Go Watch/Read This: Rachel Maddow on The Afghanistan War

Some months ago, I tried to say why it is I think Women Can End the Afganistan War.

Now the brilliant Rachel Maddow has managed to lay out, based on facts gathered during her recent visit and live broadcasts from Afghanistan, what's at stake for America if we stay and why there are strong moral imperatives for us to leave. (The transcript to her opinion piece is here.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Nation-building, or its more modest cousin, development aid, is not nor should it be a military objective. Why? Because the inevitable loss of life among our soldiers in pursuit of building a nation other than our own is too high a price to pay, and the inevitable loss of life among their civilians directly undermines the building of a peaceful civil society.

Our vast amounts of money there feed, not diminish, their corruption. Our armed, unasked-for presence is the very thing a freedom-loving people would resist.

It's my belief that American women have tremendous curiosity about the well-being and sympathy for their sisters in Afghanistan. Will we be the ones to make the argument that development aid is as important a tool for protecting national security as diplomacy or a military action? Peaceable investing in the capacity of other nations, especially in women and girls--is this one of the most effective inoculations against the conditions that enable terrorists?

How would Afghanistan drastically change if through 1,000, 10,000, or even 100,000 scholarships, talented young Afghan women and men could attend college in a country of their choice? Think of what that would cost to fund as opposed to what we pay in defense budgets now so NEITHER Afghan kids nor our own American kids can go to college.

Even usually hawkish conservatives like Ann Coulter, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, and Senator Lugar have voiced doubt with regard to the goals identified as "winning" the war in Afghanistan. While the overriding objective by hard-right partisans like Coulter and Steele is to see if Afghanistan will be President Obama's Achilles heel, those Republican and Democratic legislators genuinely interested in clarifying our nation's objectives in Afghanistan have inadvertently provided BIPARTISAN cover for the president to issue orders for us to leave.

Cynematic also blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

Comments

[Daniel Levine]

I am sympathetic to the basic thrust of your concerns, but I worry that things aren't so simple as devoting our dollars to education rather than military objectives in Afghanistan.

First, let me set aside for the moment two very important questions: whether the US has a right and/or obligation to be doing anything about Afghanistan, regardless of outcomes; and whether, even if we care about things besides narrow US interests, putting our resources into Afghanistan is the best way of promoting the overall good. Let's assume for right now that we're aiming at putting Afghanistan on the best footing we can.

Unfortunately, I think there's a significant difference between Maddow's point and yours. Maddow points out - rightly - that there is a very-possibly-unwarranted optimism involved in the argument for a continued US presence in Afghanistan. Just because leaving would make things bad doesn't mean that staying will make them better. That's different from saying that we're doing it *wrong*, but if we did it *right* we could make things better - if Maddow's comments about dollars but not lives are intended to reflect a hope that we could reform Afghanistan as long as we don't do it militarily, I think she's slipping into her own optimism.

The basic problem is that the Taliban and other insurgent groups aren't stupid - they know that providing services and benefits to a population is the way to secure their loyalty (heck, that's what they did during the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal). So if you just try to send non-military help, you're likely to get the humanitarians killed. I fear that if we handed out your 100,000 scholarships, without some military part of the solution, we'd either end up with 100,000 Afghan women living abroad or 100,000 more dead women in a place that doesn't need any more - neither one of which will drastically change Afghanistan.

For what it's worth, standard counterinsurgency theory *does* recognize that rebuilding a country is basically a political and development effort, not a military one - the military is supposed to be there to drive out insurgents and hold areas against their return so that the diplomats and humanitarians can do their work... and if they do it right, the military can leave because insurgents will leave the insurgency in search of a better life. The problem is that this is REALLY HARD to do right - both you and Maddow rightly recognize that the paradox of counterinsurgency is that you end up using force even though every time you use force you undermine your own goals.

My concern is just that you can't cut that Gordian knot by simply deciding not to use force.

OK, this is too long, but a couple parting notes...

1. To be fair to your point, I'm not sure we can win in Afghanistan, for any meaningful value of "win," unfortunately including developing it peacefully (in the near future). But the problem is not our military force, in my only somewhat informed opinion, it's that we ignored even mainstream counterinsurgency theory - where step 1 is to ensure that you have a basically legitimate government to work with. We did somewhat better in Afghanistan than in Iraq on this point, what with the loya jirga and all, but we still put ourselves in the position of backing Karzai without really ensuring that he was a good leader who could win loyalty, or that we had the leverage to make him one. In part we fell prey to "elections = legitimacy" thinking.

2. On a more positive note, there is some evidence that this isn't all necessarily futile. Modern counterinsurgency and "multidimensional" or "robust" peacekeeping are converging (from both sides) and there's evidence that, with lots of caveats, multidimensional peacekeeping *works* to end violence and build legitimate states. Nicholas Sambanis, in particular, is the go-to guy with the statistical evidence on this... unfortunately, it's going to be at least another 10 years or so before we know enough about the long-term effects of nouveau counterinsurgency efforts like Iraq, Afghanistan and, (I'd argue) DR Congo, to evaluate their impact and analyze what works and what doesn't.

