Rules for an alternative policy in Afghanistan

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould outline an alternative Afghan policy, addressing it to Pres. Obama in the eighteenth chapter of their book, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story (pp. 315-328; 2009). They write: “President Obama must reverse this process by remaking U.S. policy. That policy will have to be radical, implemented quickly, and designed to address the needs of the Afghan people, not the people in Washington who are making it….He can do this by first establishing a revised set of rules by which the United States must play, stressing a return to the old values of international law and respect for civil and human rights. The president could then initiate these rules by announcing his first priority of their foreign policy in Afghanistan is the preservation of human life.” (p. 316).

Fitzgerald and Gould then list 12 rules around which an alternative policy may be organized. I just identify their points and leave out much of their insightful analysis. You can find it all in their book.

#1 – “Stop killing Afghans,” Stop dropping drones and using fighter jets and other advanced technologies to kill innocent people in their huts and villages.

#2 – “Stop humiliating Afghan men and desecrating their homes.”

#3 – “Call in people with a better understanding of the problem from a diversity of the Afghan political perspective and take their advice seriously.” Stop depending on “Washington’s think tanks and a handful of elite eastern universities,” with their “Anglo-centric view of Afghanistan” and their “free market” ideologies.

#4 – “Start helping Afghans in a way they can understand, see, and appreciate.” Later in this section, they write: “Redirect the focus of U.S. government policy to serving local needs. Roads and irrigation to start, a viable secular education program to compete with Pakistan’s free madrassas….Afghanistan could use a core of mature American civilian experts, (retirees) and lots of them, to help the country rebuild….Empower Afghanistan’s women.”

#5 – “Declare the ‘global war on terror,” the ‘Long War’ and the ‘global struggle against violent extremists’ to be over. They are terribly misbegotten, have failed, and only serve to generate more enemies, waste resources, and kill people.

#6 – “Address the conceptual blurring.” That is: “Determine exactly what the United States hopes to accomplish and settle on one foreign policy as opposed to many competing goals.” For example, is the goal a peaceful settlement or “controlling Shiite-Iranian oil for Saudi/American oil executives”?

#7 – “Get everybody on the same page.” The US cannot afford this war and it has only brought escalated violence and chaos to Afghanistan and advantages to global competitors like China. Do everything you can to normalize “relations between India and Pakistan.”

#8 – “Promote a regional dialogue and invest whatever political currency Washington has left in it before it’s too late.” Support the calls for “a regional summit which includes Pakistan, India, Russia and Iran.”

#9 – “Address the issue of illegal narcotics from where they originate and not to suit Washington’s needs: To the Poor Afghan farmer, the decision to grow opium poppy is a matter of economics….Subjected to crop eradication by chemical spraying that sicken his children and kill his lifestock he is easily recruited by Al Qaeda and the Taliban to fight the central government and its American backers.”

#10 – “Much has been written about negotiating with the Taliban insurgents as a way to stop the fighting.” [….] If any negotiations are to be conducted, they must begin with the state within the state sponsors of this Taliban terror, Pakistan’s army and its Inter-Service Intelligence branch….Nothing can be accomplished without neutralizing them as a subversive influence and turning them toward the task of national building.” Incidentally, “…the United States has not done a good job at nation building anywhere.”

#11 – “If President Obama is to save Afghanistan and the United States itself from the impending tipping point, it would be wise to follow the advice of David Walker, comptroller general of the United States….described the country [United States] in an August 2007 interview with the Financial Times as being on a ‘burning platform,’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare under-funding, immigration and overseas commitments threatening a crisis if [non-military] action is not taken soon.”

#12 – “reopen the national debate on U.S. identity and its future, a debate that was silenced on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.” The Cold War and the national security state have ruled out such a debate, and 9/11 reinforced their position. [But] as Andrew Bacevich as contended, we cannot afford, financially or morally, the “unsustainable notion of global hegemony.”

Fitzgerald and Gould conclude their chapter with these words: “If our government has not other purpose than to serve the fantasies of its own defense intellectuals in their desire to create new ways of making endless war, then we are in serious trouble and like the Soviet Union, Afghanistan will be our final test.”