The Value of Valour

One of America's most highly respected senior news commentators and journalists, George Will, recently wrote a piece for publication in the Washington Post whose content quite impressed National Public Radio. The piece was also re-published in Canada's National Post. It was titled "Knowing when to stop in Afghanistan", and it was an intriguing item. Like many, if not most Americans, Mr. Will believes that his country should pull out of Afghanistan, the sooner the better.

Of course, Americans are not alone in their apprehensions about remaining in a country whose prospects for what the West might consider 'normalization' through responsible governance country-wide, inclusive of safety and security for its continually embattled citizens which appears, on the evidence - and there is plenty of it - that it will remain an elusive prospect. It is all very well to fantasize on the basis of human rights and emotive concern for others.

Reality, in Afghanistan, presents otherwise. Basically, it is a political-religious matter. And by intervening as the United States has done, in the affairs of the country - initially admittedly, for the purpose of ousting a fanatical Islamist regime that succoured and supported al-Qaeda whose contempt for the most powerful nation on earth was experienced on that infamous 9/11 - it took upon itself an impossible task.

Invasions of foreign countries are never neat affairs. Closely inspected, the U.S.-approved current government is merely another governance-inadequate political party in lieu of the Taliban. But one which does not make common cause with al-Qaeda. But which, nevertheless, approves of human-rights-oppressive legislation to ensure that it has the support of fundamentalist Afghans. The invasion/occupation replaced one failed regime with another.

But the enterprise was one in which its partners in 'peace, prosperity' and international civility (absent the predations of rogue regimes and religion-inspired terror-dealing) felt compelled to join. To demonstrate an obligation as an advanced and wealthy bloc of countries toward the well-being and furtherance of other, less fortunate countries.

Most particularly those countries presenting as utterly failed nations whose population groaned under the weight of tyranny. In this instance fanatical religious tyranny. Which, for the most part, reflected the general state of being of a Muslim country mired in medievalism. So they presented their purpose; secondary to routing the forces of al-Qaeda.

No more than does the American public support a continued presence in Afghanistan, does the public of Canada, Britain, Holland, and other NATO countries like Germany and Spain whose resolve to stay the course melted early on. It is a puzzling situation to be sure; stay and battle an insurgency that has the capability of melting into a landscape it knows intimately, or leave and permit the forces of international terror to regroup and strike again?

Well, Mr. Will insists nothing can be gained by the United States, its NATO partners, and UN forces remaining within a situation that has played out timeless instances previously throughout history; the most recent, with the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. History does have an unfortunate habit of repeating itself endlessly. Mostly because human beings are slow learners. In in this particular instance, it's really a case of damned if you do, and damned anyway.

Mr. Will quotes the Dutch commander of coalition forces in Helmand province as saying that the region is such that being there is "like walking through the Old Testament". That would be like finding oneself back in a time when tribal animosities and resulting ongoing attacks to secure wider territorial domains made life rude and primitive with little in the way of safety and security for the vast majority of people living there.

Mr. Will's article points out the poverty of the country whose GDP "is the size of Boise's". Development, he stresses, to be successful is largely dependent on a state of security and that is an element increasingly scarce in Helmand. As it is indeed in Kandahar, where Canadian and Dutch troops are thinly stationed, and now, to their great relief, so are Americans. With security comes the potential for success in development.

With the lack of security - which Afghanistan's own military, being 'best-practies' trained by coalition forces, along with their police (both corrupt agencies, reflecting the larger heritage of corruption throughout the country) have been unable to establish - development remains a hopeful word. Even while Afghanistan's poppy production blooms throughout the two provinces, enriching the Taliban, along with some members of President Hamid Karzai's ruling parliamentarians.

Opiate production is where the real wealth in the country is concentrated. The country's natural resources - its long-suffering population - finds itself able to fend off Taliban depredations through agricultural complicy, and feed itself on the avails of poppy fields. At least the people of Afghanistan have, in their lives of desperation, visual beauty in the incomparable mountainous landscapes and the fields of blooms.

Here's another fact of life. The United States is the world's largest arms producer, as well as representing the major agency of arms proliferation throughout the world, through profitable production and trade. And it is primarily in war situations when the creative wheels work overtime, to produce ever more intelligent and powerful arms. And where better to test the efficacy of these new creations than in the field of active conflict?

Remotely instructed and bombing-efficacious missiles and their technologically intelligent delivery systems deliver the 'wow' factor in weapons productions and sales. They don't necessarily protect the grunts on the ground. And there have been many resolutely courageous military people from coalition forces - along with humanitarian workers and the odd international diplomat who have paid dearly for their presence in Afghanistan.

But you can bet that as much as the United States (primarily) and its allies groan about the illicit growth and trade in poppies enriching their Taliban antagonists, giving them the wherewithal to procure their own weaponry, and to become, in the process, successful drug kingpins, no one talks very much about the U.S. arms industry reaping huge windfalls through the energetic prosecution of this war.