We were both shocked as well by Obama, who typically doesn't shy away from nuance and details, continually speaking about Afghanistan as if it is a nation in the same manner as the US or UK: But Afghanistan is, of course, not the same. The reason nation-building hasn't worked there (and will continue to not work) is because there is not a national identity to hold together the disparate tribes that comprise its population. It was strange to see such a glaring omission of so basic a fact from Obama's address, although I suppose its inclusion would elicit precisely the sort of questions that Obama hopes to avoid.Spoken by a gal who's never watched Braveheart, heard of the American Civil War, or acquainted herself with Northern Ireland. Evidently. "Afghanistan is not the same." Sister, huh?
-Melissa McEwan, chauvinist
Now, the reason that "nation-building hasn't worked" is that "nation-building" is a euphemism for foreign occupation, and there is resistence. Liberals in general seem to prefer goosey sociological explanations for why the brightness and light of representative democracy do not immediately take hold, and the plain facts of insurgency escape them. Armed Afghans do not want our army in their country, and they will keep trying to kill us until we leave. Go back to college and argue about melting pots and salad bowls, you geeks. Afghanistan is for real, and Superjesus Black Reagan just committed us for the long haul.
And what is revealed about the straw leftism of our dear Shakespearian sisters by this telling slip of the tongue? In every antiwar activista, a Satrap? If only the Afghans weren't so tribal, so primitive, we might sit down and reason together. Maybe Barack Obama could make a speech!
61 comments:
I've been telling my Obamaniac pals who are talking themselves into supporting this (think of the burqa! owe them a decent chance! etc) this: Try and imagine that Chicago was totally taken over by gangs and that the nominal elected government of the city was made of black Muslims and Mexican drug runners. Now try and imagine a detachment of Maine National Guardsmen trying to do anything about it. Now try and imagine a bunch of Urdu-speaking Indians trying to do so because some guys somewhere in rural Iowa wanted to blow something up in Mumbai.
This argument hasn't found much success.
What's amusing to me is the take A-list "liberals" like Yglesias and Klein have on this, namely, fairly clearly expressed reservations followed by opaque word cloud about how the administration is full of smart people, the uncertainty of it all, it could work, etc. If Bush were doing this, they'd be all over it, but they're buddies with the guys close to the throne and don't want to mess that up. Sick.
Yglesias and Klein are utterly contemptible. Each of them is able to recognize a clusterfuck in progress, but each is too cognizant of his place in the official-opinion industry food chain to do more than clear an occasional throat about it.
"In every antiwar activista, a Satrap?"
In every dream home a heartache
And every step I take
Takes me further from heaven
Is there a heaven?
I`d like to think so.
You know, the only fully industrialized countries are either in Europe or had Europeans come over, kill all the natives and take over.
Clearly, the best way to nation build, then, is to kill all the natives and take over. If you're white. If you're brown, you've gotta just let yourself be killed and taken over.
"Maybe Barack Obama could make a speech!"
Speak the speech, I prithee, LindaTrippingly on the tongue.
Or should that be MonicaLewinsky on the tongue?
In any event, did any one really think that an ex-Prez of the HLR couldn't find it within him to be a Sophist when the occasion demanded it ? (apologies to that classicist here who thinks the Sophists were the beginning of Western democracy, not the beginning of Washington lobbying.
A "trigger alert" of the ballistic kind.
His lordship has proclaimed that the ninth month shall henceforth be known as Obamalio! Hail, Ceasar!
Klein and Yglesias make more sense when one keeps in mind that they don't believe Afghanis are actually human beings, but are rather more like cows: They should be treated well all else equal but killing them for instrumental reasons is okay as long as you make anguished noises about it.
Try and imagine that Chicago was totally taken over by gangs
Imagine? Al Capone, Sam Giancana, Mayor Daley...
culcha clash. culcha clash.
"What I was most struck by while watching the speech last night is that it sounded shockingly like a Bush speech." No shit?
Total agreement on how the armed populace of this country would react to occupation predicting a similar reaction in other areas of the world. Don't be so hard on the Sister, though, for pointing out yet another reason why our current efforts are doomed. "The Afghans", if we can say anything meaningful about this collection of clans while excluding their cotribalists in the surrounding areas, are different from us.
