Flash Post #7
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TRIGGER WARNING: for vampires and anyone else who doesn’t like having reflective surfaces pointed at them.
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I never was in Afghanistan. Iraq was my war. But reading the news lately, I might almost be forgiven if, in a momentary lapse, I swore I was a refugee from some alternate reality in which the Iraq War never happened. Like some sort of Man in the High Castle situation. Because how else could I possibly have these memories of things happening in Iraq, and yet see it all playing out today in Afghanistan? Surely we would not have let the same thing happen twice (but faster and worse)?
A Moment to Reflect…
Do not be alarmed, friends. I have not lost my grip on this reality which I presume we share. I am aware–painfully–that the United States of America did, in fact, manage to invade two completely different countries (as I have it on good authority that Iraq and Afghanistan are) and commence to waging two completely different wars (early efforts at commingling and obfuscation notwithstanding), under the same US President, even during the same election cycle. It just happened that when they were handing out cups of off-brand flavored drink mix circa 2010, I picked the one labeled Iraq, and so there I went. So instead of a new shock, it’s déjà vu.
On the bright side, my experience in Iraq has already afforded me the opportunity to wrap my head around and absorb what it’s like to conduct military operations in someone else’s country, rely on members of the local populace and the nation’s reconstituted military to do my job while simultaneously having cause to fear that maybe not all of them are so grateful for my help (I always listened attentively when I walked past or turned my back), to come out safely on the other side after having had such fears go unrealized, and then watch what happens in the aftermath. To watch a war supposedly end, the last US troops withdrawn, and see the fissures kept together for a time by force of arms be torn open, the nation once more erupting into violence in the aftermath of our departure. Of my departure. Like gravity being removed from the Earth and seeing it all at once surrendered to the enormous pressures within, no more kept in check, the mantel and core expanding as a molten mass into the void of space, consuming the surface and our domain along with it. No more trace of what we have done. Only the wreckage of the Earth.
…and Breathe
Apocalyptic visions aside, in a few places on social media I have seen accusations of cowardice levied against the people of Afghanistan. Whether stated explicitly or put forward as thinly veiled “questions,” I simply cannot join in making such accusations, even when levied solely against the military-aged males of the population who may have received training, for a couple reasons.
First, I find it difficult to fault individual Afghans–everyday people looking to live their lives, not the Taliban–for being reluctant to risk their lives for the purpose of maintaining a system imposed on them by an outside power (that is, the US). I do not know them, I do not know their experiences, and I do not know their calculus as they are confronted with a threat that I have never faced, and indeed no American is likely to have faced. Even members of the US military who have deployed to Afghanistan (unless they happen to be recent immigrants) will be exceedingly unlikely to have been confronted with the possibility of living out their life under the thumb of the Taliban or, maybe, some more or less regressive local chieftain. To be clear, I am perfectly fine with judging the Taliban and likeminded regimes as morally deficient and unworthy of rule, whatever the outcome in Afghanistan. But at the end of the day, I won’t be the one made to choose (if a choice is even offered) between ending up dead in a ditch on the one hand, or living under the rule of… whoever comes out on top on the other.
(And here I’ll spare a line to remind everyone the Camp Speicher Massacre happened.)
Second, I do not grant that rational self-interest necessarily goes out the window as a justification for decisions made under duress. That is, just because a decision must be made under extraordinarily trying circumstances, and the decision reached happens to be preservative of one’s own life, that does not mean that the decision was not also the best decision one could make on behalf of one’s family and one’s community, in addition to oneself. Because not only can I not say what affect resistance to the Taliban might have, if offered, (save that the dead are generally considered to offer the least resistance of all) but I also cannot say with confidence that life for the average Afghan would be substantially different if the Taliban resumed its pre-war position of nominal control. Lest we forget, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan essentially began by joining an already in-progress effort to cast off the Taliban from within the nation’s borders. And as others have observed, tribal affiliations do matter quite a lot in Afghanistan, and local conditions may vary depending on who exactly is in charge of a particular area. Whether a particular chieftain or tribal leader offers nominal allegiance to the Taliban or some US-backed government, Kabul may be a long way away, with many mountains in between, and Afghanistan is not a country known for its transportation infrastructure–at least not in a good way. Which is not to say that I expect we’ll see liberal democracies sprout up in the more far-flung valleys of Afghanistan, only that it is somewhat questionable just how much “better” life was for people even during the US occupation.
