Ten experts polled by the New York Times present their advice for winning in Afghanistan. Suggestions include “a genuine run-off election,” “empowering local pashtuns” by “political and economic means,” creating a “functioning local justice system with courts, lawyers and jails,” and “establishing strict accountability mechanisms for high officials.” Such nation-building measures are noble, worthy aims. They may well be necessary to achieving our ends in Afghanistan and achieving our ends in Afghanistan may well be necessary to controlling Al Qaeda terrorism. But necessary does not always mean doable, especially by a military determined not to colonize a country. The preconditions for a responsive, relatively honest government and a stable civil society take centuries to evolve. Perhaps if we acted like actual colonizers and unapologetically took over the machinery of government we could remake these tribal lands in a direction more like representative democracy. But we cannot figure out how to change underclass culture in the U.S. and lower the out-of-wedlock birthrate among ghetto residents, or reduce corruption in New Jersey and Chicago. Changing the dynamics of power in Afghanistan is obviously far more difficult, however imperative it might be to do so.
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Meta
Such nation-building measures are noble, worthy aims.
I don’t know about you, but they sound to me like vapid academic blather. Part of the problem is that we have no “ends” in Afghanistan and never have had. We went there to destroy Al Qaeda and we failed to do it. It has taken 7 years for somebody to have the courage to come to grips with that fact, and to figure out that the problem is now in Pakistan, where we aren’t, and where we’re not likely to be anytime soon given the other problems with Iran and our continuing military involvement with Iraq.
But necessary does not always mean doable, especially by a military determined not to colonize a country.
The Soviet Union tried to do just that in Afghanistan and they didn’t have much success. The Brits tried to do it, twice, in the 19th Century and failed. All we can seriously do is give the faction over there that we like some tools and weapons to combat the faction we don’t. As long as there are fundamentalist Muslims willing to do violence to the people who don’t agree with them all we can do is organize and arm those people to fight for themselves. And come to terms with the fact that nothing is certain in life and that they [and, by extention, we] might lose.
The implication that has always been there in our Afghan “policy” that we were somehow going to make fundamentalist Islam go away. That, essentially, is why we are in the current mess over there. This attitude is terminally patronizing to everybody in Afghanistan, including the people we like who are not fundamentalist Muslims. And that’s a large part of the problem. All you have to do is imagine a fundamentalist Muslim army on Long Island trying to do “nation building” and you can get a pretty clear indication of how even our friends in Afghanistan think and talk about us when we are not at the dinner table to hear it.
It is precisely that same patronizing attitude toward “underclass culture”, “ghetto residents”, “out-of-wedlock” mothers,”New Jersey”, and “Chicago” that is a major part of the problem. Anybody who is serious about engaging the first three would do well to spend six months or so volunteering in a local food pantry and actually listening to the particular human beings that are running around in your mind with those labels stuck on their forehead or their chest. Do that, and you will begin to acquire some actual and practical information about the problems you are trying to solve.
And if you really want to find out something that might help corruption in New Jersey and Chicago, you could start investigating how money, power, crime, and politics work on your side of the Hudson River.
But, at least one thing is cause for hope. To hear post-Neocon conservatives actually talking about the limits of military power to remake the world suggests that everybody else might be able to get their attention for some serious discussion about real foreign policy.
I don’t know about you, but they sound to me like vapid academic blather.
For once, Joseph and I agree. If Obama isn’t looking for a good time to leave Afghanistan, he ought to be. Unfortunately, he’ll catch hell from a lot of self-serving neocon fruitbats who got us in the mess in the first place.
We do know what needs to be done to turn Afghanistan into a tolerable country. And we also know how to clean up our inner-cities and create a climate for a tolerable life for all our people.
The problem in each instance is the same: we lack the will to do so.
Well, Mark, you may know it, but I certainly don’t. All such things depend on getting the people you are trying to “reform” to cooperate with you. They may have ideas that markedly differ from yours about what they need.
We do know what needs to be done to turn Afghanistan into a tolerable country.
