At the UNU reception here yesterday, my Afghan-Australian colleague Amin Seikal made a comment that I found very thought-provoking though it’s probably something other people have thought a lot more about previously, than I have. We were talking informally about Iraq. (This was shortly after my lengthy, canapé-balancing chat with Queen Noor.) Anyway Amin and I were talking about best-case and worst-case scenarios for the upcoming US withdrawal from Iraq…
He said that the Bushites were presumably looking for a withdrawal with some shred of honor. I said they would more likely, at this point, be looking for a withdrawal in which the degree of dishonor was minimized. He said, “Yes, we should be looking most closely at the analogy with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan– not at Vietnam.”
The Soviet army first went into Afghanistan in force in December 1979. This, from Wikipedia, about the events that led up to their withdrawal nearly a decade later:
- Informal negotiations for a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan had been underway since 1982. In 1988, the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the United States and Soviet Union serving as guarantors, signed an agreement settling the major differences between them known as the Geneva accords. The United Nations set up a special Mission to oversee the process.
In this way, [Soviet puppet PM Mohammad] Najibullah had stabilized his political position enough to begin matching Moscow’s moves toward withdrawal. On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced.
Among other things the Geneva accords identified [mandated? ~HC] the U.S. and Soviet non-intervention with internal affairs of Pakistan and Afghanistan and a timetable for full Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan by February 15, 1989.
Just over 15,000 Soviet troops were killed from 1979 through 1989, in addition to many hundreds of vehicles and aircraft destroyed/shot down. An estimated one million Afghans died as a result of the invasion during this period.
Not all was roses, of course, after that withdrawal– either for Afghanistan or for the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan, the attempts to build a stable government all faltered; the country collapsed into terribly damaging civil war; and the “victorious” west just abandoned it and allowed it to continue on the downward spiral that eventually resulted in the Taliban coming in and being seen by many Afghan nationals as a force that could at least bring an end to the rampant warlordism throughout the country…
And for the Soviet Union, the puncturing of the Soviets’ regime pride in Afghanistran, as well as the massive drain that the hopeless war had constituted on the Soviet budget, both alike contributed the further unraveling of Soviet power, and the the dismantling first of all of the Warsaw Pact (November 1989), and then of the Soviet Union itself, in 1993.
Sic transit gloria mundi. I certainly wish a much better outcome than that for both the Iraqi and the US citizenries. As for the Bushites’ project of extending and maintaining US hegemony over this vital portion of the world– that should be ended as soon as possible.
The trouble with this idea is that it misses the political basis of these military interventions.
The USSR’s troops entered Afghanistan to support a legitimate secular bourgeois nationalist government which had overthrown a monarchy and was educating its people and liberating the women.
The Afghanistan government was threatened by a mercenary quasi-feudal reaction sponsored by the USA under Jimmy Carter’s orders – the biggest CIA operation ever mounted, as they are now quite happy to admit.
The USA invaded Iraq to destroy a legitimate secular bourgeois nationalist government.
The US aim in both cases was the same – to restore a benighted pre-modern incapacity. The USSR’s aim was the opposite, equally well-documented, and in line with Soviet policy since the revolution of 1917.
The US intended in each case to “fail” the state. The US “abandonment” of Afghanistan was not a mistake, it was a natural development of the policy. Anything else would have been absurd from the point of view of US aims.
This may sound outlandish to some readers here but in colonial history and practise the crushing of putative modernism is commonplace, normal even, including in the USA’s own hisory.
We won’t know what the correct analogy is until the war is over. Then we’ll simply call it the Second Gulf War. Although, if you count the Iran-Iraq war as the First Gulf War then the current conflict would be the Third Gulf War…
You could say that WWI was an analogy to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, but it doesn’t tell you much.
For all I know, the best analogy might be the Crimean War, the War of the Roses, the Boer War, the Peloponnesian War, the Lamian War or the Indian Wars of the US West… There are a lot of damn wars out there in the history books and nobody knows them all. It won’t tell us who will win.
The Soviet adventure in Afghanistan was to expand the Soviet Empire and perhaps to expand the domination of Stalinist dictatorships. Perhaps to help the Soviet Union get another path to the sea. I suppose you could analogize Zarqawi to the Taliban’s Mullah Omar or of course to Osama bin Ladin. Most analogizing is just spin doctoring anyway.
WarrenW, a good anology for you is WW3. Or would you prefer WW4? or WW5? I don’t think you’d better opt for WW6. That’s probably a world war too far. Maybe we should just settle for calling you WW#. That puts you where you want to be, in the Henry Ford “history is bunk” school.
IMO, everything is pretty much right – except for the idea that West “abandoned” Afganistan. This is a clear ideological stereotype – in real life, both the Soviets and the Westerners were thrown out of the country. Now there is little doubt that same will happen in Iraq.
So therefore you, Henry James, recommend that we use clear “geopolitical” stereotypes instead of clear ideological ones.
