THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 1, 2009
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Into the murky stew of rationales for fighting on in Afghanistan, Joe Klein throws this ingredient:
we have a moral obligation to the Afghan people, just as we had to the Iraqis when we stomped in there and destroyed the most basic institutions of civil society
Really? America was attacked by people who were given safe harbor by Afghanistan's government. Our retaliation was well within the bounds of international conduct, as opposed to George W. Bush's extremely debatable war of choice in Iraq. It also did not involve the vast infrastructural damage that we inflicted on Iraq. (Primitive and endlessly war-torn Afghanistan just doesn't have that much infrastructure to destrory.)
But even if we concede Klein his point, it feels dangerously open-ended. How far beyond the past nearly-eight years does that obligation extend? What, exactly, do we owe the Afghans? And how many of them are willing to be killed as collateral combat damage while we strive to meet that goal? I think America should do more for the Afghan people, who helped us outlast the Soviet Union and whose future sympathies we want for all sorts of reasons. But I'm not sure that moral obligation should be a central foundation for a continued military campaign there.
1 comments
What is the moral obligation of American foreign policy? Obviously, to further the economic interests of Wall Street and the politicos that enable them to pursue this in the global economy. Don't buy this? Okay, note a significant U.S. excursion abroad that was clearly predicated on other factors. Like democracy? Justice? Human rights? Start in, say, our own backyard. Central and South America. As for Afghanistan, to even use the word "morality" in conjunction with the history of our involvement there reflects a mind roundly incompetent to discuss it intelligently. It is the mind of the punditocracy. Folks who all read each other's stuff so they can decide what their own argument should be. Thus we aided and abetted the war lords and the Taliban in their war against the Commies back in the 80s and then once the Rooskies were driven out we largely abandoned Afganistan and let the Osama bin Ladens and Allah rule the roost. Just like we aided and abetted Iraq in their war against Iran for ousting the brutal dictator the Shah that we installed in power 25 years earlier to preserve access to the oil there. And now Crowley probes deeply into this world by basically ignoring the systemic pecuniary motives behind it all. Does Mike really believe his analysis above... "I think America should do more for the Afghan people, who helped us outlast the Soviet Union and whose future sympathies we want for all sorts of reasons"...is anything other than a vast dissimulation about the motivation behind out presence there? george
- iambiguous
September 1, 2009 at 6:31pm