Further into Afghanistan

So generally speaking I don't exactly have an opinion on the doubling down in Afghanistan, other than a certainty that it will all end in tears in the short term and only maybe with some kind of unflashy satisfaction in the long term (if we make it to the long term). This certainty is so far in the background it doesn't even seem like an opinion on a policy so much as a fact of life--in my opinion, the exact nature of what we do in Afghanistan in the short term doesn't matter. We're not going to see the results that would make us happy (and for many of us, that happiness would be ambivalent at best) anytime soon, no matter what; long-term, I'm not really sure exactly what we want outside of vague notions of "stability" and misleading (because impossible) rhetoric about poppies, and I don't know enough to think effectively about what we ought to be doing.

All that said, I think Andrew Sullivan is spot-on here:

As long as we can prevent terrorist bases forming that could target the US mainland, I do not see a reason for this kind of human and institutional enmeshment. My fear is that it multiplies our enemies, drags us further into the Pakistan nightmare, and will never Westernize a place like Afghanistan without decades-long imperial engagement. Secondly, I do not believe that Iraq is as stable as some optimists do, and fear that we will not be able to get out as cleanly as the president currently envisages. To be trapped more deeply in both places in a year's time seems Bush-like folly to me.

And here, where he notes that David Brooks has been drinking the Kool-Aid again:

Remember that David was only just warning of Obama taking on too many projects at once. But another expanded war in another distant country against another close-to-undefeatable foe? Bring it on! Everything is too much except empire. That's the American DNA.

Brooks' piece is called "The Winnable War," and it is--I was going to be arch and say, "it is, well, uh, interesting," but actually it is worse than that. By my count, it includes:

1. Basic presentation of Afghanistan as inherently broken and problematic
2.Basic presentation of the U.S. effort there as misdirected, dysfunctional, and largely composed of chickens with their heads cut off who also draw flow charts.
3. The big "BUT WAIT! I'VE BEEN CONVERTED!" followed by:

A. Afghanis are just like us! They want what we want! They "detest the insurgents and root for American success"; they have treated us as "friends, allies, and liberators from the very beginning." Look, I'm not here to make a case for the alien and hostile nature of Afghani culture or anything, I am just very, very wary of generalizing this statement to the whole of Afghanistan. It may well be true of the Afghani individuals a prominent American columnist meets when touring the country in whatever the equivalent of the Green Zone is; I just think if it were true of the whole country, well, things would look very different right now. I mean, the one quote from a Real Live Afghani person is from the defense minister, who has a lot of interests other than veracity in talking this way. I think it must be quite obvious that while any broad statement about what Afghanis are like and what they want is fraught, as it would be of any group, arguing that generally speaking Afghanis are rooting for American success seems heroic to the point of idiocy. Any talk of how we just need to educate them as to our aims and their interests at this juncture to get them on our side--which is the only plausible explanation for how people who want what we want and are rooting for us continue to be at war with us--will cause me to scream. In addition, I find it very, very hard to believe that Afghanis want their country occupied, or that "They think we owe them all this." If I were to generalize about what Afghanis want--and, clearly, I am about to--it seems likely that if most Afghanis feel they are owed anything, it is to be left alone.

B. Happily, we are already far along in the trial-and-error process of trying every possible error before trying maybe something that might work. Goooo Yankee know-how! This is working out so great! And we even figured out what our priorities are (which we are totally correct about this time, guys, don't even worry about it) after only like eight years! Rad!

C. Romanticizing the culture.

This country had decent institutions before the Communist takeover. It hasn’t fallen into chaos, the way Iraq did, because it has a culture of communal discussion and a respect for village elders. The Afghans have embraced the democratic process with enthusiasm.

Remember, at the start of this piece the country was inherently problematic; the interposing litany of American commitment, lessons learned, and high hopes allow the author to now employ the trope of how great Afghani culture is at its heart as a reason for why we, the Americans, will be successful in eradicating particular conditions of Afghanistan (low rates of education, high rates of terrorism and insurgency, the Taliban) which we are, of course, authorized and correct in separating from culture and deeming Bad. (I am also not here to defend the Taliban as nice guys, or to say that the U.S. doesn't have a clear interest in getting rid of them; I just think it's awfully convenient that all the Good bits about Afghanistan are inherently part of the culture and all the Bad bits are temporary ills we are there to dispel.)

And then, of course, D: the Yankee Doodle moment.

I finish this trip still skeptical but also infected by the optimism of the truly impressive people who are working here. And one other thing:

After the trauma in Iraq, it would have been easy for the U.S. to withdraw into exhaustion and realism. Instead, President Obama is doubling down on the very principles that some dismiss as neocon fantasy: the idea that this nation has the capacity to use military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states.

Foreign policy experts can promote one doctrine or another, but this energetic and ambitious response — amid economic crisis and war weariness — says something profound about America’s DNA.

