The outcry over Abdel Baset al-Megrahi going home to die in Libya and his hero’s welcome there continues, and raises a number of questions.
One of them is why we don’t bomb Libya for three months for harbouring a terrorist mastermind. We did this after 9/11, in a war that continues today.
We haven’t killed the mastermind yet, only scores of thousands of his neighbours, many of them children, but we keep on doing it.
Why aren’t we bombing Libya? Was the Lockerbie atrocity too small an act of terror to punish in this way? Or was the carpet-bombing of Afghanistan for three months, and its armed occupation for seven years, too heavy-handed a response to its government harbouring a criminal there?
And if it was a fair and appropriate response to that government, and we have to think it must have been, why aren’t we bombing, invading and occupying Pakistan, where the mastermind is now?
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US President Barak Obama think we are in a just war in Afghanistan, a very just war, a war on a major terrorist organisation and its training camps. Why not bomb, invade and occupy Pakistan and Libya too?
One of the worst legacies of the Bush-Howard-Blair years is this unyielding belief that we should fight a war on an idea by bombing and killing people possessed of that idea with aerial battleships and pilotless rockets firing shells and bullets at buildings with women and children in them.
It’s a belief that has proved, over time, unreliable.
Similar aerial attack did not convert the Londoners to Nazism; nor the Honoluluans to the religion of Bushido; nor the Guernicans to Franco’s fascism; nor the Hiroshimans to Protestant Christianity; nor the Gazans to Judaism. Ways of belief tend not to be changed by acts of war.
Why then are we in Afghanistan? Why are we killing a new generation of young men who believe we are cruel, heathen invaders of their country? Why are we breeding three more generations of suicide bombers? What is the up-side of what we are doing there? Is being there, as most British, Dutch and Canadian soldiers now believe, a mistake? And if it is a mistake, in John Kerry’s fine words, “How do we ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”.
For there is some evidence it is a huge mistake, this idea that killing men, women and children, and old men and old women, and goats and dogs and chickens, and immolating poppy fields in a country that is not your own is a useful way to win hearts and minds to our democratic ideals.
It was not found to be useful in Vietnam, where America lost. It was not found to be useful in Korea, where America lost. It was not found to be useful in Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile and Bolivia, where America lost. It seems thus far that it did not help in Iraq, which America is now creeping out of, all its allies having left, with its tail between its legs.
And yet it persists in Afghanistan, where the prospects of anything that might be called “victory”, or even “peace with honour”, or even “phased withdrawal”, are widely thought unlikely in less than 100 years.
Why are we in Afghanistan?
In answering this, it is worth distinguishing between two kinds of war. One is a war to throw out a country’s unwelcome invader, as was the war in Kuwait that threw out the invading Iraqis, and the war in France and Holland and Russia that threw out Nazi Germany. This can be easily described as a “just war”.
Another is a war within a country fought by different sects of its people, a civil war, as was the Tutsi-Hutu war in Rwanda, or the Gaza war (and it was a war) in Israel, and the Shi’ite-Sunni war in Iraq, and the Taliban-Karzaist war in Afghanistan. This kind of war it is mostly wise to stay out of.
Supposing Britain had intervened, as it thought it might, on the Confederate side in the American Civil War. Would that have been a wise thing to do? Despite the many ties of blood and culture and commercial interest between the old country and the new? Would the capture and execution of Abraham Lincoln by crack British troops have helped win the North’s hearts and minds in that war? It seems unlikely.
Did the capture and execution of Saddam Hussein likewise help in the recent war? Ask any Baghdad child with his legs blown off by a Sunni lately.
Why are we in Afghanistan? Do we share a common culture? No. Can we change their culture to ours? No. Can we win there? No; not with the numbers we’re deploying. Can we form a coalition government with the moderate wing of the Taliban? There is no moderate wing of the Taliban.
Have we improved things for the few Afghan people whose lives we control? Yes, quite a few in fact, but not the ones we killed or mutilated, or their mothers and sisters who grieve and care for them, who are numbered in their millions. And not the farmers whose poppy fields we burn or threaten to burn. Or the religious schools we are closing down. Or the mosques we are bombing on suspicion of who might be in them.
Can we attract one million soldiers from China or Pakistan to fight on our side? No. Can we attract one million European or African soldiers to fight on our side? No. A million Russians? No. Are we bound to lose, then? Looks like it.
