04.25.08
Posted in Politics, Current Events at 1:57 am by diantus
By now, most of my readers should be aware that I love to hate American foreign policy. The truth is that if our leaders really started doing things sensibly, I would quickly retreat into that black hole of popular blog writing in which I talk about misstatements by my least favorite celebrities.
With that in mind, let’s talk about terrorist groups.
Recently, the political wing of the Nepalese Maoist Party won a sizeable proportion of the Nepalese parliament. The Maoists, of course, are a group of communist rebels in Nepal that trace their ideological origins to the Indian Communist party (a little known group that controls much of the Indian countryside and to Marxist-Leninism). The group is on the US terrorism list and as a direct result; the US government funnels millions of dollars into the Nepalese government in order to pay for an ongoing civil war in rural Nepal.
So now they control the Nepalese parliament and want to set about doing all sorts of devilish things like taming the monarchy, electrifying the countryside, and rectifying the gross inequalities at work there. They are expected to face major difficulties; the least of which will be a complete cessation of foreign aid because they have joined the political process and are (at least in part) a communist insurgency. This will serve to alienate them even further from the international community and likely force them to seek closer ties to regimes that might be willing to work with them. These will be found in China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
Another favorite example is the one which inspired me to start writing in the first place: Hezbollah. These plucky little guys are still around, they’re still providing most of the healthcare and education in Lebanon, the United States is still refusing to talk to them unless they renounce existence. The reality on the ground is that Hezbollah is responsible for much of Lebanon’s civil infrastructure, is a major player in the country’s domestic politics, and has the best organized and disciplined army there (aside from the UN peacekeepers in the country, but those are mostly Italians…). That sounds a bit like a government to me.
The US, for its part continue to lavish its love and affection on the pro-western government that is currently holding a relatively slim margin and pretends that Hezbollah isn’t really in the room. The pattern is only broken by the occasional threat of violence against them and their vitriolic retaliations against what they see as a government who has sold out to the same people that leveled that unhappy country a couple of years ago. It is an unrealistic policy for the United States to continue acting like these people have no stake or say in their nation’s destiny.
This seemingly irrational behavior is not without precedent of course. During the 1950s, the United States refused to acknowledge the existence on China. No, really. When Mao took control of the country, the US and its allies refused to acknowledge that the government existed, and instead handed all diplomatic recognition off to the Nationalist refugees in Taiwan. This left a rather significant portion of the Chinese population with absolutely no representation on the international scene as you might imagine. Worse, this delusion was encouraged until 1971 when the UN finally admitted the fact that China was actually China.
The truth is by refusing to deal in any non-hostile way with these groups who are major political actors, some of which actually do huge amounts of good in their own countries, we do a lot more damage than good, and wind up simple alienating huge swaths of the population in the countries that we seek to tame. Jimmy Carter figured this out and met with the leader of Hamas, another terrorist group that now controls most of the Palestinian territories. There simply will not be a lasting peace until these people get some degree of recognition for their grievances, and yes, their contributions.
It raises many important questions about or dealings in Iraq with the Mahdi Army. Are they really just senselessly violent monsters, or do they simply have to dealt with as a legitimate party. When a rebellion reaches a certain threshold, we really ought to start looking at it as a manifestation of the popular will. After all, isn’t that what democracy is all about?
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04.18.08
Posted in Politics, Current Events at 8:12 am by diantus
Bearing witness from afar to “bittergate,” I am reminded of exactly why the United States is in such dire straits. What Barack Obama did was to have the gall to openly speak about that most taboo of all American political subjects – class. He suggested that the rise of xenophobia, religious extremism, and insularism in the American rust-belt is tied to dying economies that have failed to make any sort of recovery.
His mistake, of course, was in mentioning it. Every first year poly-sci student understands the link between poverty and extremism, class and political access, but in America, we DO NOT TALK ABOUT THESE THINGS. And this silence is why our country has so many problems. We simply refuse to acknowledge that there is any meaningful difference between what people of different incomes might be able to do or offer their children. We are dazzled by the rags-to-riches stories we hear on TV, but most Americans don’t have a real picture of what it is to be connected and privileged – even less to be born into it. There is an America that the poor and the working class don’t even begin to know or really understand – but it knows them all too well.
It is such a simple rule of thumb that has little to do with party politics, but more of a political universal – you can fob off the troubles cause by complex problems by painting simple ones like Mexicans or moral depravity like the causes instead of the truth. Its like saying that a cold is a headache or a cough instead of a virus. Growing poverty contributes to growing crime and healthcare problems, and these in turn can do considerable damage to a community. It doesn’t take a Machiavelli to realize that if you blame these problems on your opponent’s policies or softness on drugs, you can win an election without actually having to address a real issue even once.
