> [So is there any correct socialist/internationalist position on this?]
>
> Wall Street Journal - November 28, 2001
>
> Nation-Building:
> Too Important To Be Left to U.N.
>
> By David Rieff.
.
Amazing that with all Rieff's bile about the UN handing over Afghanistan to
the warlords, he has not a word of criticism for the US bombing campaign,
which in reality is what actually delivered Kabul to them - even though he
admits that the Taliban, however hateful and repressive, were preferred to
the chaotic banditry of the 1992-96 era.
Since Rieff is so committed to the idea of the great powers imposing better governments on backward nations, I'm curious whether he thinks history's verdict on the Soviet "intervention" should be reconsidered now in a different light. (I'm not saying I think so.)
Rieff is so dripping with contempt for the Afghans' ability to maintain a stable state, and so certain that great power intervention is the solution. Yet he has no explanation for the existence of a normal Afghan state pre-1979. What happened in 1979 to wreck the country? Great-power intervention.
What is to be done? I'm not theologically opposed to foreign peacekeepers. America's friends in the NA are, however. If Rieff has an action plan for imposing peacekeepers that won't be violently rejected by the Afghans, I'd like to hear it.
It should be mentioned that the UN had a chance - no guarantees, just a chance - to put together an Afghan proto-government based on the domestic anti-Taliban opposition *before* the bombing. Military action to implement that government could come later.
Instead, the US/Russia decided to let the bombs fly and give the Northern Alliance a fait accompli, wrecking that delicate process. Now the NA have zero incentive to compromise; they've already seized more than their share of the pie.
Seth