Why are we in Afghanistan? Why are we asking, probably, one of our Australian soldiers to be the last man to die for a mistake? George Bush’s mistake? George Bush’s need to be at war with someone on that dire day of the toppling towers? George Bush’s foolish idea that you bomb a country because a bad man might be in it, and you flatten and burn that country until he comes out with his hands up, even after he isn’t in that country any more. Just as we bombed Argentina till Hitler came out with his hands up. Well, gee, it worked that time.
Why are we in Afghanistan? Can we fill a football stadium full of roaring Afghans keen that we stay there?
Can we do that next week?
No?
Why are we in Afghanistan? To save the United States, as John Howard suggested, from one more international humiliation? Looks like it. But why should that matter now, now that six billion people already think George Bush a fool?
Let us do an exercise.
Let us imagine that General Suharto accused Australia in 1986 of harbouring the terrorist mastermind Jose Ramos Horta, in Parramatta, Sydney, which was true, and demanded we “give him up”.
Let us imagine Prime Minister Hawke refused to do so. Let us imagine Suharto, then, declaring a “war on terrorism”, bombed Darwin, Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney flat and set up a puppet pro-Muslim government under John Howard, and Bob Hawke’s Labor cabinet, retreating to Albury, directed aggressive incursions against the usurpers.
Let us imagine helicopter gunship raids against “suspected Hawkists” in Albury, Wollongong, Nowra, Melbourne, Bathurst and Armidale in the next seven years killed, oh, about 100,000 Australians, including 20,000 children and injured and mutilated 70,000 more.
Let us further imagine the Indonesian invaders demanded our women wear the berka and our children go to Muslim schools, and the sewerage, hospitals, transport, public safety and market economy got worse not better, and our pig farmers were bombed and immolated because the Koran commands us not to eat swine.
Would we at that point feel friendly towards the Indonesian invaders, declare they had won our “hearts and minds” and turn out gladly to vote for the pro-Muslim puppet Howard in a rigged election in which Bob Hawke was not a candidate?
Would we? Especially when we knew that Jose Ramos Horta had been for three years living safely in New Zealand?
Why are we in Afghanistan? Why is it any business of ours that certain Muslims treat their women badly? So do certain neo-Mormons in Texas; certain Amish in Pennsylvania; certain respected aldermen on Pitcairn Island; and many, many Kenyans like Barack Obama’s father.
But no bombing raids on these outposts of male tyranny have thus far been attempted. Why is this? Can there be some reason? Why do Barack Obama and Kevin Rudd believe it?
Why are we in Afghanistan?
Why do we think that killing Afghans assists their surviving relatives to a better society, a society that will still be there ten years after we leave? Why bomb them at all?
Wouldn’t it be better to give every Afghan family a flat-screen television and ten years subscription to Foxtel, Aljazeera and BBC World, plus 50,000 scholarships to their young adolescent men and women to study at Yale, Princeton, ANU, Monash, Cambridge, Trinity College and the Sorbonne?
Why bomb and mutilate these adolescents instead? Why send in robot rockets to take them out? Why burn their parents’ crops, and force on them a man as corrupt as Karzai, the former oil executive, in elections his opponents believe to be rigged, and forbid our future coalition partners the Taliban to take part in them?
Why do any of this? What friends do we make by doing it? What friends anywhere?
Why are we in Afghanistan? How do we imagine there are friendly Taliban keen to join with our puppet Karzai in government? How do we imagine the Hazaras we sent back there, like the Bakhtiyaris, are grateful that we keep on bombing their vengeful persecutors, and imagine they will treated well by these people when we leave?
Why are we in Afghanistan?
Especially now that Osama bin Laden, target and terrorist mastermind, is alive and well, after all this slaughter, in Pakistan.
Why are we in Afghanistan?
Just asking.
Name:
The West will never solve the problems of the Arab world. The best we can do now is contain and confine those problems.
That is a very, very stupid contribution.
Contain? Confine? In the Facebook age? In the age of the Underpants Bomber? In an age when any cellphone can be a bomb?
How confine?
You are a very stupid man. Voted for Campbell Newman, I understand.
Oh boy.
Yes, sorry Bob. Let them all move here lest they underpant bomb our Facebook pages.
Yay for the next Caliphate.
Oh, and I’m not in Newman’s electorate. Your imagination runs away with you sometimes. The ALP deserves the baseball bats, and only have themselves to blame. Deal with it.
Newman was not in any- electorate when you voted for him.
And you did, didn’t you?
I don’t live in Queensland.
“Let them all move here….”
Simon, you overestimate the attraction of Australia, and underestimate the attraction of the rest of the world. You sound like one of those “love it or leave it” turds.
You underestimate the attraction of our welfare, housing, medical and dental care systems… all currently free for anyone who shows up without ID. Well done, ALP.
