[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald.]
America needs to reassess its current policy of exporting democracy to the rest of the world. It is not working in Iraq and it is even less likely to work in Afghanistan. The only hope we have for change there is to seek stability and that means understanding and supporting the wishes of the local populations. We will not be successful in that part of the world, particularly if our policy is based on militarily imposing democracy.
The Bush administration has made it abundantly clear to the rest of the world, particularly the Islamic world, that it sees the democratization of Islam as the answer to radical Islamic terrorism. That is a major mistake that will plague future generations in America and the West. Our next object lesson in this arena may come in Afghanistan where increased attempts to install democracy will only make the problem worse.
This administration, under the debilitating influence of the Neoconservatives, whose basic philosophical point of departure is to see world events through a purely moral, right vs. wrong filter, has decided to spread democracy. They have decided, under that same Neocon influence, that the only correct answer to the terrorist issue, or, for that matter, any other foreign policy issue, is a military response.
It is this conflation of two distinctly different issues, selling democracy and combating terrorism, into one problem and the concurrent conviction that they only can be addressed with one policy – military action – that has caused us most of our current foreign policy problems.
This is what got us into Iraq, what lost us so many allies. Remember all the energy expended by the Bush Administration to establish a direct connection between the terrorist bombings on 9/11 and the government of Saddam Hussein? Well, that was the beginning. We say we are fighting terrorism in Iraq, but we are really trying to suppress an insurgency in order to impose democracy on them because we think that will create a better world for us and our friends.
It now appears that we will move our military attention from Iraq to Afghanistan. Both Senators McCain and Obama have stressed their resolve to “save” Afghanistan by transferring more troops there. Unfortunately, the Afghanis will not be eager for us to impose a democracy, or much of anything else, on their country. There is nothing in their culture, their history, their geography or their reality that would make this likely.
We need to continue to be concerned about terrorism in Afghanistan, not about insurgency. Al Qaida is, and will remain a threat to us, particularly if we continue our failed policies in the region. It would be foolhardy to walk away and permit them to reestablish their base of operations there. However, we should not be concerned with democratizing that country. Afghan stability and denying Al Qaida an operational base should be our dominant goals.
What we need to do is allow Afghanistan to stabilize itself. That means identifying what political arrangement will be acceptable to the Afghanis and then figuring out how to accomplish that in the face of pressures that will seek both to destabilize Afghanistan and to recreate it as a home for Al Qaida.
That means no major jump in our troop levels, no attempt to control that large country or its borders, no attempt to bring them democracy and no attempt to militarily crush the indigenous insurgency – the Taliban – for if we pursue those paths, we are guaranteeing a repeat of Iraq, or worse. It would literally take hundreds of thousands of troops to succeed using an Iraq-like “surge” in Afghanistan. Any serious attempt at military “victory” in Afghanistan will make Iraq look like a walk in the park.
About the only things we should hope to accomplish are Afghan stability and the denial of Afghanistan to Al Qaida. We can do that only if we support governance that is acceptable to the majority of Afghanis. That means some sort of Islamic government, hopefully, but not necessarily moderate, which, in recognizing the dangers of fundamentalist terrorism, would be willing to have us remain involved in the denial of their land to terrorist groups like Al Qaida. Right now, the Taliban is the best candidate. They are not universally violent, they once stabilized Afghanistan and ended poppy cultivation and they contain elements with which we certainly could cooperate toward those goals. They are far from all bad.
To accomplish those goals, we need to move on from our basic, long held premise of American exceptionalism – the thought that only America has found the Holy Grail when it comes to governance. Instead, we need to understand that the world is full of people who, perhaps because they do not share our history, have no understanding of democracy or the rule of law, are not that displeased with their own lives, and have little interest in adopting democracy.
That most emphatically includes the broadest spectrum of Muslims who have their devoutly held religious and cultural beliefs and who believe that those beliefs, not ours, are the key to their own happiness.
Until we reach that level of sophistication and understanding of how the world really works, we will certainly be seduced by our own notion of exceptionalism into more and more disastrous democracy-driven forays into the rest of the world.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston.