Yeah, but we’d rather not resort to nuclear weapons just yet.
Nation-building in a tribal culture, which Afghanistan is, is by definition pointless, since tribal cultures don’t accept the concept of nationhood.
The experience of the European empires taught us that building a nation where none exists takes over 100 years. India is a stable, viable country now, but that comes from the long British domination via the Raj. Before that, India was made up of smaller states. The only other cases where nation building works is in pre-existing nations like post WW2 Germany and Japan.
Mark, you may know it, but I certainly don’t.
As far as the inner cities are concerned: abolish the welfare state, separate school kids by intelligence and behavior, cut government red-tape for entrepreneurs, harsh sentencing for both violent and property crimes, and accepting the fact that a lot of people will wind up in jail.
They may have ideas that markedly differ from yours about what they need.
On that, we agree, which is why the problems aren’t being solved.
As far as the inner cities are concerned: abolish the welfare state, separate school kids by intelligence and behavior, cut government red-tape for entrepreneurs, harsh sentencing for both violent and property crimes, and accepting the fact that a lot of people will wind up in jail.
I would point out that we already incarcerate about 1 out of every 100 of us for some of the longest sentences in the world and now with real “truth in sentencing” for repeat offenders–who commit the majority of crime. And we do this at an extraordinary expense. It seems to me that we are quite objectively reaching the point of diminishing returns. Convicts don’t pay taxes, and at 1 out of every 25 of us in the joint the 24 who do are going to be really strapped to pay for anything but prisons.
Intelligence does not keep children from crime or drugs. Teen crime is unsupervised opportunity combined with poor impulse control. Mere segregation in school by intelligence or behavior is beside the point because the problems largely occur out of school. That is why Obama [who has actually worked in such places] has pushed the concept of as much school time as possible–to a point that seems almost ridiculous to the the rest of us. But in the case of the ghettos he is correct–unsupervised opportunity is the major problem.
I presume by “abolishing the welfare state” you mean eliminating Medicaid, Food Assistance, Section 8 [housing vouchers], and Unemployment Compensation. There really isn’t too much more “welfare” than that out there anymore. So let’s take them in order. No Medicaid means everyone who is poor, working or not, can no longer see private physicians. Period. All medical care for the poor will then take place in free clinics and hospital emergency rooms, where service cannot be refused. I would imagine the triage lines at the Emergency Rooms would be out the door–they already are at the 2 day a week free clinics now. Hopefully a path for the EMT’s to go through will be established.
No food assistance means a reduction of about 50% of purchased food among the working poor. My experience has been that charity food pantries, at the most, hold 3-5% of what the poor actually purchase with Food Assistance, so that would be gone at the snap of a finger. At the very least it would be a start on curing the obesity epidemic. But I think it also would be a massive stimulus to violent crime for real reasons–the fact that you are chronically hungry.
But at least you’ll get fed in prison, though it is very likely that the prison meals will cost the taxpayers [if there are any taxpayers left] considerably more than the food assistance. Costs for such things as paying someone to cook all that food, or to supervise the select few convicts who work in the kitchen.
Eliminating Section 8 means a massive increase in real rents for a large segment of the poor. I imagine it would cut at least another 20% off that food budget. So now we’re operating on 30% of normal food purchases and a massive increase in utility shutoffs and, sooner or later, homelessness.
Now you take all this and combine it with the fact that the inner cities have high rates of single parent families, usually mothers. So mom works two jobs now, a day job and a night job–if she can find them. Where are the kids? On the street, of course, with the same amount of poor impulse control and far more unsupervised opportunity. Unlimited unsupervised opportunity among other kids who are also chronically hungry.
Of course, everybody is subject to getting fired, particularly if your poor and it’s a recession, so Mom gets fired. From both jobs. We won’t see her in the unemployment line because there will be none and her income will go down to nothing, nada, zero at the snap of a finger. No money at all to buy food, pay her radically increased rent, and get the utilities turned back on. After a month or so, she’ll be evicted and the family can all go to the homeless shelter, if they can find room, since a lot of other people have lost their jobs at the same time in the ‘hood. It’s a recession after all.
