[Peace-discuss] Afghanistan: The Four Questions

[C. G. Estabrook]

That probably would have been the response of Soviet policy-makers in 1984.

It doesn't mean that that their occupation should have been accepted.

What we see now in the US is the limits of allowable debate being carefully 
established for Afghanistan.  On the one side are the doves, like yourself; on 
the other, the hawks who want to escalate and extend the war (the dominant view 
in the administration).

This division (and its limits) has appeared in each of America's recent wars. 
Chomsky described how it worked in Vietnam:

"...the distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger articulated the position of 
the doves 40 years ago when the US invasion of South Vietnam was in its fourth 
year and Washington was preparing to add another 100,000 troops to the 175,000 
already tearing South Vietnam to shreds. By then the invasion launched by 
Kennedy was facing difficulties and imposing difficult costs on the United 
States, so Schlesinger and other Kennedy liberals were reluctantly beginning to 
shift from hawks to doves. That even included Robert Kennedy, who a year 
earlier, after the vast intensification of the bombing and combat operations in 
the South and the first regular bombing of the North, had condemned withdrawal 
as 'a repudiation of commitments undertaken and confirmed by three 
administrations' which would 'gravely -- perhaps irreparably -- weaken the 
democratic position in Asia.' But by the time that Schlesinger was writing in 
1966, RFK and other Camelot hawks began to call for a negotiated settlement -- 
though not withdrawal, never an option, just as withdrawal without victory was 
never an option for JFK, contrary to many illusions.

"Schlesinger wrote that of course 'we all pray' that the hawks are right in 
thinking that the surge of the day will be able to 'suppress the resistance,' 
and if it does, 'we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of the 
American government' in winning victory while leaving 'the tragic country gutted 
and devastated by bombs, burned by napalm, turned into a wasteland by chemical 
defoliation, a land of ruin and wreck,' with its 'political and institutional 
fabric' pulverized. But escalation probably won't succeed, and will prove to be 
too costly for ourselves, so perhaps strategy should be rethought..."



Robert Naiman wrote:
> Imagine, Carl. I am on a listserv of Washington groups that are 
> supposedly about the US getting out of Afghanistan, and the feedback I 
> got on this article was objection to my first point, that the US should 
> support, rarher than obstruct, negotiations between the Afghan 
> government and insurgent groups.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Mar 26, 2009, at 8:05 PM, "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu> 
> wrote:
> 
>> Suppose a Russian political commentator wrote as follows 25 years ago, 
>> while the USSR was occupying Afghanistan:
>>
>>  "1. Will the USSR support political negotiations between the Afghan 
>> government and leaders of Afghanistan's insurgencies?
>>
>>  "2. Is the USSR prepared to discuss its long-term intentions in 
>> Afghanistan?
>>
>>  "3. Is the USSR prepared to relax the political constraints it has 
>> previously imposed on Afghan negotiations?
>>
>>  "4. Is the USSR prepared to address the political roots of Saudi 
>> Arabia's relationship with the Afghan insurgencies?"
>>
>> If the Russian commentator held that "What finally matters are the 
>> answers to these four questions, which are only now beginning to be 
>> asked" -- and implied as it seems that the answer to each should be 
>> "yes" -- I would say that he was attempting to design a more 
>> thoughtful, circumspect, and therefore successful occupation.
>>
>> But the occupation should be rejected, then and now. The Afghan people 
>> and people around the world should have demanded the end to the 
>> occupation and a Russian withdrawal -- and similarly today.  --CGE
>>
>>
>> Robert Naiman wrote:
>>> President Obama is expected to "announce" his "new" Afghanistan strategy
>>> Friday - the traditional Washington day for burying things. ... It is 
>>> widely
>>> recognized that sending more people - whether soldiers or civilians - 
>>> is very
>>> unlikely in itself to change anything fundamental, because the order of
>>> magnitude is wrong. The United States has not been, is not, and almost
>>> certainly never will be willing and able to commit the resources 
>>> which would
>>> be necessary to transform Afghanistan into a peaceful "democracy" 
>>> according
>>> to the present policy. The most that could be plausibly hoped for is 
>>> that
>>> additional resources would help make a new policy work: a new policy 
>>> based on
>>> a fundamental, political shift in US policy, including accommodation 
>>> with the
>>> bulk of the political forces now backing Afghanistan's various 
>>> insurgencies. ... What finally matters are the answers to four 
>>> questions that are only now
>>> beginning to be asked.
>>> 1. Will the United States support political negotiations between the 
>>> Afghan
>>> government and leaders of Afghanistan's insurgencies? ... 2. Is the 
>>> United
>>> States prepared to discuss its long-term intentions in Afghanistan? 
>>> ... 3. Is
>>> the United States prepared to relax the political constraints it has
>>> previously imposed on Afghan negotiations? ... 4. Is the United States
>>> prepared to address the political roots of Pakistan's relationship 
>>> with the
>>> Afghan insurgencies?
>>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/afghanistan-the-four-ques_b_179630.html 
>>>
>>> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/26/143616/654
>>> -- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org 
>>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org _______________________________________________ 
>>> Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
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