War in Afghanistan Poll

Well, I guess I haven't come up with any intriguing polls, since my two polls have only managed to bring in 20 votes total and the new poll currently only has one participant.  Two of those votes were mine, so really the total stands at 18.  I would appreciate it greatly if you would comment on this post with suggestions for new polls.  My only guidelines would be that your suggestions focus around the Middle East and/or the United States, since that is the focus of this blog.  I thrive on interaction and I truly desire hearing your opinions about the polls and the posts on this blog.  You can comment anonymously or publicly, but please comment so I have something from which to build.  Thank you so much for reading this blog and for participating with me.

In the last poll, I provided an incomplete statement to which I wanted you to add your opinion.  The statement was:  Now that Osama bin Laden has been found and executed do you think the war in Afghanistan is  

justified                                                                            1 
                                                                                              (33%)

another US intervention that will one day backfire         1 
                                                                                              (33%)

a lost cause                                                                       0 
                                                                                                (0%)

a mistake                                                                          1 
                                                                                              (33%)

One individual believes the war is justified, I'm the one who indicated the second option and another individual believes the war in Afghanistan is a mistake.  It is interesting to me that no one was willing to place a vote indicating the war is a lost cause.  Although I’m sure there are those out there who believe that the war in Afghanistan is a lost cause, no one indicated as such.  This makes me glad because we can't afford for the war to be treated as a lost cause.  Whether the US should have entered into a war in Afghanistan or not, it is necessary now to focus on finishing this war and providing the Afghanis with the security and organization they will need to ensure the positives that have come from this war (i.e. education of girls, greater rights for women, the destabilization of the Taliban) are not lost when the US withdraws from their country.  What this requires is the patience to stay in Afghanistan until these things are secured.  This means that many more years are required for the US to maintain a presence in Afghanistan, which is not a popular option for most Americans and, therefore, not good political policy especially as we enter the presidential campaign.  However, it is my hope that President Obama doesn’t fear a campaign loss if he keeps us committed to Afghanistan and doesn't start to make promises of huge troop withdrawals in order to appease the voters.  I don’t say this because I want us to be forever engaged in a war in Afghanistan, but I also don’t want us to ever have to return because we didn’t feel like making things right the first time.

This is one of the reasons I said this war is another intervention that will backfire on us.  Our record of intervention in the Middle East is not very good.  Almost everything, if not everything, with which we have involved ourselves in this region has ultimately come back to haunt us.  In 1953 we staged a coup of a democratically elected prime minister in Iran, who was an ally to the US (both Prime Minister Musaddiq and Iran) and we paid the Iranian ayatollahs annually in order to ensure their support of the Shah we installed (see William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, pg. 72).  Now Iran is one of the most verbal haters of the United States led by the ayatollahs to whom we paid millions.  In 1963, a decade later, we decided to try our hand at another “successful” coup and we unofficially aided the coup in Iraq that overthrew ‘Abd al-Karim Qaasim and led to Saddam Hussein’s rise to power (whom we courted at the time).  To continue with Iraq, during the 80s we supplied President Hussein with weapons to fight our now Iranian enemies, whom we created.  Soon after the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and became an enemy to the West using the weapons we freely supplied to him just a few years prior.  It is too soon to tell what the results of the most recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be, but if we look at the results of the past, we might get some idea.

I’m afraid it is too late for us to do anything about Iraq.  The one thing we have learned in both Afghanistan and Iraq from our past mistakes in the Middle East is to not replace one dictatorial government with another.  Unfortunately, we have still imposed a government on the people of each nation and preselected its leaders.  We have imposed democracy on both Afghanistan and Iraq without truly working with the people of the two nations to help them build something that is more organic.  The instability that still exists in Iraq is partly due to this very fact.  Given the sectarian nature of Iraq, setting up a government that would be agreeable to all involved was going to be a challenge, but trying to impose a western structure in this situation without a real investment from the masses could quite possibly lead to the same situation we had in Germany after World War I.  We forced democracy on the Germans; we made them pay for the war, which they couldn’t, thus economically destabilizing them; the Great Depression hit the world and Hitler rose from the ashes to cause even greater destruction.  I certainly hope we haven’t created another Weimar Republic in Iraq, but if we don’t remain somehow invested in its future and stability, we may have done just that.

In Afghanistan, not only have we imposed democracy, but we have supported people of questionable integrity because they had the clout we needed to fight against the Taliban.  If we are not careful and we leave Afghanistan in the hands of these new leaders who used to be or still are drug lords and weapons dealers, we have not only created a breeding ground for a new dictator, but we have also associated democracy with tyrannism, deceit, and corruption.  It is in our best interest not only to train Afghani police forces, but to help the Afghanis rebuild their nation.  Again, we need to work with the Afghani communities, which are tribal, and find out from them what they need and how we can be of service to them.  Anything we build without community support won’t last even if it is good and beneficial to the people.  We need to help the Afghanis to be interested and invested in their own nation building.

I would say that the war in Afghanistan was justified as much as I think the war in Iraq was justified, not for the reasons given—housing al-Qaeda and bin Laden in Afghanistan and WMDs in Iraq—but for the ending of an era of oppression and massacres in both nations (not to say the wars haven’t had a large number of casualties).  Removing Saddam Hussein and the Taliban have been good things from a humanitarian point of view, so I would say the wars are justified.  However, if we don’t make sure the people are invested in their new governments and lives, I do feel like we will one day experience the repercussions of our intervention and that will be our greatest mistake.