And not just in the ‘hood. Since we’ve eliminated the welfare state, everybody who loses a job goes down to no income whatever at the snap of a finger. Well, the food goes on the credit cards and doesn’t come off until they are maxed. The house payment and the car payment and now the full health insurance premium [no employer contributions] come out of the bank account where nothing is going in any longer. Maybe they’re lucky and its a two income family or maybe their really unlucky and both of them lose the job at once.
And there is no one to turn to for help. No one. No Medicaid, no food assistance, no housing help, no unemployment compensation. Probably a month before the repo man comes for the car, probably 3-6 before the house is foreclosed And the homeless shelters are full. Very full.
Entrepreneurship? Well you have to have something to sell and in the ‘hood in a recession there really is not much to sell and everybody has far less money. Everybody. There’s only two sure-fire commodities that you can get access to that always are in demand: drugs and women. And if you’re that kind of entrepreneur your doing a lot of cash business with the cash constantly on your person. So you have to carry a gun since the streets are full of homeless, hungry, desperate, teens, with poor impulse control. And mom is in the emergency room for dehydration and chronic starvation.
We can easily cut the red tape for this sort of entrepreneur, now can’t we? Legalize drugs and prostitution, liberalize the firearms laws–particularly concealed carry, get them small business loans to expand their territories, procure newer cars, and arm themselves a little better, and get the IRS completely off their backs–no payments by them to keep all those people in prison.
They’re sharp cookies. They have to be to stay out of the morgue. So they are probably the intelligent kids we segregated in the schools a few years back.
All it takes is will.
I would also point out that
ive the underclass incentives to stop from reproducing? “As far as the inner cities are concerned: abolish the welfare state” (John)
I think its time to put this tired old Conservative idea to bed. The underclass that Heather is talking about isn’t going to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” They can’t do it! They’re literally biologally unable to do so. There are no easy answers for this issue, but I think at the very least we should g
“As far as the inner cities are concerned: abolish the welfare state” (John)
I think its time to put this tired old Conservative idea to bed. The underclass that Heather is talking about isn’t going to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” They can’t do it! They’re literally biologically unable to do so. There are no easy answers for this issue, but I think at the very least we should give the underclass incentives to stop from reproducing?
Comment # 9 was a screw up
Heather, it ain’t just ghetto residents any more. We’ve all known about “them” and “their” insane out of wedlock birthrate for at least 30 years, but now it’s “us” too. I’m fairly well travelled and make a point of speaking to every sort of person and I can tell you Heather that matters are IN-SANE. You can see the numbers for yourself of course but numbers are sterile and boring. I know the people. Amond the white lower class in urban areas like nyc, suburban areas like Gurnee IL and rural landscapes like Jeff Davis County GA the tacit consensus among half of female high schoolers is that childbearing and marriage are entirely separate endeavors, one of which they’ll do and one of which they hope to do “when I meet the right guy and fall in love and the time is right, but for sure not for at least ten years”.
Heather, I know these people. Promiscuity, women’s “liberation” and the like have destroyed the American family. To be honest, the loss of “God” had a big hand in it too. I know that I have a strangely prejudiced view on this subject (being as I happen to be strongly agnostic, rational,, single and liberty-minded) but I can’t help but claim that Mormons, traditional Muslims (in safe societies) and chabad jews are, by and large, happier than we are. ESPECIALLY their women.
(And please smack any commenter who attempt to anecdate his way out of this. Studies indicate precisly what we all suspect – that living more closely in accordance with one’s evolved biology leads to a more naturally happy life. Even if some Chabad jew became a gay homeless guy, some mormon couple killed their kids and muslims are mean.)
that living more closely in accordance with one’s evolved biology
The genetic variety among modern human beings is far, far less than any other primate. Only one basic, closely related, strain of us has survived. Biologically we are as close to identical as 6 billion members of one mammal species is ever likely to be. Insofar as we have “evolved” to be anything, we have evolved to be highly adaptable generalists. There is no one right way, or happy way, to live.
