Lesson (yet to be) Learned

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek

Our American experience has been that when an economy has civil order, viable supply chains, stable currencies and functioning markets everybody benefits. So we give that to Afghanistan and they'll be prepared to fend for themselves. We have just assumed that others abroad would agree. From the collective experience of the last 150 years of British, Soviet and American occasional presence in Afghanistan, one lesson is as undeniable as it is hard to swallow: civil order, viable supply chains, stable currencies and functioning markets are much harder to deliver than a pallet of ammunition and a briefcase full of cash. 

We have to accept that you cannot obtain the former with the latter alone. Nor can we assume them to be obtainable by any means given current civil conditions. 

How shall we improve those conditions? What is preferred? By whom? Hamid Karzai's alleged Iranian handlers? Our State Department? The House Select Subcommittee on Agricultural? Regional warlords? Mullahs? Sheiks? Pakistani Intelligence? Our NATO allies? New Delhi?  Damascus?

It couldn't be a bigger stake game. These are Planetary stakes. There are knives in every boot, worse in some. Every player has lives and treasure on the line. And we are the newest player at this table.

I understand why National Security Advisers are so often tempted to say, screw it, "Waitress, er, I mean, Congress? I'll have a pallet of ammunition and another briefcase full of cash..."

Partisan epithets won't untangle this. We, not just we the government, but we, you and I and your brother Vinnie, and our fellow-citizens with whom we share the bus bench or the golf course, whoever and wherever we are, need to think, and talk this (and all world affairs, for that matter) through with the best intentions we can gather, and we need to keep thinking this through as conditions change. 

The LAST thing we need on such shifting sands is ANY fixed ideological approach. It's ineffective  to declare a domestically-marketable foreign policy and then just refer back to it henceforth reflexively. America may withdraw militarily, but we will always share a planet. And it is the only one we have to bequeath to our descendants. We get this wrong and they'll live to regret it.

(c) 2010 Craig Chereek