My position is anything but American exceptionalism. Yes, I’m an American and proud to be so. I asserted no exceptionalism for my country. I simply asserted the reality that we’re at war. I made it clear, I think, that I’m not happy about that. But wishing it were not so is simply unrealistic. I address the question of what we should do about it, as well as how we should think about it.

Yes, I suppose it is a privelege to have the power not to bomb. Power requires responsibility (which would be a much more obvious characterization than the sarcastic “privelege”), and I was referring both to the need to exercise responsibility as well as the common perception of Americans as cowboys who seem to think bombing is the answer to most foreign policy problems. If it wasn’t obvious that I was trying to create some distance between myself and that stereotype, then perhaps I should not have tried subtlety. On the other hand, perhaps Mr. Clark could have read more carefully.

It doesn’t take very careful reading to understand that I certainly did not “determine what a country is”. Rather, I am confused as to what a country is. Is it whatever Mr. Clark says it is? That sounds arrogant to me. One of my points is that we need to distinguish between countries and the people in them. Thus, while we went to war with Afghanistan in 2001, I certainly do not believe we intended to go to war with the majority of the Afghan people. However, in that context, I also note that we poorly understand the overlapping ethnic, religious and tribal identities that appear to be at least as important as Afghan national identity. This is nothing like arrogance on my part. I may understand the reality very poorly — and I’m sure Mr. Clark thinks he understands it much better than I do — but at least I understand that identifying someone as an Afghan national doesn’t do much to determine whether that person is someone the U.S. should support. The Taliban were Afghan nationals, in fact controlling the state. That matters far less to me than their religious, tribal and ethnic animosities and repression of others not like themselves (as well as of some like themselves but of different values and opinions). It’s not arrogant that the notion of country or nation is much, much different in the U.S. than it is in Afghanistan. Pluck a random person off the streets in America, and you’ll find an American. Not a Californian, not a Christian, not an Asian or African, but an American, first and foremost. Other identities matter, but not nearly at the same level as American. Pluck a random person off the roads in Afghanistan. Will you find a Pashtun? A Taliban? Those identities seem to matter much more in terms of the behavior and attitudes toward a woman not wearing a head covering, for example. That’s not arrogance; that’s observing reality. I may poorly understand the various tribal, ethnic and religious dimensions, but at least I know they exist and that they matter a great deal.

As for the question of characterizing atrocities, I reassert that it is wrong to equate U.S. responses with the simple assertion that “they can be atrocities”. If you call our attacks on the Taliban atrocities, then you have equated our intent with theirs. We may be stupid, using a missile to respond when a sniper’s rifle would be more effective. We may be naive, thinking that our military strategy can do good. But, make no mistake that we believe we do what we do precisely because we think it will do good.

Yes, I think it’s clear that I would concede that we sometimes convince ourselves that something is good when in fact it’s just in our self-interest. But I think that even Mr. Clark would have a difficult time persuading many that we invaded Afghanistan out of some economic or other self-interest, other than preventing further Taliban/al Qaeda violence. If anyone wants to label me as a self-interested American for that motivation, I happily accept and confess to the so-called crime.

Nevertheless, when we act from an intention of doing good or preventing evil, as we do when we aim missiles at Taliban and al Qaeda targets, it is a gross exaggeration to the point of irresponsibility to label that an atrocity equivalent to the acts and motivations that led us to form that intention. It would be an atrocity to target civilians deliberately, as the Taliban have done, as al Qaeda has done, as the Nazis did. It was not an atrocity to defeat the Nazis, even though we killed many civilians in the process. I’m not trivializing civilian deaths; I’m acknowledging them as part of the terrible cost and therefore tragic, but not an American atrocity.

According to the rules of this forum, “(a)busive, sarcastic or silly comments may be deleted”. It should be clear which post I believe should be subject to this policy.

Best regards,
Jim

I do so not because I want to bomb your country into the stone age, but because it is not at all clear to me what your country is.

