A deadly traffic accident caused by a United States military convoy quickly escalated into a full-blown anti-American riot that raged across much of the Afghan capital on Monday, leaving at least 14 people dead and scores injured.
One demonstrator, called Ahmadullah, was still shouting, "Death to Karzai," and "Death to America" hours after the initial event. "These Americans came to our country and they are doing this kind of thing in my country, and our government is also their servant and a puppet of the Americans," he shouted to a crowd of people. "We are against America, all Afghans are against them."
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4 comments:
Nadir: Americans are not the only humans on earth capable of abhorent behavior. Certainly some Afganhis are, and perhaps this riot represents abhorent behavior on the part of some Afganhis, not Americans. I am not sure.
I am open to the possibility that US miliatary and contract personel in Afgahnistan and Iraq are making those nations worse than they were before. Are you open to the possibility that residents there are responsible?
Maybe the isolationists are correct afterall: Even worse than *not* intervening when people in other nations kill, rape, and subjugate each other is to intervene and try to build a democracy. So what is it that people are calling for (you, perhaps?) in other nations, such as Somolia? What would all the "outraged" people have had US miltary do in the previous genocide in Rhowanda? "Go in" and do what?
If the Afgahnis think that the American troops are awful, wait'll the Americans leave; the Afgahnis will really get a tasteful of awful then, I predict.
I remain curious about how the US military is conducting this war: Is it really a Big Government Project, making things worse with stupid decisions, incompetence, and curruption? Is this 50 years of New Orleans levee-building? Of US public school development?
Big US Govt projects have led to some magnificent successes, such as the interstate highway system, the Brooklyn Bridge (or was that a private affair?), and the rebuilding of Japan and Europe after WWII. But it's also led to the New Orleans levees and public school and the federal tax system. Why should I think that the US military and rebuilding effort is working like the Brooklyn Bridge rather than the New Orleans housing projects?
Why did Big US Govt reconstruction projects succeed in Japan, Germany, and Alabama? Why are they perhaps failing in Afgahnistan and Iraq? My hypothesis:
1. In Japan, Germany, and Georgia, the US military waged "total war", destroying so much infrastructure and killing so many civilians and military-age men over a period of years that by the end there was no critical mass of military-age men left alive or eager to resist the erection of democratic institutions.
2. In Afganistan and Iraq, the US military destruction and killing was not enough to eradicate the wills and numbers of tyrants, and was so much that it provided anger in both committed tyrants, and those who would have been otherwise susceptable to giving US plans a chance.
My hypothesis predicts that the US had three options for winning:
1. Destroying so much, and killing so many, that there remains few capable men to resist US plans, and those men lack motivation to resist.
OR
2. Destroy so little, and kill so few, that the surviving capable men harbor a minimum amount of anger towards the US military, combined with effective and intelligent restructuring, and erection of an authenticly autonomous and democratic government.
OR
3. Destroying the governments, then leaving with the message: "Do whatever you want with each other, but if you organize a subsquent government that assists in attacking the US or its allies, we'll return and destroy it as well."
Option 1 is untenable in today's world. Option 3 violates all the criticm about the US having previously "permitted" Afgahnis to have permitted themselves to become ruled by the Taliban, and the Iraqis to have permitted themselves to become ruled by the Baathists. Option 2 seems then to most viable one, though I have never been convinced that Bush's invasion minimized its destruction and casulties, nor that its reconstruction has proceeded intelligently, though I believe that the erected government is authentic.
Sometimes I'm really mad that US troops sometimes behave this way. Other times I focus on the lack of outrage by Iraqis and Afgahnis at the Taliban and thugs who commit these acts as a matter of policy.
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