Sure, they're like us in that they respond to incentives, distrust the customs of other people, and wish BO would shut the hell up. They are unlike us in many other ways, not least of which their complete lack of a "democratic" or even "civic" tradition.
Although maybe I've been trolled by the whole post. Structuralism masquerading as pot-kettle racism accusations? That's like something the Sister could write.
Good grief, I'm now reading through the comments over at Shakesville, and I find that, not only can we trust the current administration to wisely deliberate and decide because they're smart and Bush was dumb, but also Afghanistan in 2001 was ready to embrace Western liberal democracy wholeheartedly, and it's really just the fact that we also invaded Iraq that has convinced the nation to revive all that Sharia crap.
I just came. must have been the trigger.
At least she's realizing the sham now, right? But nevermind, keep berating the feminists,guys!
Hey I know I'm probably raping her by saying this, but McEwan is a fucking beast who probably shouldn't tag her posts with a photo of her pitbull mug. She is really, really ugly.
First, I wuz wrong.
Second, IOZ is wrong! The error here in the first instance is not euphemism but question-begging. America is no more a coherent social entity than Afghanistan. There is no such thing as a people. The only thing holding up the fiction of unity is money, most of it borrowed.
America is a strongly centralized state, Afghanistan not so much. All that nation stuff is just window dressing. Anyone who says we aren't tribal has never tried to walk down a street in orange County in a hoody with his jeans sagging.
They're nihilists, Jenny, nothing to be afraid of.
Yer a nut IOZ, though a wit of a nut, if youre *certain* that Afghans vary from Westerners in culture only. Especially mountain Pashtuns.
Youre even crazier if you think that culture alters things like IQ, yet is totally tractable and can be altered by us in the course of our little nation building thing. After all, Melissa Whatever said nothing about biology and may have merely been saying that culture can be rather intractable, yet you say shes a loon and evil.
Anyway, those mountain Afghans are tough, and not used to taking orders from a distant capital. Most likely, there is a modest biological difference which points in the same direction as their culture. In one way, people like you and I are knavish. We take insults from people and do nothing. Traditional Pashtuns would find us contemptible. On the other hand, I dont know if those guys are ever going to be exporting microchips, no matter what culture they take on. That takes knavish docility and national-level organization, to start with. If they do wind up exporting microchips, great.
Aaron - I don't think that "nation-building" is question-begging. I think it's a euphemism. That said, I don't disagree with the substance of your comment, nor--I don't think--does the post.
@3:58 - Whatever you've got, cut me a bump.
Nutella: "the only fully industrialized countries are either in Europe or had Europeans come over, kill all the natives and take over."
Erm, no. Japan, South Korea, China, to name just three. Japan, for one, was already industrialized before we killed all the natives. The Soviet Union might be iffy -- is it Europe or Asia? -- but it doesn't really fit your model either.
And that leaves aside the question of whether being a fully-industrialized nation is a good thing.
You called her a racist? Great. What did we say about respecting each other's safe spaces, or whatever the fuck it was called? Now she's going to have to take a month off to recover.
Aaron said...
IOZ: Really? Google "nation-building" and "modernization." The idea that it's a euphemism for invasion is not evident at all. The genealogy of the word is statism.
Sure, in Iraq and Afghanistan it's being used instrumentally. But the fallacy is prior to and I daresay more important than the Orwellian aspect. "Nation-building hasn't worked in Afghanistan and will continue to not work... because there is not a national identity to hold together the disparate tribes that comprise its population." But if we agree that "nation-building" never has anything to do with identity and a lot to do with cash, then we can place Afghanistan in a broader category of modernist fuck-ups. The invasion is just an after-effect of a state failure, due in no small part to the fact that after the British finished raping the area, its most lucrative natural resource, the only possible basis for centralization, found itself on the DEA interdiction list.
"Erm, no. Japan, South Korea, China, to name just three. Japan, for one, was already industrialized before we killed all the natives. The Soviet Union might be iffy -- is it Europe or Asia? -- but it doesn't really fit your model either."
Crap. You're right. NExt time I come up with a thesis for my World History PhD I'll have to spent more than 10 seconds thinking about it. Oh well, too late. Already submitted. Just waiting on my signatures.
