AFGHANISTAN: THE AUDACITY OF DOPE.

NATO IN DENIAL AND WHY.

Afghans cannot just be told that, if they behave, they will not be killed by NATO. And that's called civilization, and it's much better than the Qur'an. Be the poorest people on earth, or so, Afghans, but be quiet, and we will search your houses, and bomb your villages, when our sensors tell us to. If some men and some guns are among the dead, we will call that a justified strike. That's the entire NATO program. It sounds straight out of the "Terminator" movie, with NATO troops playing terminators, with their flying robots overhead.

To persist in this course of action is to humiliate the Afghans, and to throw the gauntlet at them. Realized civilian help spending by NATO has been closer to 1% of the budget for NATO bombing and killing, rather than to all past promises. Besides, the Afghan army has been left tiny, because NATO does not trust it, and is afraid to train enemies, rather than true allies. Joining impudence to insult, NATO then complains the Afghans are not doing enough.

Many countries of NATO are becoming aware of the audacious hopelessness of NATO's message and practice. The Canadians will pull their soldiers out within two years (and they have fought courageously, with the greatest proportional deaths, more than 50% higher than the U.S. in relative numbers). If Canada leaves, it's very unlikely that Europe will stay, and the USA will be left to bomb, and kill, and die, alone. (The U.S. contingent is about half of NATO in Afgahnistan.)

The only hope for NATO is to act as tribal chief, and friend of all in Afghanistan. As a friend, it has only one material thing to offer, short term. The legalization of the "booming" poppy trade should be used as a carrot to turn around sympathetic tribal leaders (in the areas to the south, precisely where the insurrection is the worst). There are no ethical, political and economic objections to this.

An interesting question is why does NATO persist in a policy that has failed for seven years already, and that is bound to fail? Why is it the gift that keeps on giving? Hubris is part of the answer. It goes like this: we can win this, we are better men, we just did not try hard enough. Hubris is a drug. Or more exactly, it acts just like one, because it infuses the brain with very similar chemicals. So NATO strategists may look sober, but, in truth, they are just as high as if they had abused of the poppy fields themselves.

True, if non military means of helping were used massively, the war could be won. But they won't be deployed as they ought to. Why? Because there is no constituency to send massive civilian help to a country of 35 million people, when entire urban zones, in the USA , or in France, are in need of drastic help, and when so many young Brits of Muslim descent dream of Jihad. There is a constituency, though, for developping, testing, and deploying new weapons. Great progress was made because of flying lethal robots in Iraq, militarily speaking. That's encouraging in many ways: at last one thing the USA does really well.

Thus it may be viewed in some circles as rather helpful that bin Laden is so hard to catch. Better, one could extend the war to Pakistan's mountainous terrain. Nothing like a war that last forever. As Orwell pointed out in "1984", nothing like the war that keeps on giving, to support the class that keeps on leading.
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Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com