This is the second time in two days I have come across the theory that states in simplified terms that the Koran burning and the shooting of civilians indicate that lower ranking members of the US military understand that the war cannot be won. The acts are an indication of a break down in discipline and the other person to put the theory forward hinted she would not be surprised to see an outbreak in fraggings. She also claimed it was a result of too long a period of occupation. At lot of what they claim is poppycock, but it may sound attractive to some. The piece, which was published in the Toronto Star, is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.
U.S. on brink of humiliating defeat in Afghanistan
Published On Mon Mar 19 2012
By Richard GwynColumnist
In a powerful column for the London-based Independent, veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk argues that the media’s coverage of the killing by an American soldier of 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, “has been curiously lobotomized.”
Fisk makes an important point. Overwhelmingly, the stories attribute the terrible deed to variations on “an act of madness,” “brain-damage,” “trauma,” by a deranged, overstressed soldier.
In itself, that interpretation is pretty obviously correct. The suspect, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, was doing his fourth battlefield tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier he had suffered a brain trauma; very recently, he witnessed a colleague lose his leg to a roadside bomb.
Yet the interpretation is incomplete, and too convenient. Fisk refers to a briefing to GIs three weeks ago by the top American commander, Gen. John Allen. The trigger for his talk was the killing of two American soldiers by an Afghan working with them as retribution for the burning at a U.S. base of some copies of the Qur’an (in fact, unintentionally so).
Allen told his men, “Now is not the time for revenge,” urging them instead to “look deep inside your souls, remember your mission, remember your mission.”
Fisk, who is almost unrelievedly critical of all U.S. actions in the Middle East, was far too harsh in his condemnation of Allen’s somewhat inept plea to his soldiers not to exact revenge “now.” And he’s too dismissive of the effect on any soldier of repeated, life-threatening, stress.
But he has identified correctly what is surely the single most important aspect of the present war in Afghanistan.
This is that the American soldiers themselves now know that the war has become pointless, just as an earlier generation of GIs knew when the war in Vietnam became pointless.
Pointless, that is, in the sense that it can no longer be won except in the minimalist sense that — unlike in Vietnam — it might still, just, somehow, not be lost too humiliatingly.
In almost all wars there is a tilting point at which the soldiers involved, regardless of which side they are on, limit their actions to “not being the last soldier to die.” (A deeply depressing exception to this rule was the way German soldiers fought ferociously long after it was obvious Adolf Hitler had lost World War II.)
The effect of this realization is that the “discipline” Gen. Allen tried to invoke unravels. Instead, the terrible truth about the behaviour Sgt. Bales is accused of is that more events like it are certain to happen. No less so, other Afghans who have worked for the Americans and become friends with them, will shoot them in the back.
Once wars become pointless, they become exercises in insanity. All the reasons concocted to justify their continuation — not abandoning liberal-minded Afghans (women especially) to the savage rule of fundamentalist extremists; gaining time to train enough Afghans to look after their own security; preserving American military honour — are now just empty rhetoric.
The only rhetoric that has any meaning anymore is a description of how best to get out as quickly as possible.
To suppose that the consequences of a hasty withdrawal won’t be unpleasant would be an exercise in self-delusion. The U.S. may be about to turn isolationist. Does anyone suppose the world will be better policed by China and Russia, or by no one? The slaughter in Syria (for which the U.S. is blameless) may become the standard way of life in the Middle East, as it already is in many Arab countries.
But perpetuating a pointless war imposes a fearful moral cost on the nation responsible.
Moreover, the potential positive consequences of ending it can be critical. The action does cauterize the wound. The U.S. did recover — politically, militarily, morally — from its defeat in Vietnam. To recover from Afghanistan, though, it will first have to go through the valley of humiliation.
U.S. on brink of humiliating defeat in Afghanistan
Published On Mon Mar 19 2012
By Richard GwynColumnist
In a powerful column for the London-based Independent, veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk argues that the media’s coverage of the killing by an American soldier of 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, “has been curiously lobotomized.”
Fisk makes an important point. Overwhelmingly, the stories attribute the terrible deed to variations on “an act of madness,” “brain-damage,” “trauma,” by a deranged, overstressed soldier.
In itself, that interpretation is pretty obviously correct. The suspect, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, was doing his fourth battlefield tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier he had suffered a brain trauma; very recently, he witnessed a colleague lose his leg to a roadside bomb.
Yet the interpretation is incomplete, and too convenient. Fisk refers to a briefing to GIs three weeks ago by the top American commander, Gen. John Allen. The trigger for his talk was the killing of two American soldiers by an Afghan working with them as retribution for the burning at a U.S. base of some copies of the Qur’an (in fact, unintentionally so).
Allen told his men, “Now is not the time for revenge,” urging them instead to “look deep inside your souls, remember your mission, remember your mission.”
Fisk, who is almost unrelievedly critical of all U.S. actions in the Middle East, was far too harsh in his condemnation of Allen’s somewhat inept plea to his soldiers not to exact revenge “now.” And he’s too dismissive of the effect on any soldier of repeated, life-threatening, stress.
But he has identified correctly what is surely the single most important aspect of the present war in Afghanistan.
This is that the American soldiers themselves now know that the war has become pointless, just as an earlier generation of GIs knew when the war in Vietnam became pointless.
Pointless, that is, in the sense that it can no longer be won except in the minimalist sense that — unlike in Vietnam — it might still, just, somehow, not be lost too humiliatingly.
In almost all wars there is a tilting point at which the soldiers involved, regardless of which side they are on, limit their actions to “not being the last soldier to die.” (A deeply depressing exception to this rule was the way German soldiers fought ferociously long after it was obvious Adolf Hitler had lost World War II.)
The effect of this realization is that the “discipline” Gen. Allen tried to invoke unravels. Instead, the terrible truth about the behaviour Sgt. Bales is accused of is that more events like it are certain to happen. No less so, other Afghans who have worked for the Americans and become friends with them, will shoot them in the back.
Once wars become pointless, they become exercises in insanity. All the reasons concocted to justify their continuation — not abandoning liberal-minded Afghans (women especially) to the savage rule of fundamentalist extremists; gaining time to train enough Afghans to look after their own security; preserving American military honour — are now just empty rhetoric.
The only rhetoric that has any meaning anymore is a description of how best to get out as quickly as possible.
To suppose that the consequences of a hasty withdrawal won’t be unpleasant would be an exercise in self-delusion. The U.S. may be about to turn isolationist. Does anyone suppose the world will be better policed by China and Russia, or by no one? The slaughter in Syria (for which the U.S. is blameless) may become the standard way of life in the Middle East, as it already is in many Arab countries.
But perpetuating a pointless war imposes a fearful moral cost on the nation responsible.
Moreover, the potential positive consequences of ending it can be critical. The action does cauterize the wound. The U.S. did recover — politically, militarily, morally — from its defeat in Vietnam. To recover from Afghanistan, though, it will first have to go through the valley of humiliation.
