The enraging and unifying impact on Afghans of the US-NATO occupation of the country; Western support for the unrepresentative and corrupt Kabul regime; and the secularizing campaign by Western governmental agencies and NGOs has not and will never be negated by purer water and more refrigeration. The Afghans will appreciate and pocket the material improvements even as more of them take up arms to drive out occupiers they perceive as the enemies of God and Afghanistan. Western leaders should have recalled they’re not fighting Westerners, for whom more ice cubes and tetanus shots might have been enough to give up their faith.
A year after Obama outlined this new strategy at West Point it lay in shreds and tatters: the Taliban, et. al are more powerful and geographically dispersed, and the Afghan people are no less Islamic or nationalistic. The ever-present avenging angel of history ignored is exacting its pound of flesh and is still hungry. And the bin Laden-inspired Islamists are nearing victory over the world’s last superpower, a win that will have a galvanizing anti-US impact in the Islamic world by showing Muslims the impossible is possible.
The tragedy of this reality is that it would have taken no highly classified intelligence data or deeply penetrating brain power to predict its occurrence. A week’s reading at the local library about the occupations of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great, the British Empire and the Soviet Union shows each empire was sooner or later defeated and evicted—Alexander lasted longest because he built Greek colonies—by the most basic Afghan trait which has been transparently and overwhelmingly dominant since the 4th century B.C.: Afghans refuse to tolerate foreign occupation and rule.
Reading history’s lessons also would have shown that the one foreigner who had the most successful strategy for Afghanistan was Genghis Khan. He killed all the Afghan fighters and their families he encountered, built mountains of their skulls to remind Afghans that Mongols are not to be trifled with and then got his army out of the country to India as quickly as possible. George W. Bush had the chance to play Genghis for about a year but didn’t. Instead, he and his clone Obama defied history to try to win the love of Afghans and international applause. In the end, both men earned and richly merited what we see today—abject Western defeat.
Michael Scheuer is the author of ‘Imperial Hubris’ and former chief of the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station.
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Mohdemes
If china were to occupy a part of USA and recruit people from its Jails and place them in positions of power. Do you think such people will rule with justice? No, hardened criminals will continue with crime because that is all they know.
Such is the position of Afghanistan. Karzai and his brother and other sycophants are all corrupt people. In fact most of the people who are now in karzais adminstration are either war lords or their puppets. The man appointed in Marjah as governor was in a european jail facing a long sentence.
They do not have the legitimacy or the expertise to rule. They can steal, loot, plunder and rape but they cannot rule. So the next question is why does US not appoint righteous persons to rule this country. The simple answer is why would a righteous person collaborate with a occupier.
This is the problem US faces not just in Afghanistan but whereever it trys establish a puppet government. Thus US is reduced to dealing with corrupt people whether it is Marcos of Philipines, Zardari of Pakistan, Saddam Hussain of Iraq, Noriaga of Panama, countless dictators of South America. During the Veitnam war there were a chain of puppets in south veitnam.
The example of Iraq is given as a success story. First Iraq is not over yet. Second, US had a great ally in Shia and Kurds who were victims under the US puppet Saddam. Therefore they saw their chance of getting back into power with help of US and they took it. Now whether the shia of Iraq will be on US side or Shia Iran side is yet to be established.
This war of Afghanistan was lost not because of lack of military power. But lack of righteousness. Afghans believe they have truth and justice on their side. Unless US is willing to kill every single Afghan it will never be able to subdue it.
But this is not the promise of America. This cannot be the way of men of truth. America which is not on the side of justice and virtue is not the land of the free and the home of the brave.
If the sum total of America are the wars of Viatnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Nicragua, Cuba etc. who would want to be an american again. Yes, starving unemployed individual immigrants will continue to pour in but really would Jefferson or Washington apply?
Chris
@Ibrahim Abraham
Anyone who is away from God is a Babylonian, Stop trying to think you can identify just a few civilizations with that title, because me and you are included here. It is just as much as thinking that the physical Israel is the True Israel, the True Israel are Those that Rely 100 percent to God as in they are complete bestowers on to God though his will. What we see here in this world is a lot of nations fighting over resources and misconstrued beliefs; everyone being nothing but bigots and egoist in there own right, this is the state of the world, accept that first, and then proceed, before you think you have some wonderful answer or inside information that you thnk someone forgot, to these terrible scenarios surrounding the middle east, and all of Gods beloved creation.
sam
Brilliant, incisive, factual writing but unfortunately commonsense will not go down well in corridors of power. CIA people like Scheuer and Bob Baer have been forced to leave the agency because they are too often the harbingers of truth. Lots of people apart from the Afghan warlords are getting rich out of the mess in Afghanistan and money makes the mare go, not the truth.
BDP
This is what happens when insane Saudi’s fly airplanes into buildings, and you go invade Afghanistan and Iraq in response. It never made any sense, and everyone I knew thought so from the beginning. The amount of casualties we’ve suffered over almost 10 years don’t even add up to one good “Battle” from WWII. This isn’t a war, and it never was. It’s a looting of the American Treasury from the inside, and that’s all it’s ever been.
Lucas
Reminds me of an old saying, this whole mess:
“For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost”
It’s too bad we’ve failed to stem the tide of radical Islam. This war could have gleaned great things, but through our ignorant western definitions of warfare, and our naive chivalry with the laws of war, we’ve lost it, totally and completely.
If you fight a war like Norway during WW2, are you a fool to expect the same result?
The best thing now is for the governments involved to leave Afghanistan, and let us hope we weather the coming retribution for our misguided venture.