Here's my attempt to work out a coherent position.
I think that overthrowing Taliban and putting a stable and relatively tolerant government in its place would be a good thing for the people of Afghanistan. And for the surrounding region, and for the world at large. I think it's possible to do, to the very limited extent I am qualified to judge. Difficult and dangerous, but possible. It would be very costly and at least a medium long-term project, i.e., it would take a minimum of a year in a best case scenario for the major military and constitutional work. And of course it may take much, much longer than that. The only predictable thing about war is that it's unpredictable.
We could only be successful in such an endeavor in coalition with all the countries that surround Afghanistan, and with the support of the other major countries in the world to boot. And it could only work in conjunction with aiding the stabilization of Pakistan and mediating the conflict in Kashmir, i.e., starting a real peace process. In other words, it would be an enormous task and very costly for the people who live there. But leaving things alone and not intervening is also extremely costly for the people that live there. Non-intervention might arguably be more costly in the medium term future. Because recent historical trends show the situation getting worse in every way, i.e., more success in talibanizing the neighboring region, including Pakistan. And more famine and harsher control inside Afghanistan.
I also believe that bringing stable government to Afghanistan would substantially contribute to the diminishment of the terrorist threat in the world. And from that it would draw its political justice. Not to mention paying an historical debt, since as everyone knows, we contributed more than anyone to its present instability
However, and this might sound paradoxical at first, I think that a more limited engagement would be terrible for the people who live there and terrible for us. If we simply swooped in an scooped up bin Laden, but didn't overthrow the Taliban, we would increase the terrorist threat to ourselves and the people who live there would suffer for no reason. And after suffering from our invasion, they would suffer once again from the instability that invasion would set off. Everything we currently fear from the Taliban in the surrounding region would be amplified. While at the same time, putting OBL on trial and convicting him would make him a martyr. To do that without dismantling the terrorist training ground that is present day Afghanistan -- which can only be done by overthrowing the Taliban and restoring stable government -- would simply give would-be terrorists more motive while making us more clearly their target. And leaving the means to carry it out largely intact. A dreadful plan from start to finish.
Lastly, if we were to handle this in a Clintonian fashion, by using bombing as an end itself, then we would simply be acting like terrorists ourselves. Using bombs to blow up innocent people and the places they live simply to send a message of disapproval is terrorism pure and simple, whether those bombs are delivered by Air Force jet, 767 or knapsack, and whether those innocent people are pizza-eaters who never saw it coming or "collateral damage," i.e., cowering civilians who saw it coming but had no place to hide. It is completely morally unjustifiable.
Bombing that takes place as part of military political solution, on the other hand, is justifiable if the invasion is. And if not, not. If overthrowing the Taliban is a bad idea, than intervention is a bad idea. And there is certainly a case to be made in that direction.
That's my opinion such as I've been able to figure it out so far on Afghanistan and Pakistan and Kashmir. This brings us to the much bruited Phase II, which is supposed to deal with other trouble spots in the world, namely Arabia/Iraq and Israel/Palestine. And I think it is there the left truly parts company with the right. And where the left is correct.
If we truly want to remove the two other grievances that most stimulated the creation of this global terrorist network, then we should solve both those problems as quickly and simply as possible. And we should solve them without war, for the simple reason that war is completely unpredictable. The only reason I back war in Afghanistan is because I see no peaceful way to solve the problem of present day Afghanistan. It will be solved by war by us, or by our proxies, either now, or in the future, or it will not be solved at all. But in Arabia/Iraq and Israel/Palestine, there are peaceful solutions.
In the case of Iraq, there's a very simple one. Iraq is not a military threat. Its people are suffering horribly because of our sanctions. And our economic interests and those of the world are being injured. It's a lose/lose/lose situation. And it's easy to fix: stop. If Nixon was the only one who could go to China, then let Bush be the one to declare victory and life the sanctions and let his oil buddies in to rebuild the pipelines. And if we stop the overflights, we don't need to occupy Arabia.
This is what the entire international coalition that will accompany us to Afghanistan will call for. So at that point, the US will have a choice. Continue with coalition politics -- which, if continued twice in a row, could possibly lead us into a new international political order worth having -- or ditch the entire coalition and say fuck you to the world -- which would push us backwards into a paranoid unilaterialism. There is certainly a domestic and policy constituency for that latter option. IMHO, it's the downside of our otherwise very effective propaganda device of personalizing our recent wars. My hope for stopping it lies in the strengthening the coalition that supports Afghanistan. The only way the militarily much weaker countries of the world will ever be able to oppose us is if they do it in unison. And the stronger and longer the coalition, the more chance for them to develop horizontal linkages, and the more possibility of unified international opposition.
Needless to say, I think attacking Iraq against the wishes of the surrounding regimes would make the terrorist threat faced by American citizens much worse. As well as the threat to the oil regimes we support.
I think the basic message of the left has to be that the only effective way to fight terrorism is to (1) produce political solutions, and (2) produce them in coalition. Because the cooperation of the whole world is the only ultimate defense.
And this has to be opposed to what we have already seen sketched out of the alternate plan: the criminalization of all resistance to military occupation by declaring it terrorist. And the desire to to take this opportunity to finish long-standing grudges out of vengeful momentum without making any attempt to weigh how such actions would really effect the balance of terror in the present day world.
The same opposition, needless to say, will come into play with Israel/Palestine. And a solution is possible there too if the United States puts its full weight behind it. It was already conceivable after Camp David II. And the political realities that made it impossible no longer seem unchangeable, even if the immediate political realities are much worse than they were a year ago. For years, all the US cared about in the Middle East was that open war should not break out, and after Camp David, that was no longer much of a threat. Now, for the first time, the US has a very strong motive for carrying about the quality and justice of the peace. Because not-war is a breeding ground for terrorism.
And here as well, the war against terrorism forks. It could go forward into the future or backward into past that is even more awful than the one we emerged from. If the right has its way, the US will move to simply to criminalize Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And that will not only make the political problem harder to solve, it will make it impossible to solve. And it will make the terrorist threat to ourselves correspondingly worse.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com