For ever.
Are you Andre Breivik?
Now THAT’s despicable. So unclassy, Reader1
No, I honestly think it’s the political philosophy that did Breivik in. Meanwhile, you’re quite prepared to risk global environmental catastrophe on the basis of a personal hunch. Classy or not, you tell me where the far right veers off philosophically from the sane but ideologically driven beliefsof Breivik? Beyond actual murder, which may or may not be not be all that far from what will result from collective climate change denial, where is the line and what is the difference, philosophically, between Simon’s views and Breivik’s? Simon’s not a nice guy if he’s not willing to admit that there is at least some research done on the backgrounds of asylum seekers, that there is a verification process. We’re talking horrifically vulnerable people. Simon’s views are chilling.
Reader, I always found you the most chilling…
What have I done? What have I ever done? “Giving someone stick” is an extremely common, non-violent expression in this country but you knew that, you are just one for the underhand tactics. It was you who teamed up with some nasty people on The Drum and now it’s truth you are bumping up against, not me. If you’re going accuse someone of something, the decent thing to do is to specify, and not in meaningless jibberish either but in a way thattranscribes actual information. That’s how greater understanding is achieved but somehow I don’t think that’s what you’re in it for.
Don’t take on a superior foe and than whinge when you lose. If you don’t have the tools and are unaware of the mechanics, leave it alone. Don’t poke it with a stick and then giggle and run.
Helvi’s right: you are the chilling one. See below.
I’m right. You’re the idiot. See below.
Reader, by all means agree with Simon, but do not call him a Breivik, the murderer of seventy seven people
Edit:DISagree
You’re being disingenuous. Breivik did not come out of a vacuum and neither did Simon. How can I know whether Simon is a mass murderer or not? I can’t. But I can still draw parallels in terms of their ideas, as I can with Howard. I know Breivik wasn’t citing Bob Brown as an influence, that’s for sure.
They will need a Medicare Card and other formal proof of citizenship.
This person votes?
Just out of a matter of interest, have you lived anyhwere else in the world outside of your tiny mind?
I have, mate – England. They are further down the road to disaster.
Oh and thanks for the insults – it demonstrates that you have no counter- arguments to my points.
You do not seem to find it insulting that you attribute the meanest motivations for those that want to come to Australia. You insult my intelligence with the hackneyed trite “ free medical….” As argument, without nuance, without exception. If the ALP was the BNP would you be happier?
Simon, dental care is free for all up to the age of eighteen in Denmark, no doubt in Norway as well…
Afghans are not Arabs, they’re Afghans.
They’re not Afghanis either. ABC please note.
We’ve been over this ground so often that I’m thoroughly pissed off with the debate. See my last 200 posts on the matter at the Drum and in this venerable archive.
OBL died in Abbott a bad (great name) in May 2011 and if the Yanks don’t still have his body in cold storage I’ll eat Rocinante.
Then why are you so hot to get into Syria? Why do you consider Hilary Clinton a repository of wisdom in regards to solving this problem?
Do you think Russia and China have a good record on previous international interventions and therefore in tandem with the usual suspects things will go better this time around?
Five years down the track will we read “Why are we in Syria?”
Because we can win in Syria. Ninety-eight percent of the people are on our side, it’s a small flat country and, as in Libya, victory is proclaimable when the tyrant exits or dies.
And the boys will be home by Christmas. Trust me.
Trust me.
Oh, OK then.
You don’t see any contradiction in ridiculing the intervention of Britain in the American Civil War and a call to arms for us to meddle in Syria.
You don’t see any chance of this Civil strife being used as a proxy war for other interested nations, who also see it as winnable and home by whatever Mohammedans profess to be their equivalent of Christmas?
You don’t fear for another Lebanon? You don’t feel that Israel may get a little edgy or twitchy around the trigger finger? You don’t perhaps smell the recent added weight of Turkey, fed up of being rejected by Europe, starting to flex its muscle? Or the US wanting to confront Iran on Syrian soil. Or Saudi Arabia wanting to placate their American friends for old time’s sake?
Proxy Wars the war you have when you’re not having a war.
You could be right, I’m not across this as I was on Iraq, and you could be right.
But twenty years of Assad slaughter is the alternative, and it’s hard not to want to do something.
My real worry about the British in the American Civil War was they were on the side of the slavers.
The same dilemma that locks you into the free speech conundrum, locks me into the pacifist paradox.
Why not give it a try for say two thousand years and see at the end, if it results in any better outcomes than the last two thousand years of war.
