If you’re looking for a short, sharp overview of the current state of play in the Afghan war you should check out Tariq Ali’s editorial in the latest New Left Review (March/April 2008). Its admirable brevity doesn’t prevent its author from packing in much of the salient information about the war and its background, including its broader historical context.
Of course Afghanistan is the war that enlightened Western liberals still line up to defend, at a time when most of them have thrown up their hands in horror over the Iraq debacle. Tariq’s article, amongst its many virtues, effectively lays to rest the notion that this is some kind of ‘civilising’ war. He has this to say on NATO’s justification for its involvement:
“To portray the invasion as a ‘war of self-defence’ for NATO makes a mockery of international law, which was perverted to twist a flukishly successful attack by a tiny, terrorist Arab groupuscule into an excuse for an open-ended American military thrust into the Middle East and Central Eurasia.”
From Alexander the Great’s Macedonian phalanxes to NATO’s humvees and helicopter gunships, great military powers have always used the fig-leaf of moral rhetoric to cover their imperial ambitions (Alexander’s apologists portrayed him as a loyal disciple of Aristotle, spreading civilised Greek values to the decadent East). Tariq points to the key strategic gains that the war has opened up to the Western powers:
“The basing agreement signed by the US with its appointee in Kabul in May 2005 gives the Pentagon the right to maintain a massive military presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity, potentially including nuclear missiles. That Washington is not seeking permanent bases in this fraught and inhospitable terrain simply for the sake of ‘democratization and good governance’ was made clear by NATO’s Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the Brookings Institution in February this year: a permanent NATO presence in a country that borders the ex-Soviet republics, China, Iran and Pakistan was too good to miss.”
There’s the rub. For all their talk of democracy and human rights, Western liberals have fallen (as is their wont) into the trap of supporting a brutal and unwinnable war designed to advance the geopolitical interests of the US and its allies. Tariq’s article provides a succinct summary of why we should take an altogether different path.
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