So three cheers are due to Hillary Clinton for standing up and reminding us that we still aren’t allowed to talk about these things seriously. Instead, our president should be an empty-headed chatterbox who is willing to praise any American “tradition” (like fundamentalism and racism) because it wins votes. Doing so is an unspoken promise to do nothing differently. Clinton has happily announced that we have a status quo, and the people need to keep their eyes firmly fixed to the ground in front of their feet. Leave the skies to the skyscrapers and the men who own them.
As I’ve said before, the class gap in America is the single greatest problem our society faces, traditional definitions of class notwithstanding. The growing radicalism of the elements of our society who had previously been in traditional ‘blue-collar’ labor is not an illusion. There is a sickness eating at the heartland, where farmers and industrial laborers vote for policies and people who economic record that seems nothing less than suicidal, further precipitating the collapse of their communities and aspirations. It may very well be true, as some have suggested that the American working class is vaporizing, but it does not address the fact that the inequalities and the problems this set of circumstances create is real.
All I can really do is hope against hope that people aren’t as stupid as to really believe that Barack Obama was making a bald-faced attack on them, and try to grasp the substance of his comments. The truth is that telling us how happy people are all the time doesn’t solve problems. It ignores them. While Obama’s analysis was simplistic (not untrue, but really doing is justice is a thesis in itself, and maybe not right for a fund raiser), declaring him out of step and an elitist is a cowardly act which completely fails to address the very real problems he dared to talk about. It’s intellectually shallow and weak, and shows that his opponents are increasingly desperate.
In the end though, Obama is passing through a gauntlet. In fact, all of us are. This election isn’t about whether we can vote for a black man or a woman; it is about the shape of the future. Clinton represents an older political order that met the big challenges of the past without planning for the future. Do we really expect her to change that now? If her campaign is any indication, she will not. If Obama can stay honorable through what is sure to be an increasingly negative battle, then he will have proven his merit for all of us. If he doesn’t succeed in bringing desperately needed change to American politics, then who will? We need an Obama, we don’t need a Clinton… but then, I said the same thing about Gore, and we lost him too. That was in 2000, before Iraq, Afghanistan, the collapse of the credit bubble, and record government deficits.
Things are only getting better eh? Thank goodness we keep voting for the same establishment.
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04.11.08
Posted in Politics, Current Events at 8:41 am by diantus
Sometimes the hardest decisions are the ones that have the most meaningful impact. It is often not easy to do what is best in a situation – especially when the initial decision was the wrong one.
Iraq is one such situation. By starting an ill-advised war on the false premise that is was for the best, the United States has landed itself into a political and military quagmire so deep, that we will be sorting out the truth of what happened for many decades to come. If it ever ends, that is.
The recent visit of General Pertraeus has made one thing bitterly clear: our Iraq strategy is simply treading water. There is no long term strategy for withdrawal or draw-down, because maintaining the status quo requires all of the resources that we can bring to bear in that country. John McCain is correct, in that the next six months are critical, because the rough semblance of order there is so precarious. What he doesn’t want to tell us is that six months is as far ahead as we can see in Iraq; so these six months is critical, then the next six, and the next six, and so on.
The truth is that escaping the mistake we made Iraq requires some really hard decisions, and a total revolution in how we view the world and handle diplomacy. We need to change that attitude that says the territory is more important than the people in it. Allow me to attempt an explanation: a country is a piece of land, inhabited by people who recognize the authority of some central government. Regardless of the land though, it is still a human institution, and a product of human developments and thinking. To force a population into a country that it doesn’t accept as legitimate or correct for its needs is a recipe for disaster.
We are attempting to create a state in a territory that is marked by deep divisions. As Americans, it is hard for us to understand what that means, but attempting to create a coherent territorial entity in this region is going to be nearly impossible – especially a democratic system which is based on some level of respect for one’s neighbors (imagine declaring France and England to be suddenly part of one country and to sort out voting rules). This is because the creation of Iraq was not a natural evolution of cultures settling themselves according to ethnic and geographical boundaries – it was an arbitrary decision by outsides that didn’t understand the region or its people in the first place.
