Whither to Afghanistan?

George Will’s recent column, “In Afghanistan, Knowing When to Stop” September 1, 2009 has drawn quite a lot of heat from fellow conservatives, such as Bill Kristol, who wrote: “Will is urging retreat, and accepting defeat." With very little NATO support our troops slog on there, in a rather hopeless attempt at nation-building. According to Will, “The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.” After all, we won the war there, what else could we be doing? Will wonders: “Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one.” As David Harsanyi has said, in support of Will, “Or is victory achieved when we finally usher this primitive tribal culture, with its violent warlords and religious extremism, from the eighth century all the way to modernity? If so, we're on course for a centuries-long enterprise of nation building and baby-sitting, not a war. The war was won in 2002.” Haven’t we learned anything from the failed Soviet attempt to control this tribal culture on some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable? Will wasn’t the first conservative to raise the issue of whether or not we had overstayed our rationale for being in Afghanistan. Diana West wrote in, “Let Afghanistan Go,” on April 23, 2009:

This is not to suggest that there is no war or enemies to fight, . . . there most certainly are. But sinking all possible men, materiel and bureaucracy into Afghanistan, as the Obama people and most conservatives favor, to try to bring a corrupt Islamic culture into working modernity while simultaneously fighting Taliban and wading deep into treacherous Pakistani wars is no way to victory -- at least not to U.S. victory. On the contrary, it is the best way to bleed and further degrade U.S. military capabilities. Indeed, if I were a jihad chieftain, I couldn't imagine a better strategy than to entrap tens of thousands of America's very best young men in an open-ended war of mortal hide-and-seek in the North West Frontier.

West, by the way is an outspoken critic about the dangers of Islamic jihad, so she’s definitely not a pacifist or defeatist. West interview retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely who said: "There's nothing to win there. . . . What do you get for it? What's the return? Well, the return's all negative for the United States." Vallely went on to recommend a strategy of the using

"the maximum use of unconventional forces," such as Navy SEALS and other special forces, who can be deployed as needed from what are known in military parlance as "lily pads" -- outposts or jumping-off points in friendly countries (Israel, Northern Kurdistan, India, Philippines, Italy, Djibouti ... ) and from U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups.’ Such strike groups generally include eight to 10 vessels "with more fire power," the general noted, "than most nations." These lily pads become "bases we can launch from any time we want to," eliminating the need for massive land bases such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, by now a small city of 20,000 American personnel who continuously need to be supplied and secured at enormous expense.

"There's no permanent force," the general said. "That's the beauty of it." We watch, we wait and when U.S. interests are threatened, "we basically use our strike forces to take them out, target by target." This would work whether the threat came from Al Qaeda, Pakistani nukes or anything else.

He continued: "This idea that we're going to go in and bring democracy to these tribal cultures isn't going to work. If we have a problem with terrorist countries, like Iran, it's a lot cheaper to go in and hit them and get back out."

In other words, don't give up the battle; just give up the nation-building. "It's up to somebody else to build nations," the general said. "Not us."

While, like most Americans, I was in favor to invading Afghanistan after 9/11, it might be time to reassess our strategy there, and in the rest of the Middle East. American capabilities have been badly wounded by the financial collapse and we don’t seem to be learning from history: Most great empires (including reluctant empires like the USA) collapse after overextending themselves militarily, like Rome and Great Britain, and by living off past productivity and going into debt. While I thought the Iraq War was a strategic mistake, things change. Iraq seems like a more feasible location for any hubris of nation-building. Maybe we should focus where there’s at least a slim chance of a pay off.

Spending your way to prosperity

There seems to be a consensus among independent conservative pundits like Pat Buchanan and Steve Sailer that Obama's plan to get the U.S economy out of recession through public spending programmes won't work.

In this situation I'm definitely inclined to agree, fiscal stimulation didn't really work in the U.S in the 1930s, and it's even less likely to work today. Infrastructure spending during recessions only works if it complements the growth of new industries and if the government actually has surplus funds it can afford to invest.

For example, between the 1930s to 1960s, infrastructure investment was a general success in Australia and New Zealand because, A, the government was fiscally solvent and B, it tied in with the rapid growth of agriculture and mining. Without roads, bridges, schools and telephones it was difficult to attract settlers to new areas and transport products to overseas markets so back then investment in these areas made a big difference.

