[Peace-discuss] Mr. Estabrook's criticism

[C. G. Estabrook]

The most recent and detailed statement by Rory Stewart of his views -- whose 
lead you say you follow "in advocating for a very slimmed-down American force in 
the region" -- seems to be "The Irresistible Illusion" at 
<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n13/stew01_.html>.  There he writes

    "After seven years of refinement, the policy seems so buoyed by illusions, 
caulked in ambiguous language and encrusted with moral claims, analogies and 
political theories that it can seem futile to present an alternative. It is 
particularly difficult to argue not for a total withdrawal but for a more 
cautious approach ... two distinct objectives would remain for the international 
community: development and counter-terrorism" -- apparently, whether the Afghans 
like it or not.

Stewart spends a long time recounting the practical difficulties of the US (he 
pretends it's US/UK) policy.  He suggests that they are essentially similar to 
those faced by the British in Afghanistan in 1868.  And he ends his article with 
a literary analysis of a British report from 140 years ago.

What he does not do is assess the source of US (and perforce UK) policy in the 
region.  For two generations the US has insisted that it control the 2,000 mile 
radius around the Persian Gulf by whatever means -- conquest, alliance, 
intimidation, occupation.  The region includes what the State Department 50 
years ago declared "the world's greatest material prize" -- Mideast gas and oil.

Of course the US doesn't need these resources for domestic consumption -- we get 
less than 10% of our oil from the Mideast.  But controlling them gives us an 
unquestioned advantage over our real economic rivals in the world -- the EU and 
northeast Asia.  The US government in successive administrations has shown 
itself willing to kill indiscriminately and spend without counting the cost to 
secure this advantage.

The primary threat to US control of the region comes today from Pakistan, a 
country with two-thirds the population of the US and a larger army; and 
Afghanistan is "Pipelineistan," as Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times calls it, the 
essential connective within what the US calls "Central Command" -- from 
Palestine to Pakistan, and from Central Asia to the Horn of Africa.

What the Pentagon calls the Long War is its murderous struggle against the 
people of this region for the control of their resources.  It is camouflaged as 
a war against terrorism, just as the US colonial war in SE Asia 40 years ago was 
camouflaged as a war against communism.  But the people we call terrorists -- or 
insurgents, militants, jihadists, Taliban, al-Qaida, etc. -- are primarily 
motivated by resistance to the invasion and occupation of their countries by the 
US -- as even the attackers of 9/11 were.

Were the situation reversed, American resistance to an occupying Middle Eastern 
army would go without saying.  And naturally, recognizing the justice of a cause 
doesn't imply the justification of unacceptable tactics.

Invading armies have no rights, only responsibilities. Among them are the 
responsibility to pay reparations for their crimes, and to hold the guilty -- 
those who perpetrated the invasion -- accountable.  A crucial responsibility is 
to pay careful attention to the will of the victims.  The decision to withdraw 
does not lie in the hands of the invaders.  That should be elementary.

I note that today is the anniversary of the execution of Nazi leaders by the 
Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946.  The crime for which they were hanged was aggression 
-- "invasion by its armed forces" by one state "of the territory of another 
state" -- "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes 
in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". The chief 
US prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, forcefully 
insisted that the Tribunal would be mere farce if we do not apply its principles 
to ourselves.

Regards, CGE


David Gill wrote:
> ...My view is shaped by the work of Rory Stewart, a former British soldier
> and diplomat who now directs a Human Rights policy center at Harvard.  He was
> featured in late September of this year on PBS' "Bill Moyers Journal."  Mr.
> Stewart walked from one end of Afghanistan to the other, stopping and
> spending time in 500 villages;  he wrote a book about his journey--  "The
> Places In Between."
> 
> I believe that no one in the Western world understands Afghanistan and the 
> diverse Afghani people as well as Mr. Stewart, and I follow his lead in 
> advocating for a very slimmed-down American force in the region.  My position
> is dramatically different from those being considered at the White House...