Unfortunately that is a very big step backwards to before 1827, the year Clausewitz published “On War”.
Since then most people, other than ideological imperialists like yourself, but including your imperialist military, have been aware that war is conducted for ideological reasons.
I’d just like to clarify that what Amin and I were really looking at was, fairly narrowly, the modality of the withdrawal of the foreign force in question– not the whole preceding war/”presence” itself, its ideological underpinnings, etc…
I have a longstanding interest in modalities of military withdrawals… from growing up with tales of Dunkirk; to lots of readings about vast-scale Soviet redployments in their land war against the Nazis; to the Reagan administration’s ‘redeployment offshore’ of the US Marines from Lebanon, 1983; to the exit from the embassy rooftop, Saigon, 1975; to the amazingly successful Israeli withdrawals from S. Lebanon 2000 and Gaza, 2005; etc etc.
Key questions are whether the withdrawal in question is achieved under fire or not; whether it is negotiated with opposing forces, or not; and of course what the new situation post-withdrawal is.
Having said that, I’m in complete agreement with Dominic that the practice of imperial and colonial powers is the destruction of indigenous economic and sociopolitical capacities and the subordination of what remains to the imperial center.
It is time to plan for an American withdrawal from Iraq
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
April 18 2006 20:09
“…the practice of imperial and colonial powers is the destruction of indigenous economic and sociopolitical capacities and the subordination of what remains to the imperial center”
So this is what the US did to Europe to create the EU? Modern Japan? South Korea?
I see what you mean Helena. Somebody else was writing about the extreme difficulty and perilousness involved in the management of a “collapsing perimiter”. Anybody who gets left behind is liable to be torn to bits. Will the British cover the US retreat and then be left in the lurch?
Xenophon’s “March to the Sea” is on the Internet in full in English translation. I was reading it when the US invasion of Iraq took place. I intend to read it again during the retreat.
WW-Forever, you don’t want to know, do you, about imperialism, so why ask faux-naive questions? Do you think people have got the time to play ugly little games with you? Do you think you can be a gatekeeper of language, history and everything, on the basis of a half-baked and narrow semi-education? Read some books, man, and have some respect. Not everybody is like you.
Read some books, man, and have some respect.
i wonder what lesson Warren is meant to draw from the anabasis (a hymn to military adventurism, bedside reading of arch-warmonger victor davis hanson?) unlike xenophon’s ‘ten thousand,’ the US’ material and numerical superiority to its military adversaries in Iraq isn’t remotely in doubt. & unlike Xenophon’s footsoldiers, the US controls Iraq’s sky with its satellites, radar, fighter aircraft and attack helicopters; iraq’s insurgencies lack any effective anti-aircraft capability. These facts should make it easier to withdraw: good news for anyone interested in restoring Iraqi sovereignty and cultivating democracy, bad news for those like Dominic whose foremost interest is US humiliation.
I agree with you, Vadim; I doubt withdrawal would be very hard, though I disagree with what you say about Dominic’s interest. US humiliation is a good thing if it prevents further military adventurism – the wonderful Vietnam Syndrome, bad if it maddens the dinosaur.
Question: Dominic, are you interested in US humiliation?
Dominic: No.
People, isn’t that a better way to go?
Rather than holding a discussion over a person’s head in the way that you do? On a false basis of presumption?
US people especially, I wish you would try to imagine how peculiarly insular your discussions look from outside your closed circles. And remember that here on the Internet you are in the company of all sorts of people, not just US people.
[So therefore you, Henry James, recommend that we use clear “geopolitical” stereotypes instead of clear ideological ones.]
Come on, why this pathos? Geoplitics is always driven by certain ideology, but not all ideologies are geopolitical. So what?
[Unfortunately that is a very big step backwards to before 1827, the year Clausewitz published “On War”.]
C. has nothing to do with this story because hwe considered regular, not guerilla war as in Afghanistan and now in Iraq.
[Since then most people, other than ideological imperialists like yourself, but including your imperialist military, have been aware that war is conducted for ideological reasons. Posted by Dominic at April 20, 2006 01:20 AM]
Hmmmm… Sure, neoconservative ideology is both imperialstic and militaristic. But God knows, I have nothing to do with it.
Dominic, I only mentioned you to avoid any appearance of agreeing with that part of Vadim’s post.
Well and good, JR, but I still have a problem with relying on “humiliation” to create a “Vietnam syndrome” with or without the risk of “maddening the dinosaur”.
The Imperial ideology has a material basis which in this case is the tribute exacted by force of arms from the rest of the world by the USA.
If the material base is not permanently altered the ideological superstructure will inevitably revert to its previous condition or an even more virulent, for example nuclear, version of same.
In any case a reading of US imperial violence over the years (e.g. William Blum, “Killing Hope”) shows very little change in the overall tempo of US Imperialism that can be ascribed to any “Vietnam Syndrome”.