Similarly, the development of a national highway system in the U.S after WW II helped fuel the demand for a raft of new domestically made products from trucks and cars to refrigerators and lawnmovers.

In the modern post-industrial U.S economy though, there aren't really any productive industries that are being seriously held back by lack of investment in infrastructure. Some of the high-tech sectors like biotechnology and robotics might benefit from greater investment in research and development, but in terms of basic transport, power and communications infrastructure, the U.S is in reasonably good shape. This kind of crude Keynesian stimulation can only really work in countries at a much lower level of development.

Nor does this kind of approach work if there is a shortage of markets for locally made goods and services. One reason the 1929 Depression dragged on for so long in the U.S was because the U.S was shut out of many overseas markets that were putting up tariffs at the time to protect their domestic producers.

In contrast, the Depression was much less severe in Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia, which had access to a protected Commonwealth market.

Indeed, if it wasn't for the fact that more Americans had cars, relatively cheap housing, and land on which to grow food than in European countries, America could well have gone down the Fascist path of countries like Italy and Spain. Today the U.S also faces major problems exporting overseas. This is partly due to tariffs, subisidies and currency manipulation, but also because of global over-production in manufacturing and farming.

Then there's the fact that (as Ron Paul often likes to point out) America just doesn't have the money.

With a federal deficit of over $1 trillion, the U.S government should really be cutting federal programs, not increasing them. While getting out of Iraq should leave the government in a slightly better financial position, it still won't be enough to compensate for the massive increase in Medicare and pension costs that are set to occur over the next decade.

As least that's one good thing about the election of National last year - New Zealand's now one of the few countries going in the tumultuous 2010s with a reasonably fiscally conservative (albiet right-liberal) government at the helm.

America's "Dirty Laundry"

Some time last year I came across an interesting news article from 2000 about an information archive covering the race riots that flared up in America from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s.

Sociologist Dan Myers of the University of Notre Dame, who unearthed the extensive archive of newspaper articles, says it was previously believed that there were about a "couple of hundred" race riots during this period. However, the archives indicate that at least 3,500 riots of one size or another took place.

According to Myers, interest in the riots was high at the time, and the Lemberg Centre for the study of violence, which assembled the archive, also paid for a Roper Poll about the riots which included responses from some 6,000 people. By 1973 however, interest in the riots had begun to wane and the centre was closed down.

Taking his inspiration from the discovery of this collection, conservative writer Adrian Cerny has written a provocative history of the riots in a book entitled America's Dirty Laundry.

Making liberal use of newspaper article summaries and photographs from some of the major riots between 1965 and 1973, as well as statements from prominent politicians at the time, Mr Cerny has produced an eye-opening account of this tumultuous period in recent American history.

Cerny takes issue with the conventional view that the riots didn't really accomplish anything, and that they undermined some of the gains made through the peaceful civil rights protests of the late 50s and early 60s.

In Cerny's view, the riots played a major role in encouraging white flight from U.S inner cities and the subsequent political takeover of many civic governments by Black politicians.

Certainly the massive scale of the riots put a considerable strain on America's army and police services at a time when a high percentage of troops were serving in Vietnam.

Furthermore, there were few soldiers or policeman at the time who were trained in modern riot control methods, which often lead to escalating the level of violence between the authorities and the rioters.

For example, during the unrest in the city of Detroit during June 1967, over 2,000 firearms were stolen by rioters and the Mayor was forced to call in 900 inexperienced National Guardsmen to try and restore order. However, this only served to escalate tensions as the outnumbered and heavy-handed guardsmen came under heavy sniper fire from the rioters.
Eventually President Johnson was forced to intervene by calling in over 4,000 paratroopers to restore order. By the end of the rioting, 43 people were killed and over 1300 buildings were burnt or looted.

Without the manpower to guarantee law and order Cerny says, the Johnson administration decided to pursue a policy of appeasing the rioters by passing "second wave"affirmative action legislation such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968 which was deeply unpopular with many white voters.

As well as covering the riots of the civil rights era, Mr Cerny's book also documents the infamous LA riots of 1992 and the lesser known (at least outside the U.S) Cincinnati race riots of 2001. He has also written another book on the same theme - Terrorism and the Civil Rights Movement - a History.

While the book is written in a polemic rather than scholarly style, and could have done with more referencing it's an entertaining read which also contains a lot of eye-opening information about an important but under-explored chapter in U.S History.