Old New Lefty wrote a piece yesterday titled Of Espionage and Afghanistan in which he offers his thoughts on why the Afghanistan situation is what it is. It's an interesting read.
My response to him here is somewhat just me free associating—not some grand thesis I've held for a long time, but rather a few thoughts that flashed through my mind as I was reading what he wrote. I figured I'd share those thoughts here just to see if they sparked any interesting commentary by anyone else.
These are admittedly half-baked thoughts, and I expose them at some risk of people telling me I'm not adequately schooled in the various areas to have an opinion. In fact, I have knowledge of some things and not of others. It's a pretty mixed bag. I wouldn't bill myself as an expert. But then, since I'm disclaiming that I'm somewhat out of my element here, you can't say I'm trying to snow anyone or push a particular agenda. I'm open to being disagreed with or corrected and mostly just curious what others have to say. I hope others will join in with a similarly open-minded spirit.
The governmental system in the United States was designed with the notion of “separation of powers” or “checks and balances” at its core. At the highest level we have three co-equal branches distributing power horizontally within the federal government.† But vertically there is a distribution of power along hierarchical lines, with federal and state governments vying for power, neither trusting the other to be the final word.
The idea, as I understand it, was that if someone took control of one piece of it, it wouldn't give them access to anything else. It was designed to deter, or at least slow down, the introduction of any kind of autocratic system by making sure that a lot of people had to agree on anything for things to change. Such a system also has the good property that it's difficult to attack militarily because even if you took hold of one part of the government, the rest of the government has some power to oppose such a takeover. A successful attack requires gaining control over all parts simultaneously.
The system is often misunderstood, or at least misrepresented, as something that is slow and inefficient, as if that were bad. In fact, that's part of its design. It's not without disadvantages, to be sure, but it had a particular goal. By making sure that decisions were made slowly and with deliberation, it was assumed that The People, the intended true power of the government, would have time to contemplate, discuss, and intervene on any issue that might be of substance.
The President has the power to take certain emergency actions so that the system is not crippled in the case of sudden attack, but the power of the President to sustain such immediate action is intended to wear quickly thin as the President requires the support of Congress and the Courts to have any sustained degree of power. And while the President might be swayed conveniently, swaying all of Congress is, under the original design, a bit like herding cats. It's intentionally not an easy business.
I guess I'm not talking a lot about Afghanistan here, but that's in part because I know less about Afghanistan than I do about the United States. And it's why I emphasize this is just free association. But still, the tribal makeup of the Afghanistan culture seems to thwart us. In part, I think I've heard it said that this is partly because a national government is not necessarily the right model for government as it has naturally evolved in this area. But to the extent one superimposes that model on things, one might be inclined to view it as very much like the early US, which was really a kind of tribal confederation. Groups with different leaders who distrusted one another, bonded together in some ways, but not in others. I don't mean to be highly literal here, but the structures seemed similar.
And then I thought, well, if such a structure had been constructed deliberately, as in the US, we could say that it was working well—deterring outside control by emphasizing rugged individualism and local structure. I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's always been my understanding of what original notion of militias was. (Am I confused on that? History buffs are invited to opine here.)
Of course, I can hear the modern Republicans saying that I'm just making the point they've been making about States Rights all along—that the Federal government is too big and that we should be reducing its power. Sadly, I think those same people are the ones that have been pushing things like the Patriot Act, phone tapping, and other ways of making government “efficient.” Those don't seem compatible to me. Acts of centralization and efficiency work against the basic theory of the US design, as I understand it, because they make it vulnerable to centralized attack.
I found myself pondering for a moment a hypothetical variant of Afghanistan, where its present nature is the result of thoughtful design by men sort of like our Founding Fathers, wanting to make it robust against being compromised from within or without by any kind of organized attack. (And please, let's ignore the other aspects of their society because I don't want to get into the morality of societies and whether our presence there is Good or Bad. I'm just talking about the structural integrity of the government and its ability to resist attack.) It seemed to me that had this been the result of intentional design, there might be people writing about how well the structure had worked to resist tyranny, in much the same way as you imagine our Founding Fathers had intended our system. Please construe this “praise” narrowly, but I'm led to undersetand the US hasn't exactly definitively won this war, and so it seems reasonable to conclude, at least to some extent, that they have.
And then, following my train of thought as I free associated, I thought about the question of whether if they had a CIA, a Patriot Act, a strong Cheney-style central executive, etc. they would be more or less vulnerable. It seems to me they'd be more vulnerable. It seems to me that if they had such a central degree of control, there would be an obvious target which we could take over in order to gain definitive control. It seems to me that not only would that power center have the visible look of “being in control” for the sake of show, but more importantly if they really had detailed records of the purchases, phone calls, and physical movements of their people in the way we have in the US, it would be small matter once we took control of that centralized data to really mop up there.