Oh, wait, I've got it:
China isn't quite totally industrialized yet. Japan and South Korea don't count and any other examples you come up with preemptively don't count. No take backs.
Man, it feels good to be a gangsta.
Braveheart, heard of the American Civil War, or acquainted herself with Northern Ireland
I think the foreign occupiers won in all those cases. Also in Germany & Japan. Considering the native americans we can also add the U.S itself. Only Northern Ireland has flickers of resistance, and those certainly don't compare to the situation in Afghanistan. Some analogies for America's involvement in Afghanistan is the British and Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
Speaking of the Pushtuns, James Scott attributes in the following quote from them in "Seeing Like a State": Taxes ate the lowlands, honor ate the highlands. People in mountainous terrain are harder to govern and so intractable honor culture plays a larger role for them than the edicts of a state. What we need is to develop an Agent Orange for mountains.
First of all, nuance is officially a dipshit word.
Second, I have to wonder, does Melissa think all that is needed is a new national anthem, flag, and an Afghani Uncle Sam like icon to bring the country and bring our 'nation-building' efforts to completion?
You either think nuance is a dipshit word, or you don't.
Japan, South Korea, and China know nothing about industrialization, or killing aborigines, and the combination of the two.
Nutella was wrong in facts, but right in spirit. And I actually mean that. Prom's correction is apt, too, except for South Korea.
No, wait. Europeans came over and killed plenty of Chinese. And Japanese (in the employ of other Japanese). And South Korea, um... Did Prommy miss the part where, um, European and American forces came in and, uh, killed as many of the natives as they could? Fuck, even my Turks came out of retirement to kill some gooks!
meh. i consider myself a "liberal," and i resent being grouped with this dumb broad and having her racist, stupid pop-sociology views imputed on all "liberals" ...
your argument that this line of thinking is attributable to one's "liberalness" is about as empirically sound as her sophisticated theories on international relations ...
but since i enjoy polemics as much as the next man, here's my theory: perhaps WHITENESS is a better predictor of this sort of ethnocentric/racist reductionism than "liberalness" ... my anecdotal experiences suggest as much
I do enjoy a good anecdote as evidence of empirical want.
you are less enamored of irony, i gather ...
"white" and "liberal" are rarely mutually exclusive, but I'll make an exception for myself.
BLAWG!
IOZ, you've positively been on FIRE here lately, it's wonderful :)
Let's not forget this particular "Satrap" was once briefly a member of the campaign team of John Edwards, who had a shot at being President.
Edwards or Obama, McCain or Kerry or Dole, all of these just prove to the dangerousness of GROUPTHINK and how I really doubt that, whomever the president is at any moment, there are any truly dissenting voices reaching his ears.
"The invasion is just an after-effect of a state failure, due in no small part to the fact that after the British finished raping the area, its most lucrative natural resource, the only possible basis for centralization, found itself on the DEA interdiction list." And yet, up until 1978 or so, Afghanistan was one of the more modern states in the region. One could say that state failure is a desired outcome of policy.
Whoa there fella! She only said "shocked" and "strange" yes?
Cut her some slack. More, better, to come.
You just can't BE a "Superjesus Black Reagan": no; you gotta STYLE it.
Ummphh!
'if we agree that "nation-building" never has anything to do with identity' (Aaron 4:54)
Why the hell should we agree to something that silly? Membership in a nation is not automatic, identity is vital (or lethal, depending). See history of Eastern Europe for details, or the news from Israel (an ongoing Eastern European nationalist project).
@TGGP:
"Braveheart, heard of the American Civil War, or acquainted herself with Northern Ireland"
I think the foreign occupiers won in all those cases.
Ummm... The Wars of Scottish Independence didn't end with Wallace's defeat at Falkirk. Robert the Bruce succeed where Wallace failed, and Scotland's independence was formally recognised by Edward III in 1328.
"Braveheart" is possibly the least accurate historical movie ever made. As one professor of Scottish history of my acquaintance put it, "If you want to understand Wallace's role in Scottish history, you'd be better off watching Apollo 13."
Also, the fact that we now speak of Northern Ireland is testament to the fact that the rest of Ireland did succeed in throwing off British colonial rule.
