Getting the Generals to Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

It is time to give Afghanistan back to the Afghan people and let them sort it out.

This means letting the Taliban “win”, an unpleasant prospect for a propagandized America, just like “losing” to the Viet Cong.

Afghanistan and Vietnam run so grimly parallel that we are fools not to remember our lessons.

Lesson #1: Don’t drag out a losing war indefinitely just because we can’t stomach the political pain of acknowledging a lost war.

Lesson #2: The native people support the insurgency because the Taliban/Viet Cong represent the people’s struggle for national independence, they speak the same language, and they are sick of Americans bombing their wedding parties.

Let us set down our doctrinaire US/Them propaganda and see who the Taliban are. The Taliban are the armed nationalist indigenous resistance movement against foreign occupation. They have set up a shadow government that issues passports, that calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Truck drivers who bring supplies to NATO bases must carry an IEA passport, and also pay a stiff tax to the Taliban. (See Patrick Cockburn’s excellent reporting at Counterpunch.org.) When Quadaffi spoke at the UN, he advocated for the Taliban’s right to set up the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban (aka the I.E.A.) have a website, where the war is sold from their point of view. It is an Orwellian experience to read celebratory comments about blowing up American conveys.

(Here’s a good place as a disclaimer as any: All things being equal, I’d like America to “win” in Afghanistan and establish equal rights for women, but since that’s not going to happen, screw it, let’s go.)

We can’t eliminate the social movement called the Taliban, because the Taliban are Afghans, largely comprised of Afghan’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, who are 42% of the population. The Taliban are Afghans acting as the legitimate indigenous nationalist military force resisting the foreign occupation. It is also clear, that the US has lost the opportunity to “win” in Afghanistan. What is winning? Defeating the Taliban? Oh really. Good luck with that. The Taliban are the Afghan people. Further, the Taliban movement is very resilient, surviving a crushing defeat in 2001, by just heading up into those endless, freezing mountains to regroup and eat their goat yogurt. Or maybe they ate Belgian chocolate airlifted in by the ISI paid for by wayward US tax dollars.

American money created the Taliban when they were America’s proxy army in fighting the Soviets partners. Once they were our allies, and perhaps they can be again. Surely, the Orwellian demonization of the Taliban can wear off after a few washes in the news cycle.

Americans live inside a bubble of propaganda that only extended living abroad can make clear. When one leaves the US, suddenly one decompresses from the Groupthink atmospheric pressure. The debate in the media about Afghanistan has been so strange. People pontificating like armchair 19th century English imperialists, twirling their handlebar mustaches while loaded on gin & tonics, talking about “our responsibility to the Afghan people” like it was our “white man’s burden.” Americans live behind enemy lines in a Thought War. PR firms catalog grumpy anti-war tracts like this one because they have Information War contracts to monitor and shape US public opinion.

The Afghan war is based on wrong foundational ideas: that America is the global cop, that America should be an occupying force, that America is the backbone of a global economic order that props up pliant crooks like Karzai. All this is wrong. Let us move towards a multi-polar world where the problems of the Age are settled by diplomacy and international organizations. Let’s start by handing Afghanistan to the UN.

Of course, the Taliban have many backward ideas about women, homosexuality, modernity, and music. I wouldn’t want to live next door to them. I’m just saying, let’s make peace with the Afghans and their armed advocates, the Taliban, and let Time and the awesomeness of Internet and pop music (and international aid and reparations) drag Afghanistan into the 21st century.

All this seems logical to me, a civilian who makes no money off the military, who wants peace, who generally likes Islam, and who is generally sympathetic with other countries that don’t want the US military stationed there.

Unfortunately, the Taliban are only half the problem in the Afghanistan war. The other half is the American military’s general.

The career militarists at the Pentagon want to extend the war in Afghanistan. The military-industrial complex wants to wring a few more years of billions out of the Afghan. Like Vietnam, a long war is a good paycheck. One military talking head said that winning would cost 5 billion a month for 10 years! I disagree that we can spend our way to victory there, though I agree that Halliburton would be willing to try.

Robert Drefeus has a smart article in the new Rolling Stone, where he writes of the difficulty Obama is having with the Generals.

Obama is smart, and living the world of Realpolitik, not in the Ideal world of the Leftist blogosphere, and so knows some history. Civilian presidents who resist the power of our military and our secret police (CIA) have often faced internal sabotage. Jimmy Carter was harpooned by the CIA spooks because they thought he was naïve for wanting to do the right thing, the Christian thing, even at the expense of short term loses in the field. Who knows about JFK, but the CIA certainly has been reluctant to release their files about Oswald.

So let’s have some patience with Obama, that in the first year, he hasn’t dismantled the entire apparatus of military conquest. We want Obama to go the distance and have a product 8 years, not throw a rod early and get coup de ta’d by the Raytheon heathens.

And of course, the good people in the military may honestly believe that we could still “win” in Afghanistan. The problem with military people can be caught in the proverb: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” However, there is no military solution to hammer the situation in Afghanistan with.

Politically, there will be a high cost if America is still in this new Vietnam in four years. The progressives are already getting grumble. We are starting to feel like we got played during the election, and a great disappointed watchfulness has set in. People voted for Obama as the anti-war candidate. Now, we’re still in all these wars! Recently I was at a gathering of progressives, and when people said Obama’s name, there was a new hesitancy has replaced the unbridled enthusiasm. Obama and the Democrats should know that extending the war in Afghanistan would hurt their chances in the long haul.

Most people don’t care about the nuances of world domination/geo-politics, they just want out. Here, the Americans and the Afghan people are in agreement: US out of Afghanistan.

And I’m with them. Out!

Learning to see Nature so we Awake

When we learn to look really closely at Nature, secret doors open to knowledge, biology, art, and mystery.

When our awareness steadies in focused observation, colors deepen, shapes define, strange relationships develop, and patterns emerge.

It takes bravery to receptively witness the beauty of the world. It takes a refined, disciplined, masocism to endure the pleasures of percieving the gorgeousness of our burning world.

We must willfully shake off our everyday daze and be voluntarily tazed by the miracles blooming and swooping all around.

A long, thorough, multi-seasonal contemplation of Nature in Her many forms brings ever deepening revelation.

Humans need these skills for appreciating Nature, so we’ll turn less Nature into parking lots, so we’ll be content with non-consumptive pleasures like looking at the subtle colors of sunset.

We take the right posture when we adopt a reverent appreciation for the great beauty that surrounds us in the Web of Life.

The skill of deep appreciation of Nature offers necessary skills that humans need in our effort to create planetary survival.

When we see Nature, when we learn to really open up to Nature’s beauty in her delicate and useful shapes/colors/forms, we are gifted with appreciation for the Lifeweb that supports us. And we need that gratitude for Life, in all her stunning complexity, because it strengthens our connection to the Earth that we need to work fiercely to protect.