And then I wondered if the reason that the Bush Administration naively thought they could just swoop in there, as in Iraq, expecting to quickly take things over with a burst of shock and awe was that they mistook that society for our own. It's we, not they, who are working hard to make our society centralized, efficient, and easy to take over.
I shudder any time I hear a US politician talk about running the US like a business. Businesses are efficient because they are autocratic. Iraq and Afghanistan don't look so organized and centralized. Maybe that's why they are so difficult to make a dent in.
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†Whether you consider the Supreme Court to be originally an equal of the Congress and the Executive or you consider it a later addition might involve a somewhat subjective judgment. Plainly it came into its full power through Marbury vs. Madison but depending on how you feel about that ruling, the power might have been there all along. Certainly the other two branches didn't have the power to undo the ruling, again underscoring my point that all power was not centralized.
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but the usa found itself changing things on its border rather against its will. over time this has led to empire, overt and aggressive, and the executive branch has mutated to accomplish the tasks of conflict that arise.
like the roman senate, the american congress has become nearly irrelevant in foreign affairs because the interests of the american people in foreign affairs is slight. the executive branch has thus expanded its operations unchecked.
the american constitution is a dead letter. it only works when and if convenient to the politicians in office. poor afghanistan is being harrowed, as was iraq, merely because it suits the purposes of a few politicians, and gives work to the bureaucracy of empire.
As most liberals, and there are of course exceptions, we like our basic lifestyle, do feel it is one of the better ones for the world, and wish we could be as wealthy as the conservatives appear to be because the playing field might be more even. The problem is we have attitudes that don't mix with that business orientated life style. You know what those are, most of us are truly not motivated by greed, nor are we set to do business at the extreme expense of others, including our own work force. So there you have it.
Whether or not the Bush administration was naive or not no longer matters. What we have to focus on is removing ourselves from that area. Bush, was no president. He was a puppet of baser instincts. They got what they wanted out of the fiasco, that is why they pronounced it Mission Accomplished. The problem is they did not understand the mission or what it took to actually accomplish what they started. They continued on flowing men and money into a war then that they had no commitment to ending because they could cut with their money and run.
They are still making money off of it. The issue now is how do the three branches unite to end the war, regardless of the perceived need to continue it. I think that you set the deadline and get out, no other way. Then you deal with supporting what you feel you must in the area. This had not been a war with a nation, one against the other, it has been a war with tribes, ideology and terrorists that crosses borders, includes many nations and a bastardization of a religion, manipulated into strengthening it.
We don't have experience currently with that here, nor do we have past experience with it. We have some pretty good ideas about how to start wars, but the last few, we have had trouble ending. Saving face is important but saving lives probably more important at this point.
While we waste time, money, lives and political capital on this, they, the real enemy runs all over the globe stirring the pot. So once again, we did not have the experience to start this fight. We put it into a context that we understood, but did not exist. We also measured it against how a business might attack a competitor, we put people into power who saw dollar signs for themselves and interpreted that as good for America. If the American people truly understood just how much debt we have over this, and who owns it and who we owe, China, another nation completely unlike us, there would be more people giving up, perhaps a revolution. But as long as the right and those in power in all three branches of government are on the lobbyist's take, keep throwing nonsense up there, religion, conservative wacked out ideological arguements, and keep people focusing on that instead of the real issues, then we will continue to be in Afghanistan, the next election will screw those trying to get out, and certain groups will continue to make money on the backs of our dead.
The hatred and illogical nonsense being spewed by the right is the subterfuge to the real issues in this country. It is joined by the voices of the unemployed who are immensely angry and looking for someone to blame, hence the rise of the tea party.
The supreme court is unbalanced because of the ideology of some of the appointments, that is how Bush got into power, how this is being supported and how it will continue, since even China can influence our elections now through masked donation entities.
It is truly an Us and Them situation and it doesn't look good for America. It is not enough to think we are the best anymore. We must clean up our act and be it and one way to start is to get out of Afghanistan, stop transferring debt to foreign nations, tighten up our processes and make an effort to return to our real roots, government by the people for the people.
It is a mystery as to why anyone from our nation, with it's slight 200 year history, would ever presume to be able to step in and understand the complexities of Afghan society and its deep political entrails. What hubris. The Afghan leaders will emerge, as they always have, and it will fall to them to put a governing faction together to stabilize the country from the inside out. The US has been meddling in civil instability in the region for 40 years, and look that's where it's gotten us, and them. We need to step off, the sooner the better. I'm open to comments from those far more enlightened than I am. Thanks for sharing you thoughts on this.