"Withdraw into...realism"? I know he is referring to the foreign policy philosophy and not simply good sense, but did he even reread that before publishing it?

"Infected" is right.

ETA: Larison seems to have come to much the same conclusion.

Some odds and ends

1. Bob Herbert defends liberals. I think Obama should too. You want a strong argument for voting for "the most liberal Senator in Congress"?

Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.

[...]

Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.

[...]

It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.

Self-hatred is a terrible thing. [...]

Liberals need to get over it.

2. David Brooks has some campaign advice: Surprise Me Most. Weirdest takes all.

3. Finally, FiveThirtyEight (Polling Done Right) has some PR suggestions.

I think they're all correct. Which matters oh so much.


Finally, we've been so pathetic about waging any kind of sensible War On Terror that many in the Arab world don't believe we're really doing it. Instead, conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. and Israelis planned it as an excuse to invade Iraq for oil or wage a general war on all Muslims. NOW can we all agree that the efforts, prejudices, and rhetoric have been COMPLETELY MISDIRECTED? I mean, fuck. Whatever happened to hearts and minds?

ETA: Thank god for Robert Gates. We're not going to go poke Russia in the eye and run away giggling.

As usual, David Brooks falls half into making sense and half into making me want to punch him in the face.

The observation that Obama has a huge fundraising advantage among "creative classes," "information workers," and the educated is not all that unexpected except for the degree to which he's popular among hedge funders and corporate types. The key here, according to Brooks, is education and training--people who came up from liberal areas, went to "left-leaning institutions" like Harvard (excuse me?) and now want to see people like themselves--educated, liberal, savvy types in government, not "people who used to run Halliburton and are backed by evangelicals."

The crucial thing that I think Brooks is missing here is the following: All these people have access to information (information workers? get it?). They, I would conjecture, are more likely to follow the news closely, to be plugged into the state of the world around them, and to accept experiential as well as empirical evidence of inequity or problems in the country--their educations trained them to believe statistics and to believe an aggregate of experiential accounts. This is the picture the Democratic party is working with.

Meanwhile, the Republican party continues to harp on social alarm buttons like gay marriage and taxes without any reference to reality because that's the only agenda they have to go on. The Republican party has largely enacted the policy platform of the conservative movement, and it was a disaster for everyone but the management-employed, country club set (those who tend to give to McCain). Now they're reduced to OMG GAYZ smoke and mirrors to try to get the electorate to allow them to continue doing the same. I highly doubt that people whose education, training, profession, and so daily lives involve empirical analysis, adaptive thinking, and basic reality-based information analysis are likely to buy that kind of strategy, regardless of their various positions on abortion.

In no way is this meant to denigrate those who do not fit this description as somehow plebeian or dumb. All I am trying to point out is that the kind of occupation Brooks identifies is necessarily a predisposition in this particular political climate to vote Democrat.

Oh, wow. I took a break from writing this and found some really scary statistics totally by accident (well, okay, by reading a political and cultural blog, but without intent):

Only 2 in 5 voters can name the three branches of the federal government.

--Nearly half (49%) of Americans think the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution.

--Only 1 in 7 can find Iraq on a map.

--A majority (70%) continued to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, even after the 9/11 Commission reported that the claim was groundless.

--Only 1 in 5 know that there are 100 federal senators.

Right now I'm primarily interested in "Nearly half (49%) of Americans think the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution." If you were of this opinion and you heard all the hullabaloo over FISA, for example, you might wonder what the big deal was. The President can do whatever he wants as long as he says so, right? Back to whatever I was doing. That's eminently logical and a fair allocation of one's mental energy, especially since approximately 98.24% of all political hullabaloo is bullshit.

But the kind of professional that Brooks describes is highly unlikely to hold this kind of misconception and so will understand fairly quickly and intuitively what the problem is, again chasing them toward a Democratic vote.


Going back to Brooks, his conclusion that this is "a battle of the elites" is not entirely wrong--information and education elites vs. (his words) country club and corporate elites. I'd say each does have a mistrust of the other. At the same time, the divisions between these two camps are not nearly as clear or as deep as pundits would like us to believe, and even if they were I think it's a misdirection of the information Brooks is using as a starting point. What's important here isn't that the latte-sippers are coming to take over the power of the country-clubbers; it's that the people with information and analytical occupations are trending Democratic.

In addition, Brooks' conclusion that once the power grab is complete, the claims of the liberals' re: unions, economic equality, etc. will fall by the wayside is almost certainly true to one degree or another--we all know about campaign promises. However, I think that this class of voter and politician is more likely to have a systemic understanding and positive valuation of how economic betterment for others results in economic betterment for them, too, in the long term, as opposed to robbing the bank in the short term a la BushCo. Whether or not such people are more likely to be governed by altruism is a question I will not mire myself with.