What a privelege, to have the power to not bomb. And what arrogance, to determine what a country is. Presumeably in the context of bombing or, not. If your country is stuck in a ducking stool and you drown, presumeably the righteous Mr Vernon would save his weapons. If you were to surface alive, then he’d let off all his pornographic munitions. Such is the mentality of the ‘nuclear parking lot’ lunatics that try to argue on European sites when they are perhaps best contained on Little Green Footballs.

What the Taliban does is an atrocity. OK. What happened in Nazi death camps were atrocities. OK and a Godwin. But, and hear Mr Vernon good:

U.S. responses to such threats are not atrocities.

Pish. They can be atrocities, wedding parties and the like, or maybe they sometimes hit the bad guys. Obviously lack of evidence is not proof that there is no evidence, however….

Enough.

Mr Vernon, I would submit, is nuts.

I try to sympathize with your plight, but I find myself questioning several of your arguments. I do so not because I want to bomb your country into the stone age, but because it is not at all clear to me what your country is. It is also not clear to me that you grasp some of the obvious implications of war. You push a point of view about the global war on terror but fail to define it as a war.

First, your characterization of U.S. bombardment of Kandahar province as “atrocities” requires the assumption of an intent by the U.S. to harm civilians. I agree that such deaths are shocking and regrettable, even tragic. Nazi death camps and Taliban terrorism are atrocities. U.S. responses to such threats are not atrocities. Could we respond without bombardment? Possibly, but you certainly have not demonstrated in any way that a non-military response to Taliban and al Qaeda terrorism would have any meaningful impact on destroying their organizations. I will concede, of course, that we have not yet shown that military actions can accomplish their elimination, either. In other words, I agree that our military actions so far have not “won” the global war on terror or the battle for Afghanistan. However, I would not characterize our efforts as atrocious. One of the many reasons I’m sure we can agree on for preferring peace to war is that war kills people, often innocent civilians. That’s why we call it war. That’s not a reason to label valid military attacks against enemy forces as an atrocity, even when the attacks miss their targets and hit others. I’m not trying to trivialize civilian casualties. When you equate civilian deaths with atrocities, however, you trivialize the real atrocities, which are the actions of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Second, your call for increased investment in Afghan security forces does not have any logic, given your own admission that your ruling government is a failure. Afghan military forces will be an instrument of the Afghan state. If the Afghan state is a failure, why should we strengthen its military capabilities? Better to fix the Afghan state. I’m fairly certain we agree that this is necessary, and I confess that I don’t have a clear solution. I do not believe the solution is to try to rebuild your country while we are still at war. Tragically, thoroughly bi-partisan U.S. policy will have us negotiate with so-called “moderate” elements of the Taliban. I have no earthly idea why we should do this, as I do not see how it will do anything but strengthen the forces of extreme repression and terror. Yet, our outgoing President, our President-elect and our defeated Republican presidential candidate all support this direction in our policy. I certainly concede that you know better the problems of your own country and how we might begin to help strengthen a peaceful Afghan nation. However, I do not believe that you have one Afghan nation. I believe that you have a confusing Afghan national identity that is less important to many than tribal, religious and ethnic identity. How ironic I find it that America — long ridiculed by many “cosmopolitan” internationalists as a hopelessly racist and ethno-centric culture — should confront problems abroad where the sectarian, tribal and religious animosities simply surpass our ability to understand them.

Having disagreed with you on these points, I’ll close by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments about self-determination, human rights and education. I do not believe that military action is the only answer. But, we are fighting a war, and simply to stop the fighting and hope that international aid will solve the problems that created this war — well, that seems too simplistic and naive to me.

At root, I think that we have never really understood this war — never understood exactly who and what we should be fighting and therefore never set any realistic war objectives. We don’t understand what it means to fight against non-state enemies, nor what it means to confront a variety of states that either sympathize and deliberately aid our enemies (who we haven’t really fully identified) or share at least some of our objectives but lack the power to do any particular good in our fight.

In the end, it is your country that has paid a steep, steep price for this failure. And for that, I am truly sorry. I hope that my country can help. I am not sure your advice would actually improve anything, until we actually figure out this new type of war.

Best regards,
Jim Vernon