You make an interesting point about centralization and the exposure to "attack" (one might also read "corruption ") that this creates. In the end, we cannot elevate the Founding Fathers to the level of sainthood some would have. But they were answering the call of the individual parts that made up the new nation and by its nature, the new nation had to be very flexible in its design. They did this well, but with inherent flaws that we still struggle with.
No way the branches could be "co-equal" at all times. Knowing this, they provided the president with some special powers for limited times (even the Romans understood this and has a law allowing for 6 month dictatorships). But like the Romans, that power has been overused and is so corrupted now by the likes of those adhering to a Unitary Executive that we are at risk.
To Afghanistan - I think this is your best point. It does look somewhat like a nation that is decentralized in its exercise of power. And our imposing of a centralized democracy would neither fit there nor satisfy the original design of our founders.
Really interesting mindwalk Kent. I enjoyed this very much.
When NATO troops finally leave Afghanistan, there is a 50-50 probability that the country will split up into different ethnic areas, including an area controlled by Pakistan, and an area controlled by the Taliban.
The United States Constitution is structured so that things are held in amber until there is a total and utter crisis, and then waves of reform take place. And by coincidence, at that time we get great presidents: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR.
How we'll get out of Afghanistan is the same we got out of Vietnam. When enough pain is inflicted on American society and a majority of people want us out -- we will get out then.
The bottom line--I think any advantage they might have gained from their decentralized government is negated by all thier other issues...it seems to me.
The first error of the Unholy Trinity -- Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld was to imagine they knew something about the Mideast no one else had figured out in 4,000 years. Mesopotamia has been at war for at least that long, save a few brief periods when an absolute ruthless despot ruled with an iron fist -- see Saddam Hussein for an example.
What did the Unholy Trinity know that nobody else had figured out? Absolutely nothing.
Their second great error was failing to heed the lessons of Vietnam, including the most important one: Never assume you are vastly smarter or superior to your predecessor. We ignored the lesson the French learned in "Indochina", so we repeated it in Vietnam. We ignored the lesson the Russians learned in Afghanistan, so we repeated it there.
Actually, we should have learned that lesson at our founding, when an undisciplined, under-financed, ragtag rebel army won -- against all odds -- defeating the greatest military power on Earth. That is the lesson taught in most far-flung wars against a determined colonial populace.
The third great error -- one born of ignorance and xenophobia -- was to imagine Iraq and Afghanistan were pretty much the same. Hardly. If Iraq remains largely in the first half of the 20th century, Afghanistan remains largely in the 7th Century.
Furthermore, I would argue we didn't win in Iraq, we simply bought off the opposition. I see no way we can achieve even that level of "success" in Afghanistan.
Jan, I kind of don't know what to say in specific response, though I agree with you about the insanity of it all. The corrosive effect of money is certainly responsible for some of the breakdowns I was talking about, and it is indeed very short-sighted and dreadfully sad to watch. I know what you mean by the ironic optimism remark at the end, too. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
RD, I like the way you followed the parallel structure of the two cultures that I was focused on, and yet you added your own take on the interpretation. Some interesting thoughts—plenty to ponder. Thanks!
Abby, no problem about the typos. Thanks for stopping in. I do think we're collectively out of our league over there. I keep hearing it's of strategic importance and I think “Yeah, if only we could solve the problem. But it's of no strategic importance to just hang out there and fail, which seems to be what we're doing.”
Jan, to be honest, I think we could have won a war against a nation where we had the will to just wipe it out. We have tools of mass destruction. What has happened in recent years, I think, is that war has evolved. Perhaps since WWII and the mess we made, people no longer seek to do the total destruction thing. We don't have the will to kill innocents (not that I'm advocating it, just observing). Maybe the lack of will to kill innocents is a measure of the optional nature of the war. If it were really a war of necessity, like World War II, maybe we just wouldn't care. I don't know. Survival instincts have a way of focusing one in strange ways. But this is not really about survival. We'll survive fine. This was really a war of opportunity and could only be prosecuted if we didn't do any collateral damage. And although we have surgical tools for taking out a building or two, we don't have the intermediate tool of taking out a gigantic area of a country with surgical precision. So we're powerless and unwilling to admit it. And yet, it's painfully obvious by our bankbook, so I don't know who we're fooling.
I'm disappointed about the ways the US has degraded and it's a shame to see a country as primitive as Afghanistan reminding me of things we should be doing. It's everything from using social security numbers as keys for everything, talking about national ID cards, letting them tap all our calls. I tend to think of it as if it sets us up for someone to attack us, but as noted by others above, much of the power changeover has already happened.