Yours is really a version of the “non-reality-based” or more comprehensively “post-modern” idea. In that version ideology can be de-linked from its material causes and then also from its material consequences (war). Political life is then for you only a mental life, more or less “correct”, and ahistorical. I want you to know that I don’t agree with that kind of thinking.
[The Imperial ideology has a material basis which in this case is the tribute exacted by force of arms from the rest of the world by the USA. Posted by Dominic at April 22, 2006 07:48 AM]
This is good old Marxist approach. The problem is, their “basis-superstructure” theory leads to pretty pointless generalizations like “imperialist ideology”, but does not really help to explain the vast diversity of ideological factions we observe in real life.
My understanding of ideology is more of a cognitive type: ideologies can be taken as games which run on top of certain cultural-religious computer.
Well, quite, Henry. You have made a very short, sharp definition of post-modernism.
Teresa Ebert in a 1995 paper on feminism described post-modern (as opposed to historical materialist) feminism as “ludic” feminism. Ludic means playful and Ebert’s point is that women like Judith Butler and Donna Hathaway are only playing mind games.
You accuse me of pointlessly generalising, but the trouble with your mind games is that they can only ever be generalising and never specific.
Whereas what I am talking about is a concrete analysis of a concrete situation – that of the USA in the world today. The material basis is in plain view, and the self-serving rhetoric is heard everywhere, including on this blog.
This is a clear base and superstructure relationship. However, if you want to say that base and superstructure is a diagrammatic and not a dynamic scheme, then I agree.
The dynamic is provided by the more profound relationship between subject and object. Your “game” philosophy is either entirely subjective or in other moods, entirely objective.
Either way your ludic philosophy denies the possibility of a freedom that is a “recognition of necessity” (in Spinoza’s words). It is anti-humanist. It denies the materialist humanism of the Ancient Greeks, the Renaissance Italians, and the Marxists. This is the practical humanism that has created all that is best in our world.
The other book you remind me of is “The Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse, a 1940s precursor of post-modernism. I read it again recently. It’s tragic.
Actually, you can replace the term “game” by “application” becasue the key is that ideology is like something that runs on a cultural-religious computer. This immediately resolves problems wuith freedom becasue it is already wired in culture/religion, but ideology can redefine this notion according to concrete situation.
All this is based on Lakoff and Eco, nothing to do with feminism.
Nothing to do with feminism? This stuff seeps up everywhere. It just happens that our study group was reading Teresa Ebert this week, and me personally the “Glass Bead Game”.
You’ve been reading (Umberto?) Eco and somebody called Lakoff. Same difference.
Your last post is pure po-mo.
The outstanding difference between you an me right now is that I recognise your philosophy and am familiar with it. You on the other hand can’t be bothered with mine at all. That’s also typical of post-modernism.
Well, I think I know a thing or two about Lenin’s definition of consciousness, all this camera stuff. I just don’t advertise it 😉
Thanks for Lakoff. There’s a local media pundit here in Johannesburg called Prof Tawana Kupe who wrote an article recently in our “Business Day” with the word “framing” in it so many times I wondered where it was coming from, especially being a carpenter myself and knowing what framing is in the reality-based world. Now I know.
You can’t wag the mass dog by “framing” its tail. You have to get out and organise people. I get terribly bored with Chomsky and sub-Chomsky stuff, for example.
The movement is the medium. The crowd itself is the message, not its reflection in the bourgeois press. When the movement becomes the main medium, you’ve won. It’s not difficult to understand. It’s a job of work, that’s all. Why do the Chomskys and Lakoffs of this world think the bourgeois media are going to do their work for them? They are just lazy, or worse, deceitful.
[The crowd itself is the message, not its reflection in the bourgeois press.]
This is the case with mostly illiterate population without much access to the media. Now in the West even really poor have radio, TV, VHS/DVD players. So, old PR methods do not work any more.
You say so, Henry James, and I say otherwise.
If you are in the USA, take a look at your Peace Movement. I’m not wrong about this. I have plenty of experience of both success and of failure.
[take a look at your Peace Movement. I’m not wrong about this. I have plenty of experience of both success and of failure.]
Unfortunately, I can’t say that US peace movement is particularly successful, rightist ultra-nationalists still find one ingenious way to another to set their agenda.
Recent “immigration debate” is just one recent example of this. GOP sytematically uses “tolerance” demagoguery to promote mass import of cheap labour from Mexico.
We are supposed to believe that this kind of migration is a good thing because it is wrong to object “poor latinos supporting their families by $$$ from the US”. What neoliberal PR does not say is that this migration warps Mexican economy which becomes dependent on $$$ from the US. From the other side, it also warps the US economy which uses cheap foreign labour instead of investing in mechanization and automation.
All this is quite useful to deflect public attention both from the war in Iraq and social issues.
When you do see a mass movement that is successful in action you want to second-guess its express aims and to insinuate that it is only a product of the deceptions of the media.
You are determined to rubbish all suggestions of mass popular agency whether projected or actual.
That’s po-mo.
According to you democracy is dead and was always impossible, anyway. There is no such thing as free will according to you.