Frankly, I am getting tired of all these meta-narratives that try to explain historical events by some broader conspiracy theories. Although they may seem to logically hold together, they usually assume a purposefulness that is contradicted by the chaos and sub-optimality of the result these theories purport to engender. I am not specifically referring to such outlandish ideas as the 911 conspiracy that claims that the events on that day are the result of a secret cabal of military industrial fascists bent on gaining control of the world economy, while suppressing civil liberties, but rather the commonly accepted urban legend explanations that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are about gaining control of the remaining world oil supplies, or as Michael Moore would stipulate about helping a rich corporate sponsor such as Unocal protect a profitable pipeline out of the rich Caspian basin, or even Howard Kunstler’s theory about building a police station in the Middle East. No, I reject all such narratives out of hand, as they simply try to explain incoherent secondary effects that no one, including the politicians or the press, predicted before the fact.
My own view is that history is the integral or summation of incremental decisions, which although casually related, fail to tie into a broader narrative that has any purpose whatsoever. And as the global order becomes more complex, each decision is more likely to be an incremental reaction to a previous decision, more localized in nature, and less integrated into a purposeful objective.
What does this mean practically? That the US invasion of Afghanistan was nothing more than a reaction to the events of 911. The US military had to be seen as “doing something”, so it invaded a country to satisfy this objective. End of story. From an Islamic perspective, these same events were nothing more than a reaction to the US military presence in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf war on the part of Wahhabi nationalists who interpreted the US bases as a form of occupation by a presumed “infidel”. They resorted to terrorism because they lacked the resources to wage a conventional war. Once the US invaded Afghanistan, a new set of realities were put into motion, specifically the protection of US troops in a foreign and hostile land. This was not part of some master plan on the part of Bin Laden to draw us “in”, nor part of a sinister plot on the part of the US military industrial complex to gain control of the remaining oil supplies. If the US actually cared about its oil predicament, which clearly it does not with only 30 billion barrels of conventional crude oil reserves remaining, it would encourage conservation and maybe facilitate the construction of more nuclear power plants. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were about short term political calculations, not about a genuine need to preserve an empire.
General McChrystal plan for stabilizing Afghanistan is primarily motivated by the need to protect US troops, which have been increasingly coming under fire for doing what they have been ordered to do i.e. occupy Afghanistan. He is also trying to clean up a situation that has been horribly neglected for the past eight years. The US military’s job is made easier if it can gather intelligence, which is made easier if it can trade protection services for information. All of this of course requires more troops, which in turn creates a whole new reality.
So what is really going on is a set of incremental deltas that is driving the agenda forward. Each delta in and of itself has an impeccable logic behind it independent of any long term desired outcome. Even the Karzai government, corrupt as it is, has had to make a series of Faustian decisions to stay in power, even at the cost of courting the enemy – the Taliban. A similar chain of events happened in Iraq, for different reasons, and with different outcomes. The issue we need to ask ourselves is whether this reality tunnel is where we want to be in ten years time, or in twenty years time. If the answer is no, then somebody at the top needs to make a purposeful decision – unpopular as it may be, which will eventually steer us into a different outcome.
Even though I support General McChrystal’s efforts and see in his actions a genuine desire to stabilize Afghanistan, I cannot help but think we have further ratcheted up the stakes in this Imperial Faustian game. Every step we take to bring order to the periphery, undoubtedly weakens us at the core through those insidious trade-offs of other roads not taken, other investments not made, and other markets not developed. What we need today is a forward looking leader who has the courage to cut our losses and not waste our resources on side shows that no matter how well intentioned will amount to little more than nation building in a third rate country.