I'm not really all that big a fan of the 2nd amendment, but if I was I'd be worried about all the registration of guns. It seems to me that the function of the second amendment is, in fact, to do that whole “second amendment remedy” thing (see my article The Second-Class Amendment), which is why I don't like it. I don't think that's the way to accomplish such things. But if you think it might be then the government has an overwhelming edge by all the data it has collected.
In practice, I think the way it will really play out is not with guns but with more subtle things. You and I when we try to run for office will be cut off at the knees by all the searchable data about how we've lived our lives. We've all done something that will be abused somehow informationally. And that limits the set of candidates perhaps to the point that the only ones that won't be harassed are those that pass certain other loyalty tests. It's not good. And if we were informationally distributed in the way Afghanistan were tactically distributed, maybe we'd be more resilient against that.
I’m astonished at the low strength and endurance of women half my age, they tire very quickly, most cannot work more than a 10 hour day even at age 30. The pain tolerance is also exceedingly low as is tolerance for personal discomfort. In my culture long range planning is of the utmost importance as life can change from moment to moment.
Where I come from, once someone cheats you or anyone you know, business is never done with them again. Those who sell inferior products don’t last long, only a fool thinks they will not do it again. Your survival depends in many ways on your honor, more importantly if you do not defend your neighbor they are under no obligation to defend you and the group will not hold them to an obligation. Backstabbing within any group is a mark you can’t erase, no one will trust you again. And why should they, the tribe understands that they will do it again. I will not allow anyone to be insulted in my home, nor will I tolerate an insult in my home, it is sanctuary to anyone I allow in. It was the same with my father in his business, a customer who insulted any employee was thrown out if they didn’t immediately apologize, a customer could never be cheated, errors found in billing were refunded as soon as they were found, we were dependent on both groups. He had very loyal employees and customers. I am the same to those who treat me as part of their “tribe” this includes employers, co-workers and those I buy from. I have no moral obligation to those who have none for me and mine, I cannot spare it or I will not survive. It is a very different way of thinking but my people survived in the desert long before luxuries like electricity. You never know who you will need, so you have agreements with neighboring tribes.
Dishonor, arrogance and stupidity are a deadly combination. George W. Bush was all three and our reputation as a people precedes us wherever we go. Our politicians, judges and business leaders are world renowned for ruthlessness and telling lies, we have excused it for decades. I understand well that lack of education and hard lives are not the same as ignorance; I think the people of Afghanistan are thousands of years wise. Our pieces of paper that have words written on them by people long dead are simply revered pieces of paper, a lot like old bibles. Actions speak louder than words, those words are meaningless and afford me no protection as I have no money or power, instead I am only loyal to those who are loyal to me. I think you are also very wise.
I’m astonished at the low strength and endurance of women half my age, they tire very quickly, most cannot work more than a 10 hour day even at age 30. The pain tolerance is also exceedingly low as is tolerance for personal discomfort. In my culture long range planning is of the utmost importance as life can change from moment to moment.
Where I come from, once someone cheats you or anyone you know, business is never done with them again. Those who sell inferior products don’t last long, only a fool thinks they will not do it again. Your survival depends in many ways on your honor, more importantly if you do not defend your neighbor they are under no obligation to defend you and the group will not hold them to an obligation. Backstabbing within any group is a mark you can’t erase, no one will trust you again. And why should they, the tribe understands that they will do it again. I will not allow anyone to be insulted in my home, nor will I tolerate an insult in my home, it is sanctuary to anyone I allow in. It was the same with my father in his business, a customer who insulted any employee was thrown out if they didn’t immediately apologize, a customer could never be cheated, errors found in billing were refunded as soon as they were found, we were dependent on both groups. He had very loyal employees and customers. I am the same to those who treat me as part of their “tribe” this includes employers, co-workers and those I buy from. I have no moral obligation to those who have none for me and mine, I cannot spare it or I will not survive. It is a very different way of thinking but my people survived in the desert long before luxuries like electricity. You never know who you will need, so you have agreements with neighboring tribes.
Dishonor, arrogance and stupidity are a deadly combination. George W. Bush was all three and our reputation as a people precedes us wherever we go. Our politicians, judges and business leaders are world renowned for ruthlessness and telling lies, we have excused it for decades. I understand well that lack of education and hard lives are not the same as ignorance; I think the people of Afghanistan are thousands of years wise. Our pieces of paper that have words written on them by people long dead are simply revered pieces of paper, a lot like old bibles. Actions speak louder than words, those words are meaningless and afford me no protection as I have no money or power, instead I am only loyal to those who are loyal to me. Though I know no other home than the US mine is tribal thinking, I think you are also very wise.
