Stalin is supposed to have said “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”. Like much said by that master of lies, it is a half-truth. A million deaths is a statistic, but it’s also a million individual tragedies.
The death of David Pearce, the first Australian soldier to die in Afghanistan is a tragedy for him and his family. So were the deaths of Marany Awanees and Jeniva Jalal, shot by security guards from Unity Resources Group, an Australian-run security company in Baghdad last week. And so have been all of the deaths in Iraq (as many as a million since 2003) and Afghanistan in the wars and violence that have afflicted both countries for decades.
As someone who supported the war in Afghanistan, as a necessary act of self-defence and as an intervention that seemed likely to have positive effects, I have to accept some share of the responsibility for the deaths it has caused, including that of David Pearce. I can make the point in mitigation that, if the Afghanistan war had not been so shamefully mismanaged, most obviously the diversion of most of the required resources to the Iraq venture, it might well have reached a successful conclusion by now.
But even after that mismanagement, I still, reluctantly, support the view that it is better to try and salvage the situation in Afghanistan by committing more resources, rather than pulling out and leaving the Afghans to sort it out themselves. I draw that conclusion because I think there would be even more bloodshed after a withdrawal, and that there’s a reasonable prospect that a democratic government and a largely free society can survive in Afghanistan with our help. And, even after all the mismanagement, i think most Afghans are better off now than they would have been with a continuation of Taliban rule and civil war.
The opposite is true in Iraq. Most Iraqis say they are worse off now than under Saddam, and of course the millions who have been killed or have fled the country could not be asked for their views. While it once seemed plausible to suggest that even if the war had been a tragic mistake, the consequences of withdrawing the occupation forces would be even worse, it’s hard to sustain that view any longer. Occupation by foreign armies has done as much to fan the flames of insurgency and civil war as to impose stability. And the tens of thousands of armed mercenaries, like Blackwater and Unity Resources, are no better than any of the other militias that claim to be protecting somebody or other, and shoot anyone who gets in their way.
All of us whose governments have contributed to this disaster, and particularly those who have supported the war, need to acknowledge these disasters and accept their share of moral responsibility for them. It’s distressing, in this context, that the average American woefully underestimates the toll of civilian casualties in Iraq, by a factor of at least ten and probably more like 100. It’s even worse that supporters of the war have done their best to encourage this misperception, in all sorts of ways, from quibbling about statistics to an obsessive attacks on trivial side-issues that allow them to ignore their moral responsibility for the consequences of the policies they have pushed with such vigour and, in many cases, venom.
John Quiggin 
you have used ‘iraq’ where i think you intended ‘afganistan’, in para 4. Fixed thanks – JQ
Your reasoning for intervening and staying in Afghanistan is similar to others on intervening and staying in Iraq. I’m not saying they are the same thing, but the differences are finer than the anti-war (Iraq) movement has been prepared to admit.
Just to address just one of the many issues you raise – the presence of foreign military and concomitant political structure that acts like as a de facto government, as in the Iraq situation, is inimical to the sovereignty of the national government.
Not being in a position to prosecute or expel the mercenaries who commit violence against their own citizens is serious credibility damage.
At least in the case of Iraq we roughly know what the US government was trying to achieve; set up a client state in the middle east, awe the fractious nations of the region with US military might, dip into the regions oil and strengthen Israel.
Debacle as the Iraqi situation is, at least its failures have a certain coherence, in Afghanistan it is difficult to see what was the aim, if any, outside of rhetorical implausibilities. After the fruitless chasing of Osama’s clique ended, what was the point of deposing the Taliban. However unlovely they were, they were the indigenous government, the September 11 perpetrators were Saudi Arabians and Egyptians, not Afghanis. If we were talking about a million occupying troops, complete control over the education system, incarceration of nationalist troublemakers and a ruthless crushing of dissent, sure lets go ahead and nation build, short of that – just get out.
Thats a failure of vision not competence.
Iraq on the other hand, where a 5 minute broadcast over radio and television for the police and army to report for duty would have secured victory, is truly world class incompetence.
“And, even after all the mismanagement, i think most Afghans are better off now than they would have been with a continuation of Taliban rule and civil war.”
This is surely true if you replace “Afghans” with “Residents of Kabul”, but for much of the country, continuation of civil war is very much a fact. To call this warlord and militia dominated failed state a “largely free society” is quite off the mark I think, and the Taliban’s control over southern Afghanistan has been exapanding for some years now. This wouldn’t be happening if the international community had followed through on their promises of security and development, instead of leaving it up to warlords and bandits whose human rights records are hardly a great deal better than the Taliban’s.
