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November 30, 2009

Afghanistan: Should we stay or should we go?

Today's Talk of the Nation on NPR had an interesting segment called What To Expect From Obama's Afghanistan Address (audio only). Neal Conan and Ted Koppel discussed Obama's upcoming speech and took several phone calls from listeners.

What I want to mention here is something Ted Koppel said where he paraphrases something Afghan President Hamid Karzi said recently. It begins at about 16:10 on the audio clip.

Ted Koppel:

Hamid Karzi said something that was very truthful the other day. He said in effect, 'Hey guys, you Americans are not here for my sake. You're not even here for "our" sake...' I'm... I'm transliterating now what he said. 'You're not here for the sake of Afghanistan. You're here to protect your own interests. So this notion of "we're gonna leave if you - Hamid Karzi - don't do exactly what we tell you" is nonsense. You won't leave as long as your interests are threatened. Once your interests have been met, nothing that does me any good is gonna keep you here anyway.'"

That got me to thinking. We - and the rest of the world - tolerated the Taliban being in control of Afghanistan... UNTIL terrorists based in Afghanistan and supported by the Taliban brought us the 9-11-01 tragedy. We didn't go into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban. We didn't even go in to topple Al Queda. We knew they were in Afghanistan several years prior. In fact, when President Clinton fired cruise missles at Al Queda training camps Congressional Republicans complained loudly, calling it "wag the dog."

No, we went in explicitly in response to 9/11.

I'm as in favor of bringing greater freedom to the people of Afghanistan. Heck, I'm in favor of greater freedom for all people who are living under repressive regimes. But we can't save the world. We can't! There are reasons why we went into Afghanistan and Iraq rather than into Tibet and North Korea. Innocent people lived under tyranny in each of those places but there was ZERO chance that the Tibetians or the North Koreans were going to see American military hardware forcibly removing their tormenters.

Besides which, Koppel's transliteration of Karzi is spot on. These people know that we're there for our own reasons, not for theirs. So who are we fooling?

So... I'm torn. On the one hand I very much want to believe that somehow the Afghan people can be left with opportunities that they wouldn't have if we just left. But on the other hand, that seems like buying into spin. Plus the fact that no outsiders have EVER managed to tame the Afghan people.

Maybe, just maybe... if the Afghan people want freedom they're going to have to fight for it themselves. Maybe nobody can do that for them and we're just throwing good money (and blood) after bad because we can't or won't face that fundamental truth.

Posted by Kevin at November 30, 2009 05:38 PM