense of national identity, a culture of obedience to authority, and a pro-Western outlook after the Meiji Restoration. Afghanistan had nothing of that. I get the impression that Afghanistan as a NATION is a legal fiction; it is a region, like Central America, with a lot of shared culture but with loyalties lying closer to home.
ReplyDeleteWe should not have tried to set up a government in Afghanistan, let alone nation-build. We should only have eliminated the then-leadership of the Taliban and made it clear we would repeat that as often as they made it necessary. This was never going to end with Afghanistan looking like Crawford, Texas.
CCC 2309 "- there must be serious prospects of success." Unrealistic ambitions + poor planning = NO prospects of success.
But did Bush know there wasn't a chance of success? He probably figured the Afgan people would be willing to follow any government as long as it was better than the Taliban. Obviously he was mistaken, but stupidity isn't a sin.
DeleteSo your defense of Bush is that he was ignorant? At least it's consistent. When he declared a war on Iraq (Constitution be damned, *HE* was "the decider"), he never claimed he was doing it because he knew anything, but because of what he did not know.
DeleteStupidity may not be a sin, but killing people without KNOWING it is necessary IS a sin. Ignorance is not an excuse.
Unknown. I might be oversimplifying, but I have always believed Bush, being Bush, imagined we would get the same enthusiastic reception that we got liberating France or, heck, even the Philippines. He didn't seem to think things through beyond old film clips he saw growing up learning about his Dad's war.
DeleteAs for Afghanistan, the blame lies squarely with Bush.
DeleteHe's been out of office for 12 years. Afghanistan had a government prior to 1978, one which ruled uncontested. Would not have been a novelty.
Unknown. I might be oversimplifying, but I have always believed Bush, being Bush, imagined we would get the same enthusiastic reception that we got liberating France or, heck, even the Philippines. He didn't seem to think things through beyond old film clips he saw growing up learning about his Dad's war.
DeleteNo clue why you fancy Bush thinks that way.
Simply because of how he seemed to approach both Afghanistan and Iraq, as if we would be welcomed with open arms and it was a given that somehow things would swing our way.
Delete@Art -- So what? Does everything have to be instantaneous for you to see a relationship between cause and effect? I guess the fact that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge stood for several months after the engineers left the job shows they had no responsibility for what they erected, the engineers of the de Havilland Comet had no responsibility for the metal fatigue that, and the collapse of the Hyatt Regency walkway could not have been the responsibility of those who chose to improvise its construction. At least the bridge, the Comet, and the walkway did not fail IMMEDIATELY as soon as external supports were removed.
Delete@Art -- So what? Does everything have to be instantaneous for you to see a relationship between cause and effect?
DeleteI have the sense not to infer a relationship between cause and effect merely on the basis of (1) one event preceding another and (2) who I prefer to blame politically.
Simply because of how he seemed to approach both Afghanistan and Iraq, as if we would be welcomed with open arms and it was a given that somehow things would swing our way.
DeleteYou're talking in riddles here.
"the engineers of the de Havilland Comet had no responsibility for the metal fatigue that" led to the loss of two planes
DeleteNo, you base it on whom you wish to defend politically.
DeleteI have been unfair to the engineers and technicians above, because they did not have anyone pointing out to them that their designs would lead to disaster. The collapse of Afghanistan was not merely predictable, it was predicted, however much you may gaze on it in slack-jawed wonder as though it were unforeseeable. A closer analogy is the destruction of the Challenger, which Allan McDonald warned of before it happened.
No, you base it on whom you wish to defend politically.
DeleteYou're projecting.
I have been unfair to the engineers and technicians above, b
You've been unfair to pretty much everyone. It's your signature. Political events are seldom predictable at time scales of 20 years, but this day brings a great many people who insist they knew it all along. I'm vending bridges.
Art Deco and Howard, you're both making good points, but could you maybe tone down the pretentiousness?it's getting a little old.
DeleteIraq appears to have eventually become a success. But Afghanistan has been the Graveyard of Empires since before the birth of Christ, and there were plenty of people saying so from the beginning.
DeleteThe terrain is absurdly rugged. Every home is a fortress, and every adult male is a partisan, and most of them have rifles that they live with and shoot regularly. The base level rifle there is the bolt-action Enfield .303, which has a much greater effective range than the carbines chambered in e.g. 5.56 NATO and 7.62x39mm, with nearly the power of the .308 Winchester round used in the M60 machine gun, its successor the M240, and most or nearly all government snipers in the US. The men using these Enfields are easily as good as the infamous D.C. Snipers, while using iron sights (the DC snipers had a holographic Bushnell scope).
Those foreign rulers who have had the most success in Afghanistan have had to settle for buying off local warlords with popular support, in the hopes of keeping them from fomenting popular uprisings. That would mean paying off the least militant Taliban, something our government is loath to do.
Stupidity may not be a sin, but killing people without KNOWING it is necessary IS a sin. Ignorance is not an excuse.
ReplyDeleteBush faced a trilemma in 2002: allow Iraq to rebuild (and with it's regional ambitions intact), attempt to maintain the failing sanctions regime (which Big Conciences were assuring us was generating a six figure sum in excess deaths per year), or replace the government.
(Iraq for the last year has been quieter than was Ulster during the period running from 1977 to 1999 or Israel and adjacent territories from 1988 to 2004, which is a dramatic improvement. No one in fora such as this seems to care).