I'm going to type the name "Amanda Marcotte" here, just so her Google alerts will hopefully bring her in to see people making fun of her Mini-Me, especially the one that called her ugly. LOOKIST!
Ha! You make my point for me. First of all, we're talking about how one actually creates institutions. This membership thing is a side show. But if you insist, identty is optional enough that Israeli passports go to non-Jewish Russians and Arab Moroccans. The problem being solved however is the second order one of beating the Palestinian competitor at the demographic game. That has to do with maintaining a capitalist nation-state, not building one, and it doesn't require citizenship. As in America it all worked fine so long as the cheap labor force was willing to return home across the border after payroll was made.
"The reason nation-building hasn't worked there (and will continue to not work) is because there is not a national identity to hold together the disparate tribes that comprise its population."
Nations aren't held together by national identities so much as they are by force. Nation building did work in Afghanistan, we just didn't like the nation that was built.
Come Meestah Taliban, Taliban's bananas!
Just like the US claims to want democracy in the Middle East, so long as they don't vote for Hamas or Hezbollah! Then it doesn't count. Or if the people of Chile elect a Socialist, and Nixon decides he doesn't like that. Or if the people of Nicaragua elect a Communist, and Reagan decides he doesn't like that. Or if Iran elects someone, and Eisenhower decides he wants The Shah instead.
To say nation-building cannot work in Afghanistan is to ignore the lessons of history. Imperialist Muslims did a bang-up job after ousting the Sassanids in the seventh century. Lesson to Obama and America----they were patient. Yes, it took a few centuries to drive out the adherents and then the remnants of rival religionists, but upon those rocks they built a Church which absorbed even the Mongol Horde and continues supreme in Afghanistan to this day. Ironically, in modern times the blame for most of the division and unrest lies with the Hindu sellout, Mohandas Gandhi.
What exactly is nation building again? I'm sorry I wasn't listening.
'But if you insist, identity is optional enough that Israeli passports go to non-Jewish Russians and Arab Moroccans.' (Aaron)
Borderline cases and minorities. There's even 'Israeli Arabs', i.e. Palestinians who weren't expelled in 48-49. But most Palestinians have to be kept out or down, if the state of Israel is to exist. The options are quite limited.
Humm. "The Muslims" (i.e. Arabs from the peninsula) were driven back to their base in Herat the mid 600s by highland tribes, Kabul remained under a Turkic dynasty governed by Chinese influence until about 900, when they were finally conquered by a totally different Persian-speaking dynasty from Sistan that, yes, happened to be Muslim. So "the Muslims" succeeded in their patient project only if one thinks of "the Muslims" as a monolithic bloc.
Assuming Mexico finally quells Afghanistan in 1225 then yes, on these terms I guess we can look at your imperialist project as a success.
sorry, in 2225.
anon 2:57: anything that doesn't fit one's theory is of course an outlier. One could easily argue that Israel is an outlier. My point is that a coherent identity doesn't make a state, and non-conformity with it doesn't exclude someone from benefiting from the state. Identity is totally malleable and instrumental. Like money, it doesn't smell (even when made from taxing outhouses, as Vespasian pointed out). Nation building has fuck-all to do with people feeling some mystical connection to each other. Jews felt a mystical connection to each other for quite some time before Sykes-Picot set the fucked-up and confused course of events into motion that ended up giving a Jewish-supremacist party military and political control over Jerusalem.
Aaron---
I've obviously mistaken "Islam" as signifying a cohesive, unifying worldview for adherents, even among folks of diverse backgrounds and emphases.
Or does it depend on the application? If one is praising Islam, or bemoaning anti-Muslim cultural bigotry, one is suffered to refer to "Muslims" as such, and it has discrete meaning, albeit modified by Islam's broad appeal and sway bacross the globe. The five pillars, Sunni v. Shiite, jihad, etc., actually retain affirmative significance. Glass half full.
Now if one is not praising Islam, calling folks "Muslim" is suddenly little different than calling them "homo sapiens". Why, "Muslims" are like bits of flotsam scattered to the four winds, as alike as sand in Australia and rocks in Greenland. Glass half empty. So is Afghanistan an "Islamic" state? Has been been for hundreds of years, ever since Islam's most proficient warlike period?