[Cynematic]

@Daniel--thanks for the thoughtful and knowledgeable comment. This is truly your bailiwick, so I'm humbled that you'd drop in and engage.

By all means I wasn't suggesting that scholarships alone could cure the many ills that keep Afghanistan from achieving stability and securing a liveable, peaceful civil society. But I do think enabling 100,000 or more Afghans living and studying abroad, especially women and girls given that they cannot reasonably pursue their lives and educations safely within the country, is perhaps the kind of deeply disruptive yet strategic exercise of soft power that we should have "deployed" in 2001. (I say this as the rare person--the rare liberal--who didn't even want the AUMF for Afghanistan to pass. I thought and still think we never should have invaded. But no time machine exists so there's not much help in dwelling on that. Given that mainstream consensus now seems to have arrived at the "graveyard of empires" argument a tiny number of progressives were making 8 years ago, I rue that we had to expend so many lives and funds to reach this point--a point where Rachel Maddow, at least, seems to have concluded that our military presence/actions substantially undermine all the other true good we try to do there, and we don't really have a "Plan B.")

It's a pertinent question whether it would've been possible to help practically every girl and woman from Afghanistan emigrate so she could attend school and live outside national boundaries. Realistically, it's doubtful now, but my larger point is this: does tribalism have a future if there are no women available to perform the necessary labor of reproduction? Is Afghan 'nationalism' (such as it exists) meaningful if no women are around to literally repopulate the notion? I'm obviously not an expert in development policy, Afghan history or culture, or military/security issues, but my gut sense is that yes, if bringing aid to Afghanistan endangers humanitarians who administer it, then maybe the solution is to bring as many women/girls/young people out of the country into areas where they can live and study safely. (Perhaps to Turkey?) Creating a temporary female diaspora of Afghans puts the ball back into the court of male Afghans--is unending warlordism in a militaryless vacuum (one in which billions of US dollars stop appearing--no more being magicked away by corrupt "leaders" into private coffers) meaningful? Without women to oppress, what would the Taliban do? Without the firehose of American cash to feed profiteering and the daily presence of American troops to stoke insurgent recruiting, what will the Taliban or its alliance with Al Qaeda mean for everyday Afghans?

Call it a radical Lysistrata strategy, with a rough peacetime analogy in China's extreme gender asymmetry (the different causes of which I have to bracket for now). It's an attempt to plow resources, aid, education, training into women to force the hand of change. Afghan men would need to decide if they value peace over warmongering, or the incremental but more equally distributed rewards of civil prosperity over the dangerous, risky, highly inequitable lottery of warlord prosperity. The message: Evolve, or good luck perpetuating yourselves in the current form. The women would return when it's safe to do so.

By the way, in trying to formulate a corner of this alternative feminist sticks-and-carrots diplomacy, the military or peacekeeping forces wouldn't necessarily be irrelevant. Perhaps they could ensure that Afghan male powerbrokers stay *within* their borders and work it out with Karzai et al til an accord's reached. If Afghans decide Karzai isn't their leader, let them arrive at a new one. It's a counterintuitive idea, but maybe by a strategic ABSENCE--most notably the absence of the next generation of Afghan women and young men who are all elsewhere learning basic health, business, governance and other crucial skills--and the ABSENCE of our military could we exert the greatest influence. Because our presence through occupation, even though it's temporary, seems to inflame sentiment against us and in that way, undermine much else of what we hope to offer.

Pie in the sky, I know. Perhaps there's a nugget wiser heads than mine can adapt; maybe work is already being done along these lines and I am simply unaware.

Just some thoughts, not particularly rooted in any expertise, but offered in the spirit of trying to "think outside the box." Again, I really appreciate the opportunity to broach these subjects calmly, rationally, and with insight from people like you who try to solve extremely complex, difficult problems.

[Kathleen]

I am of the opinion that our presence in Afghanistan was at first necessary but now we have overstayed our welcome, if there ever was one.

I also agree with the idea of dollars for education for the woman of Afghanistan. Education leads to choices. War leads to death.

I know things are never so cut and dry but it is obvious that something has to change.

[MAC Cosmetics]

ut in real life, there is a misunderstanding.Obviously the school should develop each student's personality, ability. But in reality, often ask students to be "obedient" and "naughty", "understand the rules," "honest". In fact, many students who love to study without self-confidence, they are mainly sticked to"standard answer," "teacher's positive," "the prescribed format."

[abercrombie london]

n trying to formulate a corner of this alternative feminist sticks-and-carrots diplomacy, the military or peacekeeping forces wouldn't necessarily be irrelevant. Perhaps they could ensure that Afghan male powerbrokers stay *within* their borders and work it out with Karzai et al til an accord's reached.

[oil paintings]

interesting what you got goin on here. could you share a few pointers maybe? im sturggling to get my blog even off the ground. you have my email if you don't want to post it here for everyone to see

[cheap ray bans]

http://www.raybansonsale.net/ cheap ray ban sunglasses