The Things that Don’t Make Sense to Me.
I have this desire to write some hi-faluting, pretentious or psuedo-pretentious bit about current foreign policy, culling half-heartedly and half-bakedly from Virgil and Thucydides.
But I don’t want to go through with it now. I’m tempted to take a riff from Pinkwater’s “Young Adults” — where they, dejected and rejecte, the Young Dada Ducks must go to their “Doctor Wizardo” comics for spiritual guidance.
But I know next to nothing of the bastardizations from Greek history and mythology that mainstream comics has to offer. Thor? Wonder Woman? Nay. (I did pick up a few of Jack Kirby’s “Devil Dinosaur” comics from the bargain bin… I like that comic.)
Things I wonder about.
The rationale for Iraq, the current rationale and a reason B that Bush gave politically and a fig-leaf item in the PNAC Document: “Build a democratic nation in the heart of the middle East that will serve as a model for the Muslim World… Freedom draining the Terrorists out… and…”
Wasn’t there this war in Afghanistan? A war that was far less controversial than the one in Iraq? In a nation that has, in its past, a bonafide Democratic tradition (right before the Soviets invaded — the quaint, rugged democracy we like to pretend that we’ve built for them… when you hear the occasional story about Afghan pop culture icons– say, well-known Afghan singer — they come from that period of Afghanistan’s history…)?
Why the heck could Afghanistan not have been this “Democratic Nation” in the Muslim World? I thought that was part of the point.
Nay. Everyone knows pretty much that this administration’s hearts were never in Afghanistan. (Notice the Rumsfeld press conference two entries down … And they say we shouldn’t worry about Bin Laden indeed… It’s all about Iraq right from the start!)
I can’t find the chart showing the amount per capita for various nations “post-conflict” (nebulous in the case of Afghanista) but… that nation is at the bottom of the heap.
And… I’ve never been sure quite what to make of this:
SY HERSH: Okay, the cream of the crop of Al Qaeda caught in a town called Konduz which is near … it’s one little village and it’s a couple hundred kilometers, 150 miles from the border of Pakistan. And I learned this story frankly– through very, very clandestine operatives we have in the Delta Force and other very…
We were operating very heavily with a small number of men, three, 400 really in the first days of the war. And suddenly one night when they had everybody cornered in Konduz– the special forces people were told there was a corridor that they could not fly in. There was a corridor sealed off to– the United States military sealed off a corridor. And it was nobody could shoot anybody in this little lane that went from Konduz into Pakistan. And that’s how I learned about it. I learned about it from a military guy who wanted to fly helicopters and kill people and couldn’t do it that day.
JANE WALLACE: So, we had the enemy surrounded, the special forces guys are helping surround this enemy.
SY HERSH: They’re whacking everybody they can whack that looks like a bad guy.
JANE WALLACE: And suddenly they’re told to back off–
SY HERSH: From a certain area–
JANE WALLACE: — and let planes fly out to Pakistan.
SY HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, 10, maybe 12 more– or more heavily weighted– Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated– no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe more. I’ve heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only– Al Qaeda but they were also– you see the Pakistani ISI was– the military advised us to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out.
And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden’s immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation.
JANE WALLACE: How high up was that evacuation authorized?
SY HERSH: I am here to tell you it was authorized — Donald Rumsfeld who — we’ll talk about what he said later — it had to be authorized at the White House. But certainly at the Secretary of Defense level.
AND then… According to MSNBC.com (2/18/02) “officers of the 82nd airborne division and elements of the 101st— pleaded with the generals running the war to have their men dropped along the Afghan-Pakistan border region to cut off the retreat of al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden. To the fury of these officers, their pleas went unanswered, turned aside by the high probability of casualties.”
….
It appears that the great success of the Iraq War was in convincing Colonel Qaddafi, the Dictator of Libya, to dismantle his programs for devloping weapons of mass destruction.
For a brief, shining moment, I heard this message: “Qaddafi has learned the lessons of Iraq. And you notice that North Korea and Iran are pretty quiet these days…”
Yes. North Korea has learned the lessons of the Iraq War.
Which, as far as I can tell: we can topple dictators, particularly if their military is about the size of the Idaho National Guard. At that point, we really don’t… know… what… to do.
At which point, we can alienate that nation’s population… and… lose a war through perpetual bombing?
What lesson did Iran learn? “Better build up the arsenal… FAST” and “We like that ‘Pre-emptive War’ Rhetoric! Let’s goof around with it a bit.”
…..
Actually, about Iran. In January of 2002, they had a moderate Reform-minded government (naturally restrained by the Islamic hierarchy), the hardliners on the outs a bit, a population that had the greatest of sympathies toward the US population for 9/11, and a burgeoning student population enthralled with the promises of the West. Sure, their government had disgusting elements in it… but…
Question: What was the point in calling Iran an “Axe of Evil”? Doesn’t that mostly just feeds into the goddamned hardliners, and reinforces their power.
Did you catch this statement by some Pentagon official (perhaps even Rumsfeld) at the time of the somewhat overhyped Student Demonstrations? “Even if Iran develops a Westernized Democracy, we’d still have to be weary of them, because Iran has a history such that they’ve developed a sense of destiny to them… the Persian Mystique…”
My thought then was “Wow. Those bastards are hedging their bets!”