BB, this post is probably a lot more how my brain works than many of my posts reveal, so feel free to stop by more often if you like that kind of thing. I usually tidy it up a bit so as not to get people too disoriented, but I think of my brain as an “analogy web” and I tend to reason by projecting situations I don't know (or don't know well) onto situations I know better and then seeing what the projection predicts. An index of my past topics by category is at my web site.
But as to the other points you make, I do agree with you and that's the reason I pointed out the analogy I was making was narrow. I didn't mean to be commenting on the whole of their society, just the protective value of distributed government. I wasn't trying to build them up, just to learn from them. See my remarks to Tim above for an elaboration on that.
Harry's, I agree with you on that. I don't even know if we can be part of the solution since I don't know that a solution to be part of is going to emerge. I think we're mostly spinning our wheels (at great expense).
Tom, I agree with your points generally, though I'm not even sure if your remark about buying off Iraq isn't overly generous. We've bought them off for the time being, but it remains to be seen even whether that lasts. At that point we can decide if it's any better than Afghanistan. Regarding the ragtag army of the revolution, one of the things we're really bad at is seeing ourselves in another situation where we are not in the same role, so I think a lot of the time our leaders see that war and think "war with americans -> americans win". They have trouble seeing it as "war with ragtag determined army against haughty big army -> ragtag army wins". I noticed a similar problem with the Cold War, where we think we're in the same position in this war, that is, where we have to just hang on and sooner or later we'll outspend the opposition. In fact, we're the Soviet Union in that analogy and about to bankrupt ourselves; the enemy can hold out economically longer than we can.
I know you weren't really talking about the whys and hows of our involvement per se, but I guess I needed to flesh out my thoughts on the subject. I'm glad I stopped by.
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....beginning in 1979 toward the end of Carter's administration, the CIA and National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski encouraged and facilitated the overthrow the secular Afghan government by Islamic fundamentalist.
The Afghan government which Brzezinski et. al wanted to eliminate because it was friendly with its neighbor, the Soviet Union, had within it such individuals as Anahita Ratebzad, a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council.
== Ratebzad wrote the famous May 28, 1978 New Kabul Times editorial, which declared: "Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country ... Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention." ==
Obviously, there are a powerful interests in the United States who could care less about human rights, about what good is possible in life that could evolve outside an omnipotent sphere of corporatist capitalism.
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The expression "you break it you own it" is a rule in U.S. foreign policy. U.S. terrorUSt$ are masters of breaking other nations and peoples, however, such breakage virtually never results in truly owning such nations because that would entail the responsibility of caring for such nations' peoples when terrorUSt$ don't give a damn about anything but the acquisition and concentration of capital. The modus operandi of terrorUSt$ is to break, then (through what passes for 'ownership' ) control and exploit when profitable, otherwise just abandon and/or embargo.
By the way, the U.S. of A. was founded as wealth care system; capitalist wealth rooted in the privatization of land, stolen land of course, the government sales of which enriched the U.S. Treasury... a great country indeed! the greatest deceiver. There is no statute of limitations on hypocrUSy.
This is a great post, Kent. An excellent addition to Lefty's post.
I gave you a little "Best Of" award on my little bloggy blog.
Exactly!
Thanks, Kent! Hooray for critical thinking skills! I wish more Americans would acknowledge theirs, but that is a different topic. I think so many interesting thoughts are being posted here and in a constructive manner. I wish our society would mirror that by and large.
Either that or, in my mind, we(as in the USofKickAssofA!!!) are a cocky bunch and thought it would be an easy fight, like Captain America swooping in and kicking ass and taking names.
It's a confusing mess to me as well, but hopefully a mess we can get out of.
Rated, very interesting.
Americans seem to want to have their cake and eat it too - have states' rights (decentralization) and yet be a coherent powerful entity. Have small government and lots of government services. Have those services, but not pay taxes. Etc. etc.
And so with the governmental set-up - want a system that doesn't work, but want it to work... The Repubs seem to be the epitome of this - all for freedom while regulating your private life, for small government while expanding it, etc. etc.
The country has survived and thrived as a result of natural resources and (as somebody - too tired to cruise thru the comments again - said) stolen land, vast amounts of both, but vast isn't limitless...
The most effective way to solve these problems involves educating the public in an accurate way not through constant war and deception. Instead of relying on almost entirely weapons and deception they should be relying on teachers more. The main job of the military should be to protect those that are educating the public and doing other necessary tasks not dominating them.
And to replace debates, let candidates expound their programs in 15 minutes--while attached to a lie detector.