I recommend reading this investigation by Pakistani journalist Syed Saleen Shahzad.
I also supported the Afghan War back in 2001 because in my naiveity I expected that the international community was willing and able to commit the resources necessary for building a peaceful and democratic country. Maybe if it had been FDR instead of Cheney in charge they might have bothered.
Gerard, I agree that large parts of the country are no better off, or not much better off. As I said, this has been shamefully mismanaged.
John,
I believe that Special Air Service Sergeant Andrew Russell has the sad distinction of being the first Australian soldier to die in Afghanistan
Margo Kingston’s recounting of the aftermath of
Sgt Russell’s death, demonstrating the barely restrained vindictiveness lurking just beneath the avuncular grandfatherly persona he now cultivates, is one (of many) reasons why I hope John Howard loses his seat in the upcoming election.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/19/1087595786335.html
I won’t quibble about whether life is better or worse now than under the Taliban, Prof Q, although I’d like to see some statistics that support the ‘better now’ thesis. One thing is certain, however: Afghan narcotic production has soared and continues to increase, as other agricultural production declines. An inevitable or an unforeseen consequence?
It’s just that the sentence I quoted seems to imply that civil war in Afghanistan has somehow ended, which I don’t think is at all the case. In fact, civil war is probably wider now than it was in 2000.
sorry could I rephrase that last sentence and remove the ‘probably’?
There is no such thing as a good war, or a better war; they are all ghastly. I dont know any military people who are more pro violence or pro war than civilians, they understand the risks implicitely.
How it plays out in the public arena is another battle.
The war in Afghanistan is to stop the spread of the Taliban who are regarded as a major threat to the developed world.
Gerard, I didn’t mean to say that war (civil or otherwise) had ended, just that (unlike Iraq) there was already a war going on in any case.
The reasons for staying in both places is exactly the same – failed states, as Afghanistan was pre-2001, are likely to be a greater long term problem than the current short term pain of staying and sorting out the problems.
what responsibility do you have for sending soldiers to iraq or afghanistan, if this action was taken by a government over which you have no control? an action in iraq which has never had majority approval?
are the sheep in the field responsible for this criminal carnage, as well?
no, because unlike four-legged sheep, you have the means to dispossess this bandit guild of politicians of the power to make war for the benefit of their personal careers. i wish your sense of responsibilty was sufficiently robust to join with other ozzies to establish democracy, but it is not. you will say, “what a shame”, and vote for some pollie. duty done, you can turn to the sports pages.
It would good if people who think sending troops to Afghanistan is a good idea could at least give an estimated time-line and predicted scenario as to what the outcomes of sitting there are, and how the situation is not going to deteriate again once foreign forces leave.
I too supported the intervention in Afghanistan although was very much against the Iraq war. My understanding of the history of Afghanistan is that the country is well used to long wars of attrition and just because the allied forces thought that they had won in 2002 did not make it true, especially as the leadership had largely escaped and could regroup – as they have done.
We have a leader who wants history put onto the curriculum but has shown on many occasions that he has no real understanding of the lessons of history. I don’t know why he thought that the war in Afghanistan would be so easily won when the Russians were unable to do so, the British Empire was unable to do so nor any other power for hundreds of years.
The only way to win the war is to spend billions on infrastructure. Whilst I applaud the Australian Army’s role in training and building it is only in one small part of the country.
For real peace to occur there has to be a concerted effort in education and training, building roads, bridges and a transport system which is safe after dark in all of the major centres. Hard to do when humanitarian helpers are so vulnerable to abduction and/or attack.
One way would have been to help refugees and to have them go back when it was safe to do so. The unseemly haste to send Afghani refugees back (like the Baktiari family) with minimal help after the war was deemed over is to Australia’s shame. If the country could be pacified these refugees would have been in key positions to help rebuild Afghanistan with good education and skills. It is not too late to establish and educational plan similar to the Colombo plan to assist in this process.
“The only way to win the war is to spend billions on infrastructure”
From this perspective, we should surely leave. The oppurtunity cost must be huge (for both Iraq and Afghanistan). Surely the money would be better spent on easier causes that help more people.
#15
So the reason is not anti war as a principle more making a judgement on the risk of losing war.
While some people are pure pacifists, most sensible people are anti-war on the basis that war is usually a disaster for (nearly) everyone involved. There are rare exceptions, and again, most people judged Afghanistan to be one of them.
