NPR ran a report praising the Afghan National Army, hoping I suppose to allay US public anticipation that Afghanistan should be conducting its own slaughters and incurring a greater share of soldier casualties. As if not enough ANA are getting caught in the friendly fire of US air strikes. They’re skilled fighters, we’re assured, especially when they have combat experience in other parts of the country, meaning, they are now being deployed outside their tribal regions, meaning, against other tribes. For every accusation of ANA soldiers mistreating civilians, there are reports apparently of them “eagerly taking up the fight.” Those don’t sound like contradictory motivations to me. Where their PR for the unpopular ANA means to ameliorate Afghan outcry, the US military trainers seem to be taking credit for inherent tribal hatred.
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
“The Man who would be King”.
I used to think that it would help a little bit if they would actually READ Kipling.
This is like listening in on the conversations at a county jail, (any one will do) where the petty thieves and dope dealers discuss how their plans fell through This Time, and plan out how they’ll do it better the Next Time just by closing one hole or another. If you were to believe the movie Gunga Din, the British Army had Afghanistan and what’s now Pakistan and India all sewed up by the end of the flick. Never minding that the incident took place in the late 1880s early 1890s.
Of course add the fact that the person they cast for the Thug Guru looked amazingly like the contemporary Mohandas Gandhi the whole theme of the movie takes on a more immediate (to the audience of the day) Pro-British propaganda aspect.
But the British, unlike Americans, actually do read Kipling, required reading in schools. But just take a look at who “our” partners in crime are.
After getting their ass handed to them so very many times in the past, there they are, AGAIN. Einstein was right when he joked that the only thing actually infinite was stupidity.
And Solomon from Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun, that which is now, was before and will be again.”
At the root is the notion that one group of people (actually one person who got a bunch of Really Stupid People to fight for him) is so much better than others that he gets to rule over them.
It’s the root of slavery and the root of Monarchy. (including the Corporate Dictatorship)
There’s one more 3 o’clock comparison… the ARVN were NOT liberal peaceniks. And they, too, were backed by the Amazingly Massive Firepower the U.S. could bring to bear.
The New Emperor says “All my predecessors used overwhelming force to try to subdue the world, and failed… So I just have to use even MORE Shock and Awe, yeah, that’ll work! The only reason it never worked before is because the Old Empires didn’t have as magnificent an Army as mine!”
Famous last words. George Bush assured the graduates of the service academies in ’02 that he had 60 nations scheduled for “regime change” and that they would prevail because “We have the mightiest military the world has ever seen”. Later that year he told the same thing to the soldiers at Ft Hood.
It’s a war that’s lost merely by being begun. Nothing new.