It starts with a surrender to Assad and Bibi and I don’t like it.
What if we fire Tony Blair from the Quartet thing,he’s a slacker and not bringing any results. Pay Assad a 200 million dollar salary and the promise of a hefty bonus to get an agreement on Israel/Palestine in 12 months. He’s an insider, he grew up with this stuff.With the way things are in Syria at the moment, it will provide him with some useful insight as to how Israel feels, and perhaps he has the power of empathy to get things moving. He must have some political acumen, he’s a survivor.
Give Assad some responsibility, suck up to him if necessary, give him a sense of purpose, the promise of a Nobel Prize if he is successful and fame for evermore.
A fight shouldn’t be fought simply on the basis of when it can be won or lost. The cause for US presence in Afghanistan is as just as it is in Syria. The Taliban cannot and must not prevail. That it’s going to take time and cost a bit doesn’t make it not worth fighting. These people are fanatical theocrats and won’t be negotiated with.
Yes Blake, it is always best to fight a losing war for an interminable amount of time at whatever cost, ….that sounds like fanatacism to me.
No it’s fighting fanatacism. I never said no matter the cost. Tell it to the women of Afghanistan that we (the coalition forces) that we will no leave leave – job half done and let them have the Taliban back in their neighbourhoods.
I meant NOW leave – sorry, Typo.
Blake: Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to go to Bali, and liberate the Balinese women from their enveloping saris and subservient roles?
Ooops. I forgot. They’ve seen it, seen Western dress and behaviour, and don’t choose it.
Silly women. We must use force to make them accept a western male’s model.
allthumbs,the wars serve their purposes. Many won out of the Vietnam war. It is public kosher and politically correct to sing the “what a loss” tune. The public discussions of wars and conflicts can only ever be shallow. Some causes of war and many aspects are never discussed or mentioned from start to finish and then through history.
With respect and myself wishing no war it is not a losing war but has plenty of losers.
There are forces that delight in war,there are politics that will sit on their hands when war could be finished as there is politics that will end to soon or not.
War is big business and politics must be given the people strength to make sure no decision makers are cornered or assailed, blackmailed or overempowered.
There is many aspects.
I don’t disagree Jim with anything you say. I wished we just owned up to it and went at it hammers and tongs, involve the entire population. If this is who we are meant to be, why the dithering, annihilation not procrastination.
I could tell you it all from start to finish and about the time lag but it is not for the public table.
It was comical this morning listening to Greg Sheridan and Alexander Downer on the radio with Jon Faine. They could have won the Tour de France in record time going backwards with the amount and speed of their backpeddling.
The fear is there it would not end soon. The war machine is hungrier than that. But you never know.
Afghanistan came about because of lots of reasons and lots good and bad, the same that have inspired other troubles.
Reasons that can’t be spoken for discretion.
The way the Earth is being ravaged over resources and pollutions, populations troubles etc, you’d think countries would voluntarily be on their toes and aspiring best practice and behaviour and to indulge in modernities leisures and fruit for some.
But there are many J B Ismay’s and uneducated masses the other end.
“But there are many J B Ismay’s”
Well said Jim!
Is that not worth the price of admission, Ellis?
A guide to writing :
Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don’t start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
~William Safire, “Great Rules of Writing”
The notion that we can invade a country and change its centuries old culture to one that we would prefer,is delusional, as we have proved in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan among others. At best, they eventually recover from us.
It’s all Western hubris.
This is well said.
Ditto to Bob’s post.
The circumstances must change. The whole psyche of man and woman under traditional and heritage scales of life’s bounds must somehow change.
The circumstances of resources.Many of the countries are poor in those circumstances and social structure to leave the bounds or grow out of them into better sustainable circumstances.many countries of the world have been able to.
We may startle at some leaders brutality but the psyche of those railed against may demand nothing less to put down the troubles in some cases.
A quagmire that must be assessed against time and effort and capabilities of intruders into it.
Jim, I can’t understand you. I will ban you forever soon.
English. It’s precious. Learn it. Please.
Breivik on trial will be interesting :
Pål Grøndahl, adult clinical psychology expert, says, “It’s not possible to correct a person with this diagnosis.”
“He believes he is always in the right. Moreover, you will be told it is you who are ill when you try to explain the same to the individual.” That was in late 2011.
As far as the law is concerned, (and as far as I understand it the law of Norway is similar to ours in this regard) the individual is only unfit for trial if he is hallucinating or the like; in this instance he is clearly able to understand the nature of his acts and can be tried.