If Afghanistan is a rare exception, then can I ask what is exceptional about it comapared to the other civil wars of the 20th century? (excluding appeals to the tyranny of the majority).
If it was a good idea to go to Afghanistan, then the conditions that made it a good idea should be explicit, in which case it gives a good idea about the legitamacy of wars to come.
Did ‘most people’ really think that Afghanistan was a good idea?? Maybe they did, but I simply don’t recall it. I thought that there was much disquiet about a US intervention that appeared to be primarily motivated by retribution, rather than any clear-headed military strategy and long-term achieveable plan.
Afganistan has 32 million people in it (more than in Iraq at 27 million). With this size of population (and its geography), an insurgency would probably be impossible to bring to an end by force.
Pr Q says:
Afghanistan is Afghanistan because it is populated by Afghanis. Likewise Iraq is Iraq mainly because of Iraqis. Despots and foreign interveners can amplify or dampen grass roots tendencies. But they cant remove them unless the destroy them root and branch.
Both are evidentlly structurally unsound states, riven by ethnic divisions. The only reason they were held together is overwhelming military force.
In the case of Afghanistan the enforcers have been military empires such as the UK, USSR and now USA. We forget that the current bout of troubles in Afghanistan were started by the excessively liberal [!] policies of the USSR, which annoyed the local witchdoctors and war-lords.
In the case of Iraq the enforcer was Hussein. His biggest crimes appear to have been committed in the course of modernisation, by giving the green light to the to Baathist military stomp on the Shias and Kurds before the Suuni militias did.
How many other nations in history could you say would be better-off under these kind of political regimes? The example of Titos Yugoslavia is instructive. This country was held together by a despot. But when he died his countrymen decided that they did not like each other much after all. No need for the USSR or USA to stuff things up, ordinary citizens can do the same given grass roots cultural tendencies.
The Afghan intervention has been reasonably successful because it low-balled expectations and did not run too much agains the grain of Afghani culture, which, as Churchill once remarked, “is full of interest”.
The Taliban were generally unpopular outside of Pathan areas because they could not keep the peace and kept ripping city dwellers off or hassling them for no good reason. This is classic behaviour of rural hicks moving into bright lights big cities. So the US is doing its job if it keeps them bottled up in their mountain fastness.
War Nerd nails this pretty well. The US is playing “divide and rule” in the badlands whilst propping up the cities. This is what the UK and USSR did. Its really the only viable strategy for a backward country.
In any case, the real battle for Afghanistan is in Pakistan. (Just as the key strategic nations in Mesopotamia are the Saudis and Iranis, rather than the Iraqis.) THe US seems to be propping up the good guy in Pakistan, or at least his nine lives have not run out yet.
Pr Q says:
Barely a day goes by when I do not shudder with shame when recollecting how I supported the Iraq-attack from late-2002 through to mid-2003 period. This despite (or because?) of the fact that virtually all of my family, friends and fellow-bloggers (in particular Steve Sailer and John Quiggin) correctly predicted the error of my way.
I recanted my view by mid-2003. But this hardly seems sufficient accountability, given the level of culpability.
May I suggest that Pr Q set up a “repentance and penitence post” on his blog to accept donations from re-constructed war-bloggers seeking to wash away their sins. Proceeds to be donated towards victims of the war.
I will pledge $100 to it straight-off. Pr Q is, of course, exempted from any further obligation.
Many “sensible people” did not support the war in Afghanistan, history and geography being cited as sufficient reason to not engage.
The Afghanistan invastion was just as wrong as the Iraqi invasion – its just that because they are poorer and we do not like their brand of religion we think it is OK to invade them.
the war was immoral because there was absolutely no evidence that the Taleban regime was involved in 9-11 and quite a bit of evidence that they were getting ready to hand Binladen over.
Bombing a poor country is cowardly
Also it was stupid- surely the history of Russia showed exactly what would happen a long drawn out quagmire.
The only even half way decent argument relates to human rights- well I do not think you can improve lives for women or others out of the barrell of a gun. I suspect trade and education is almost the only way to do it – and slowly.
Finally thinking real politik etc what the hell does Australi have to gain. I think our good friend George would still have liked us because of our resources and geographic position – and we are mostly white christian anglophones ie good guys. We could have just ignored this morally bankrupt invasion – perhaps built a school or two instead.
Perhaps we get some backhanders form the drug barons – it is the only “rational” motive I can guess at.
Jan