Camille Paglia, of all people *heh*, has articulated my own view rather well, although I have a small difference of strategy with her:
Let’s get the hell out! While I vociferously opposed the incursion into Iraq, I was always strongly in favor of bombing the mountains of Afghanistan to smithereens in our search for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida training camps. But committing our land forces to a long, open-ended mission to reshape the political future of that country has been a fool’s errand from the start. Every invader has been frustrated and eventually defeated by that maze-like mountain terrain, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union. In a larger sense, outsiders will never be able to fix the fate of the roiling peoples of the Near East and Greater Middle East, who have been disputing territorial borderlines and slaughtering each other for 5,000 years. There is too much lingering ethnic and sectarian acrimony for a tranquil solution to be possible for generations to come. The presence of Western military forces merely inflames and prolongs the process and creates new militias of patriotic young radicals who hate us and want to take the war into our own cities. The technological West is too infatuated with easy fixes. But tribally based peoples think in terms of centuries and millennia. They know how to wait us out. Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.
I still think it’s worth the time and treasure to bomb the hell out of the Afghan mountains that form a refuge for the Taliban and al Qaeda. And it might not be a bad thing to periodically swing back around that way and carpet the mountains with more Big Berthas until they’re mostly gravel. Just cos.
As for, “…outsiders will never be able to fix the fate of the roiling peoples of the Near East and Greater Middle East,” well, almost. Outsiders have done rather well for historically short periods of time (multiple decades) by partitioning the warring tribes and sects and punishing those who stray from their corners. Such a technique might well work in Iraq, if coupled by a “democracy” that is more republican than democratic, allowing the various tribes and sects to have representation in an overall federation via traditional tribal/sectarian leaders, not by openly democratic elections. In Iraq, it would have a fairly good chance of at least fostering a more or less stable government at least until the next strong man emerges.
But continuing to play “democratic nation builder” with the tar baby of millennia-old tribal and sectarian feuds is a plan for failure, IMO. The only large groups in that area even remotely interested in a more or less Western style representative democracy are Israel, the Kurds (~) and, to some degree, Turkey–because of the still powerful lingering effect of Kemal Attaturk’s example. The rest? Not even the relatively more civilized notional country of Iraq is anywhere near ready for a genuine Western style representative democratic republic, IMO.
(Of course, the largest part of the problem is the way Islam has codified the savage tribalism and bent toward irrationality that is endemic in the region.)
I see others hold similar views, apparently having learned the lesson of Santayana’s Axiom, where most have not. Had I been keeping current in my reading (alas, a monster of a cold has set me back), I would have seen Jerry Pournelle’s comments and his posting of the very relevant “FORD O’ KABUL RIVER” by Kipling, sho knew a thing or three about the peoples of Afghanistan… which things have not changed much since Kipling’s day.
Kabul town’s by Kabul river —
Blow the bugle, draw the sword —
There I lef’ my mate for ever,
Wet an’ drippin’ by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
There’s the river up and brimmin’, an’ there’s ‘arf a squadron swimmin’
‘Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.Kabul town’s a blasted place —
Blow the bugle, draw the sword —
‘Strewth I sha’n’t forget ‘is face
Wet an’ drippin’ by the ford!
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
Keep the crossing-stakes beside you, an’ they will surely guide you
‘Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.Kabul town is sun and dust —
Blow the bugle, draw the sword —
I’d ha’ sooner drownded fust
‘Stead of ‘im beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
You can ‘ear the ‘orses threshin’, you can ‘ear the men a-splashin’,
‘Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.Kabul town was ours to take —
Blow the bugle, draw the sword —
I’d ha’ left it for ‘is sake —
‘Im that left me by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
It’s none so bloomin’ dry there; ain’t you never comin’ nigh there,
‘Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark?Kabul town’ll go to hell —
Blow the bugle, draw the sword —
‘Fore I see him ‘live an’ well —
‘Im the best beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
Gawd ‘elp ’em if they blunder, for their boots’ll pull ’em under,
By the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.Turn your ‘orse from Kabul town —
Blow the bugle, draw the sword —
‘Im an’ ‘arf my troop is down,
Down an’ drownded by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
There’s the river low an’ fallin’, but it ain’t no use o’ callin’
‘Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana
and
“In a democracy (’rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom
And, as someone at Pournelle’s site commented,
“Some days reading the news is like living in a Flashman novel.”
*heh*