[lbo-talk] Afghanistan: Talibs And Warlords On The Left, Imperialists On The Right

KJ kjinkhoo at gmail.com
Thu May 26 11:36:41 PDT 2005


At 09:31 -0700 26/5/05, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>The temptation is to applaud, without too much investigation into the details,
>any action that seems to oppose empire. But I'm learning, step by step and a
>little more each day, that this impulse must be resisted if anything like a
>realistic understanding of the way the world works is to be achieved.

Resisting the impulse may be fine. But, all said and done, doesn't Ingalls' argument amount to -- in different prose -- a version of the old "white man's burden"? To whit, secular democratic forces have to be developed in Afghanistan -- under the watchful eye of foreign troops. Leaving aside the befuddling notion of implanting democracy at the barrel of a gun, who would be these watchful troops if not American? NATO? European troops? Surely Ingalls isn't thinking of a some multinational force comprising troops from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.? And if he's thinking of troops under the UN flag, the record in Bosnia, Kosovo, various African countries is hardly encouraging. Indeed, how is Ingalls any different from the Soviet mission in Afghanistan -- developing "socialist" forces in Afghanistan against backward clerics and villagers?

Isn't it a sad commentary on events, nearly four years after the invasion and occupation, that "the people in Afghanistan most likely to take advantage of the anti-US feeling are not progressive secular democrats but right-wing fundamentalist extremists"? A mirror of what happened with the Soviet invasion and occupation.

kj khoo



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