Afghanistan: “What would Thomas Jefferson do?”

Vampire06 of ‘Afghanistan Shrugged’ had an informative, well-written post yesterday about the challenges of trying– as the head of a US Army ‘Embedded Training Team’– to put into place the building blocks of procedural democracy in a place in eastern Afghanistan. (HT: Registan.)
V06 has enough self-awareness to understand some– but not all– of the ironies of his situation. Plus, he’s a good writer with an engaging, self-deprecating sense of humor.
His immediate challenge is to identify a location for the voter-registration center, in the northern part of Goumal District, right next to the border with Pakistan. The traditional tribal coloration of all the local terrain deeply impacts this issue.
He writes,

    What would Thomas Jefferson do?? I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t do what I’m doing which is standing there with my mouth open trying to catch some Afghan upper respiratory disease. Did I miss something along the way? Isn’t there some kind of UN monitor or some PhD in election science around to settle this?? Usually, if the question is really hard I ask my wife for the answer and she tells me and I sell like I knew it all along. You wives reading this know what I’m talking about, but that ain’t gonna fly here.
    OK, here we go. If I talk really fast and loud they’ll think I know what I’m talking about…

Now, V06 is in that district, as head of the ‘training team’ working with a battalion of the Afghan National Army. But don’t be in any doubt as to who’s really calling the shots here.
He writes:

    Because of our proximity to the border we have CAS [combat air support] circling the area, every 15 minutes or so we have them conduct a show of force our way of saying to anyone who might want to drop by unannounced; that we have a big stick to swing if needed. Later in the day we’ll here the gunfire from another unit closer to the border in contact. Be nice to everyone but have a plan to kill them.

Of course, the people flying CAS are Americans; and almost certainly the people able to “call them in” when needed would be the American “trrainers”, rather than the Afghan National Army officers. So it’s clear that it’s the US military that dominates the strategic environment there.
(I imagine our friends in Iraq are well aware this is what would happen there, too, if the US military is allowed to retain ‘training units’ with the Iraqi army even after US ‘combat troops’ have all supposedly evacuated the cities… )
But then, there is the also conundrum, very vividly represented by Vampire06, of how anyone can “implant” democracy in a distant foreign country, on the tip of a cruise missile or under the weight of a 2,000-pound bomb such as– in a big fight– the CAS people would be capable of delivering.
Democracy is, after all, at its very base a mutual agreement among the participants in a political system that they will not use force or coercion to decide tricky issues of policy arising amongst them, but will do so on the basis of an egalitarian respect for the views and preferences of all citizens, as brought together through a non-coercive process of deliberation and an accepted, well understood, and egalitiarian decision mechanism.
So how can you implant “democracy” in a situation where you have foreigners, backed up by cruise missiles and 2,000-pound bombs, making the decisions on behalf of a people who are living under foreign military occupation?
“Be nice to everyone but have a plan to kill them”? It doesn’t quite stack up to the high ideals and timeless principles of the US Declaration of Independence, does it?

3 thoughts on “Afghanistan: “What would Thomas Jefferson do?””

  1. Great question Helena. (and double-kudos for the catch — think we’ll quote this one in pending writings)
    My first reaction to the essay was to start thinking of Jefferson quotes that would be all-too-relevant — that Jefferson would have counseled (as he did to Lafayette after the French Revolution) not to expect transition to democracy on “a feather bed.”
    Jefferson also would have had much to say about how one fights a war, about treatment of prisoners of war, international law (yes indeed), and even about how to build schools in rural areas not yet secured from hostilities….
    But Jefferson would be aghast at the very idea of using force to impose democracy on anyone. (much as he was also quite nervous about supporting democratic rebellions in lands with cultures & citizens beholden to “monkish superstition.”)
    I wonder if what we have here is a neocon-light lament on how presumably unsuitable “jeffersonian principles” would be to the neocon project. Ok, he’s embedded with the military; his capacity for candor is obviously constrained to light satire)
    But irony indeed Helena. He’s got the right question — what would Jefferson do? (apart from not being there in the first place)

  2. Well, the handle Vampire06 sort of gives his realposition away. Rather if George Bush himself had some literary or story telling abilities. Or yet still, just as cynical and narcissistic to be believable as the harbinger of democratic values.

  3. OK, what DID Thomas Jefferson do? He was a slaveowner (some of his slaves being his own children), he mass-murdered Natives and so on. It was all called “democracy”. I guess it was way better than what USA are doing in the ME now?
    So-called USA democracy was always a tool of opression, not a fancy picture Helen painted. But, after all, USA liberals have no other ideal, bad for them, and even more bad for USA’s victims.
    And if ANYBODY believes in BS about USA going to “bring democracy to Afhganistan” ANY WAY one is even more …hnnn…naive than Bush-jr.

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