Apparently Norway only allows a maximum sentence of 21 years. They face the prospect of having to put up with him spouting his nonsense at the trial, then having to let him out in 2032 or thereabouts, when he will be 54 years old. And very dangerous.
Countries like Chile or Peru, or most in the world, are never in the list of combatants in these global affrays, because these wars are a rich man’s sport.
Well, not all rich men. Kate Adie, the BBC correspondent, tells of how during gulf war 1, the British troups stationed in Sausi Arabia were met with disdain and resentment, as if they were servants: “We are paying you to fight our war: the least you could do is keep out of our way.” Or something like that.
Would we be fighting another war for Saudi Arabia in Syria?
A friend of mine is a well known devil’s advocate. His suggestion :
Split up Afghanistan amongst its neighbours, Pakistan, Iran, China Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
Let them swallow it and let them worry about the horrid mess.
I’m not sure that would work, but at least we would be out of it and the Taliban would be marginalised; perhaps Bob’s Hazaras and some of the others could come here – just watching Yalda Hakim on Dateline – a totally gorgeous, intelligent young ex-Afghan.
To Reader1:
You are a bully.
If you can liken Simon to a mass murderer, there’s not much point going into details. So we won’t discuss the Left and Stalin etc. etc.
The ‘asylum seeker’ issue isn’t as black and white as you paint it. I have some insight and I KNOW there is an INDUSTRY with vested interest in making it seem black and white too. Doesn’t make it so.
My views on Global Warming/”Bad” Climate Change/Next? are not based on personal hunch.
You Give Women A Bad Name.
I don’t give women any name, that’s sexist. We are all individuals. Note the key word – “philosophically”. The realm of thought and ideas. Where is the philosphical difference between the far right in general and Breivik? Minus the murder, I specifically said that. Remember, we’re talking philosophically, ideologically. Simon’s pretty happy to consign asylum seekers to a less than ideal fate.
The responsible thing to do is to trace the ideas back to where they sprung from to try to figure out what they mean and the reasons they came into being in the first place. We are all slaves to our ideas. You, me, Simon and Breivik. That’s why the quality and effectiveness and intention behind the ideas is so key.
Maybe Simon is just being mindless. But he’s putting a lot of energy into it.
I prefer the simplest explanation – what some more academically inclined like to call Occam’s razor.
It’s like if you roll ten sixes in a row, you are no more or less likely to roll a six the next time. There’s no earthly reason why simplicity would necessarily in and of itself have any mystical connection with truth. Complexity often comes from knowing more, the brain works by making more and more intricate connections.
You might have to team up with Simon on this issue, Doug. He seems to be applying this principle to his views on asylum seekers. And if I can mention the B word in the presence of Liberals and Scandanavians one last time, just to be contrary, Breivik’s not the sharpest tack in the drawer either, let’s face it. Better to have a detailed map than a novelty placemat when you’re adrift on the high seas, as Homer Simpson once found out.
I’m agreeing with you! Why do you bite so hard?
Perhaps it was too subtle :
“Simon is just being mindless”
Agree.
Why is it so hard for you lefties to countenance that good, intelligent, mindFUL people can hold different opinions from yours? (We conservatives have to learn it early, enduring all the Leftist would-be indoctrination at school, university etc.) The most ideologically intolerant people I’ve come across have been LEFTISTS.
What makes Simon of the “far right” anyway? The fact that he disagrees with you? That equation of yours is what’s mindless.
I agree with Simon. Doesn’t make me evil or mindless or stupid or any other insult you wish to hurl. Your intolerance is oppressive. Let up!
It’s about the words, Loula, and what they mean. The ego alone is an empty vessel. If you actually had an argument to mount, you wouldn’t be wasting time on the above paragraphs. You would be patiently explaining to us all exactly why too much carbon is never enough.
Sorry, Doug. I had just looked up what Occam’s Razor meant on Wikipedia and was scrambling a bit. A few possibilities of what you might mean crossed my mind and I started writing at a particular point on the evolution spectrum, not yet fully resolved. I’m glad we agree because I wasn’t sure either way.
I did advise on Loula the non-comformist. Formidable, forthright, not unlike you, Reader1; unwise of anyone to call Loula an idiot; reference to Helvityni’s ‘history’ was also an error.
Don’t ignore the warning shot across the bow
It’s my history, I was there. I thought righties deplored censorship. I have a right to my own memory.
Bring on your warning shots, Suckers. At some point or other, you’re going to have to stop resting on your nonsensical laurels if you expect to get anywhere. Sitting back in your Jason recliner passively waiting for others to convince you of the patently obvious was never all that effective as an argumentative technique. Not in the long run.