The best way to view Iraq is like thinking about Yugoslavia after the death of Tito. Here was a country that split violently in the 90’s – quickly chopping itself into ethnic enclaves. The nation of Yugoslavia was an artificial one in the first place. This is also true with Iraq. Almost every place in which you force different people to cohabitate you create conflict. It was true in the USSR, it is true in Israel and Palestine, it is true in Iraq, and it is true in Africa. This understanding lies at the very heart of our ideas of self-determination. The longer you force them to coexist, the more those resentments will build.
To save Iraq, we must allow the ethnic groups there to determine their own fate instead of attempting to impose a geopolitical solution that has always been alien. In order to do keep Iraq intact, we will need another well-armed strongman to keep the disparate peoples under his boot. However, the idea in Iraq was to promote democracy and development, and as such, maybe it is time to start doing that. We need to respect the interests of the separatists, and let them separate. There are nascent political organizations around the country ready to take power, and they don’t especially want to submit to an alien government.
It should be obvious that our hold-the-line strategy in Iraq is failing. The progress has been almost non-existent, and the balance is so delicate. We should prepare the regions of Iraq for a self-governing future, or else we will be there for a hundred years. Many of our policy makers know this, but they are being restrained by other factions that thing that things will be magically fixed if we just wait it out (at great expense).
The decision to leave is sometimes the hardest one, but often we do more damage by fighting. By keeping to our current strategy in Iraq, we are keeping the healing from starting.
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04.04.08
Posted in Politics, Current Events at 4:46 am by diantus
In what will likely bring forth a nightmare of 9-11ish proportions in the next fifteen years, the United States has started paying and arming insurgent fighters to help them make Iraq look secure. While the idea that many members of these groups were fighting against us just some months ago, and now are engaging in join operations with US marines may sound like a magic parable of cooperation to some, I think it is worth mentioning that we are, in effect, bribing our enemies to stop bothering us. We are paying protection money.
To some extent, I think this an understandable thing. It serves as an admirable stopgap to protect our own people until someone has a workable plan to extricate us from Iraq. However, it seems to me that deliberately arming militia groups in Iraq is a great way to accomplish two things: first, in fifteen years, when they country is a bombed out shell and ruled over by warlords, a lot of disillusioned and angry young men can vent their frustrations by crashing more planes into more American buildings. Second; it ensures that our efforts thus far to keep the country unified are destined to fail.
I mean really… does anyone remember Afghanistan? Or why we went there back in 2001? Was it not those self-same rebels that we built up to fight the Soviets who kept those guns and then used them to create a desperately impoverished hotbed of extremism that gave a safe haven for terrorist groups? This kind of thinking is ridiculously blind. We give them money and weapons, renege on our promises, and leave them worse than we found them. After that we act surprised when they are still pissed off, this time at us!
There is, as far as I can tell, no way of adequately policing these “Sons of Iraq,” nor of ensuring that they remain friendly to our interests. Our only leverage is a paycheck – which it is worth noting, we’ve failed to give several independent bands in the tribal regions of Iraq. It should be further noted that they see this as a betrayal by the United States, and not a minor snafu in accounting. The protests that broke out reveal that their loyalty to us and to country stops with the funding.
Far from making a secure future for the Iraqis and the American forces there, I foresee a future in which these same weapons are being turned against American soldiers and Iraqi citizens. Hopefully our leaders will have to good sense to act surprised. They can tell us that the Iraqis are just expressing themselves, like a temperamental teenager with a tattoo.
The act of arming tribal groups in the name of security also seems like a means of further limiting the power of the central government. We have all been witness to the efforts of the Iraqi government to put down unrest in Basra. While the Bush administration claims that this was an Iraqi led operation, it still relied predominantly on American troops and material, and the ensuing ceasefire required the intervention of Iran. This tell the various tribal groups that if they pull hard enough, they can win independence from the Americans and they’re enemies inside Iraq – especially by allying themselves with friendly powers.
The Iraq that we sought to create through this invasion is not the one that is emerging. Instead, it is deeply divided, prone to factionalism, and seemingly unwilling to embrace the government that we have told it to embrace. While I agree that Iraqis need police and protective services, making those services beholden to the United States is not going to stem the ongoing rush of resentment from the Iraqi people. It is obvious that the system of governance that we have attempted to put into position there is not going to be right for those people. A strong centralized government emerges after long periods of history, and is something that has never really existed in Iraq. Our current track is likely to restore the old order – a unified center whose control in the periphery is illusionary and dependent on martial force. Saddam Hussein ran such a government very effectively, and as the Iraqis are likely to learn again, Americans do love a strong man…
Oh, and the plan to arm insurgent groups is being adopted in Afghanistan too. As they say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.
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