Every situation's a different situation, sing it!

It appears that old blogbuddy Mustafa Hirji at Points of Information trackbacked to an old post of mine (well, not so old) in order to criticize my declarations of futility in this Afghan mission.  I missed it since I so rarely get trackbacks---they have not caught on as a replacement for comments by any stretch, thankfully. 

Anyway, his...interesting critique:

About a decade ago, there was this place called Rwanda where the Hutus and the Tutsis each hated the other and were just waiting for the chance to kill the other side. And when one side started organizing to do exactly this, we in the West decided that we should leave those people to their own devices since it would be difficult to stop them. Most people acknowledge that this course of action was morally bankrupt, and the political "left" has been especially critical of our moral failure over Rwanda—and rightly so.

Mandos and the political "left" now think that we should just leave millions of Afghan civilians to their own devices in the face of some violent and oppressive, and potentially genocidal, warlords, do they want to defend the West's record in Rwanda?

I'm afraid that I'm just going to be a big ol' meanie and point out the obvious: Afghanistan is not Rwanda.  I have never taken a position on Rwanda, as far as I can remember, and hence have no desire to defend or critique any external actor in that conflict and genocide.  The only thing I'll say is that almost every situation in Africa these days seems to have been massively exacerbated by some form of foreign intervention at some point in time.  I'm not a component of some inchoate mental collective called the "political 'left'" (what are his scare quotes for?) and do not take responsiblity for this object's views, whatever they are.

The analogy is silly, anyway.  The internal conflict in Afghanistan is and has always been about governmental legitimacy foremost.  And consequently when Mustafa says,

But I take issue with the claim that our presence necessarily can only make things worse. First, he's provided no real support for this claim at all—yes, we are unsuccessful there right now, but that doesn't mean we are making it worse, and certainly not that we will necessarily make it worse. But his argument that because the Pashtun, the Uzbecks, the Tajicks, et al. each mutually hate the rest, we should just leave them to their own devices is what really confuses me . . .

I thought I gave the evidence, but I'll give it in a nutshellier nutshell: that we are there to favour one group over the other, from an Afghanistan-internal perspective, and that favour creates a political imbalance that the disfavoured side---the majority---has apparently elected to resolve by force.  We cannot favour the majority, because we have declared ourselves opposed to the geopolitical---among other things---perspective that has taken root among some significant elements of the majority.   (The absurd "Safe Haven" thesis held by some---that eliminating Save Havens For Terrorists is a real or attainable or meaningful goal.  ROTFL.)

I won't---and do not need to---refer to any kind of essential hatred between groups, merely material and political interests and perspectives.  I do not know why Mustafa does.  I didn't do so in my original post---I said that the Pashtun peoples view with hostility an authority that has chosen to define itself against them in history.  To me these sorts of distinctions are important.

And this is but one double-bind with which any do-gooders-by-force in Afghanistan must contend.

Comments

[skdadl]

A useful distinction, too. I must try to discipline my own language.

I still say the Americans are playing NATO for suckers, though.

[Craig]

Beyond Afghanistan and Rwanda (what - no mention of Darfur?) not being the same situation, the fact of the matter is that there was no genocide being carried out in Afghanistan. Had there even been an inkling of evidence to suggest such a claim, Bush, Blair & Co, LLC would have jumped on that one right away. "Not only are they terrorists, and not only do they treat their women and camels unfairly, but they're also engaged in genocide." It seems "genocide" was an even less believable scenario than "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq - afterall, we used the "genocide card" in Iraq.

But, as I've repeatedly said, I don't understand online ideologues. I understand them even less than the ones in the so-called "MSM."

That Iraq and Afghanistan both have nothing to do with "human rights" is quite evident: the administration now and in 1991 is virtually identical. There were no "humanitarian interventions" then and there aren't any now.