Depends who's asking, and why.....
So, Inky, is your position that "our" victory is inevitable if "we" just "stay the course" because corporatist consumerist capitalism/modernism implanted by the Chinese (a better example than Mexico) will finally largely supplant Islam in Afghanistan in 2156? And I am supposed to care about this glorious "victory" for what reason? Especially if staying the course means living in a bankrupt polity (the United States) that can't prpvide a quality of life for me because it is draining all of its funds on eldess land wars in Asia?
Boy, that is a cheery thought.
Brian M---
Not cheery at all, I agree. I myself want us out, period.
It's just that I tire of the perpectivist buffoonery that allows domestic endo-chauvinists to ridicule American foreign community-organizing when the Muslims running the show now are little more than artificial flashes in the pan themselves.
"When the Muslims running the show now are little more than artificial flashes in the pan themselves." And who are they, exactly?
Enron---
Conservative clerics, especially those with guns or controlling those with guns. See also Iran.
Iran is, uhm, not backing the Taliban. you seem to have quite a bit of conceptual common ground with the "religion of peace" contingent!
Iranically, the mollahs you mention are completely home-grown--and hardly flashes in the pan--while the Taliban are the booby prize from at least four imperialist projects (Saudi, Pakistani, American and Soviet).
You and George Will are about six years late on the "wanting us out, period" front. It feels a bit instrumental.
Aaron---
I don't mean Iran backs the Taliban. I meant "See also Iran" in the sense of conservative Muslim clerics really running the show in that country too. Yes, yes, I know the Taliban is Sunni, Khomeini and Khameini Shia. Gosh, what a world of practical difference that makes to Israel and the West! Like for the cops and citizens living with the Gambinos and the Genoveses. They're Not Identical and Sometimes Fight Each Other Bitterly, yawn....
I feel confident that you did not concern yourself with my position on Bush's invasions six years ago. Not that you should know or care that much, but I like Pat Buchanan was for regime change, rinse/withdraw, repeat as necessary, from the outset. Firm messages needed to be sent to the region's tinpot terrorism abettors and Israel threateners, but neocon New Manifest Destiny delusions involving nation-building and incipient Muslim humanism was not part of it as far as I was concerned anyway.
I do understand timewarps or losses of perspective on this subject, though. I remember the proggies whining about pipeline-seizures and "cultural bigotry" even when it was just the plucky Taliban in the post 9/11 crosshairs, before they started pretending---in a losing effort not to appear to be lockstep pacifist appeasers---that Afghanistan as opposed to horrible Iraq was the "justified" use of American force. Ah, it all seems like yesterday.
wriggle, wriggle, little fish! there are all these piddling distinctions, for all it matters to Israel and the West!
It's true, I find people with schematic viewpoints like yours annoying. My personal cross to bear. Basically a post hoc ergo propter hoc problem. For example, Iran is obviously supporting Hamas, but not Taliban for contingent geopolitical reasons. Similarly, Israel had better hope that it and "the West" form a monolithic bloc, because otherwise shelf life indicators not so encouraging.
Aaron---
First, I didn't "wriggle" from my intended meaning re Iran---you mistook my meaning initially.
Second, whether or not these are "piddling" distinctions is a question of fact. Or orientation. Or priorities. No one claims that territorial and other historical considerations don't cause internecine difficulties which emphasize the "personal" at the expense of good "business". And yes, it's been since Nasser that the Five Families have openly joined in a common enterprise. Then Sadat tried to go legit, and you know the rest.
Speaking of orientation and perspective, Aaron, be careful you don't end up like Donnie Brasco explaining fervently why Lucchese construction graft and murder is different in kind, not degree, from Bonnano heroin trafficking and murder.
Look, anyone who compares a world religion to organized crime families is simply a bigot. Any garden variety bigot will try to tell you their biases are factual. Think on that. Or don't, I really couldn't give a shit.
Aaron---
Yeah, I've noticed the respectful, unbigoted manner in which Judeo-Christianity has been depicted by you and others here over the years. It almost brings a tear to my eye.....laughing at your sanctimony.
But for purposes of my illustration, anyway, the Jews as you know were always prominent in organized crime/religion. Still are. They don't get a pass for their crimes from me, the way Muslims do from you.
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