So I don’t think it’s fitting to call the people, or even just the military-age males, of Afghanistan cowards for staying home.
Alternate Conclusions
In addition to accusations of cowardice, I have seen some comments on social media suggesting that, if the people or even just the men of Afghanistan are not cowards, then they must surely be complicit in Taliban rule–perhaps, by and large, even enthusiastic supporters. As if they must “like” living under the Taliban. In rejecting this hypothesis, I must state that here again it matters that living conditions in Afghanistan may vary depending upon local conditions, and that was just as true during the US-led occupation as it was before and will be even still, regardless of who ends up in Kabul. Which means that not only can we not say what conditions individual Afghan males may be facing with their families in their particular place of residence: we cannot even say for certain that conditions would improve if they succeed in fighting off the Taliban. Consider, by way of analogy, the plight of American people of color fighting for freedom abroad and returning home to racism again, and again, and again. Point being, if it’s a choice between different local leaders, or even just the same local leaders offering fealty to different governments in Kabul, but otherwise leading the same, threadbare, day-to-day existence regardless, why bother risking anything for that system, let alone one’s life and the lives of one’s whole family by association? It’s not enough for the roughly one-third of the population that lives in, around, and between Kandahar and Kabul to have lives made better or worse by a change in the central government. The government must be able to reach the nation to have a nation.
Finally, whatever happens, the people of Afghanistan will be the ones who have to live (hopefully) with the outcome in their own country, irrespective of blame or guilt. For them, how they respond is a matter of life or death, with choices they cannot escape by fleeing to points west and seeking shelter in air-conditioned rooms set far apart from any active warzone. This is where I must ask the reader, particularly if still clinging to the belief that the situation in Afghanistan can only be explained by cowardice or complicity, to look inward and reflect on what has brought the United States of America and the people of Afghanistan to this point where we appear bound to part ways under such dire circumstances. At such a juncture, I don’t find it laudable to sit back and extoll the virtues of courage under fire when we (you and I) are quite simply… not. That is, we are not under fire right now. And even those of my fellow Americans who have been under fire cannot possibly know what it is like to have to choose sides in a civil war where, no matter who wins, the end result will be living in a country as underdeveloped and neglected as Afghanistan, following so many decades of war and instability, so often under the influence of foreign interventionists acting to the detriment of the people (lest we forget the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and our own meddling in that affair).
My Conclusion
What we are seeing now, the seemingly unchecked resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, is by no means sufficient to warrant writing off the people of Afghanistan as cowards, nor is it reasonable conclude that they must, in the alternative, be desirous or deserving of a life under Taliban rule. Thus far, the only conclusion I am willing to arrive at under the strength of such evidence is that there has been a colossal failure of US policy at some point in the last twenty years. Beyond that, it would appear the people of Afghanistan are to be distinguished from ourselves solely on account of having been born somewhere beyond our borders, to people who were themselves not then our fellow citizens. And yet on that account my nation, the United States of America, stands ready to abandon them to the Taliban as if they had invited such a fate upon themselves through their own moral failings. Even if that were so (and to my mind it is not), it would be the height of depravity to respond to the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan by flinging accusations of universal cowardice or complicity at those who must now or very soon will have to make life or death decisions for themselves, their families, and their communities under the most extraordinary of circumstances.
At the risk of channeling my own inner Man for all Seasons, regardless of how we found Afghanistan, I fear we have we left that country with such a wind blowing that not one of us sitting in judgment from afar could even hope to stand upright against it. And with the last US forces in Afghanistan on track to be withdrawn any day now–perhaps with a brief bump to support evacuating the whole damn embassy–it seems none of us will. I do, however, want to conclude by saying that I don’t know what the right answer is here. It may be, as I opined about the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and the ensuing civil war there, that such an outcome was inevitable from the start, that the moment we invaded we set the country on a course to calamity whether we stayed two, twenty, or two-hundred years. I only know that it hurts to see what has followed, once more, in our wake.
Songs of Babylon 