What is necessary for happiness is “meaning” and meaning is the answer to the question Why? A nunnery can be just as happy as a “traditional” nuclear family group [which is what you are actually talking about] as can an extended polyandrous clan or tribe with shared tribal experience of some form of ritual testing trial for men, of menses and childbearing for women, and of a path of pain and esctacy for shamen.
This last, by the way, is probably the oldest form of these possibilities and insofar as any one of them is what we “evolved” to be, that’s the best candidate. But none of them are very good candidates and the explicit fact that the way we live can be one of dozens of different ways is testimony to how poor a candidate for the best option for human “biology” all of the ways are.
What characterizes all of the happy options is that they offer answers to the question Why? Not quite the same answers and no one of them is the “right” answer. But they are the “real” answer for those who have found it. The truly unhappy are the ones who have no basic answer at all.
Insofar as all these unwed pregnacies are clearly disturbing you, you should be glad that they are not nature. What you are talking about is culture not “biology”. Culture can change. In fact it can change quite rapidly. Consider what has happened everywhere on the planet over the past 500 years and you will see what I mean. Five hundred years is merely the blink of Nature’s eye–and only 20-25 generations in human terms. We’ve been around ever so much longer than that.
But, really, I think Bradlaugh has your own condition taped in his book We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. The pessimism he speaks of is, essentially, the inability to answer the question Why?
And I think that your inability to do it is what is really bugging you.
@Joseph Marshall
“What is necessary for happiness is “meaning” and meaning is the answer to the question Why?” (Joseph Marshall).
This is good insight. If we have true meaning then nothing else really matters. I’ll take it a step further and say that our meaning must give the impression of being everlasting. And this doesn’t have to be an “after life.” It can be the continuation of an entity. If one feels as if they contributed to the survival of this entity, then a part of them survives with the entity’s existence.
I would point out that we already incarcerate about 1 out of every 100 of us … It seems to me that we are quite objectively reaching the point of diminishing returns.
Since at least 2 percent of the population are outright sociopaths:
American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. pp. 645–650. ISBN 0-89042-061-0.
I would say that we are far from the point that there are no more returns. 1 in 100 is just not that many people. I’d bet that the number of people in the inner city who belong there is much more than 1 in 100.
Intelligence does not keep children from crime or drugs.
Actually, the correlation between high IQ and low crime rates, even among people raised in the same socioeconomic status, is well documented. For instance, criminals average 10 IQ points lower than siblings that are not criminals.
Jensen, Arthur A. The g Factor
I presume by “abolishing the welfare state” you mean eliminating Medicaid, Food Assistance, Section 8 [housing vouchers], and Unemployment Compensation.
Yup, that’s what I mean. All of these programs have created a permanent underclass of people who are completely dependent on the government. Get rid of the crutch, and most people will learn to walk, really. Some won’t, and charitable giving is sure to increase when (1) people have more money since it’s not getting taxed, and (2) people know that their charity really matters since the state won’t pick up the slack. Some will turn to crime. See above.
Entrepreneurship? Well you have to have something to sell and in the ‘hood in a recession there really is not much to sell and everybody has far less money.
We’re in a recession, but most people are still working, and the stores are still open. There is always room for entrepreneurship.
“Convicts don’t pay taxes, and at 1 out of every 25 of us in the joint the 24 who do are going to be really strapped to pay for anything but prisons.”
“That is why Obama [who has actually worked in such places] has pushed the concept of as much school time as possible–to a point that seems almost ridiculous to the the rest of us. But in the case of the ghettos he is correct–unsupervised opportunity is the major problem.”
You may or may not realize it, but it sounds like advocating imprisoning kids in school while lamenting that so many adults are in real prisons. Either way we pay to keep them off the streets, non-working, non-productive, and at our expense.