Disjointed thoughts on Violent Liberation

[lifedistilled]

I find myself still in favor of the wars in (it does not sit well with me to use the Hitchensian term 'liberation of') Iraq and Afghanistan. My thoughts on it have colored very much of my political thinking, as they've been fought for most of my politically aware life, and the threat of them has loomed over my entire conscious life. To defend them

Comments

[csue_n_moo]

When Kabul falls the way Saigon did, I wonder if I'll be able to watch that on TV, too?

[lifedistilled]

I don't expect so. The Viet Cong were backed by the Soviet Union and local Soviet-communist organizations. The Afghan insurgents are not necessarily organized in this way. Instead of a 'fall of Saigon' scenario, I think we're much more likely to see Kabul simply become increasingly co-opted by shari'a-favoring organizations and Taliban-esque groups.

It won't be a capitulation so much as a simple change-of-flavor, and it'll be back to what it had been before.

[csue_n_moo]

Personally, I'm looking forward to grainy footage of Hamid Karzai being helicoptered off the presidential palace roof, complete with bags o' cash.

[tcpip]

The lesson learned is that if one favours liberation outside of one's borders then the emphasis must always been on providing the people of that nation the means to self-emancipation - if not before, then immediately afterwards.

(cf., Australia and East Timor)

[lifedistilled]

Most certainly, and that's one of the most transparent failures of both wars. The emphasis should have been on empowering the citizens of the liberated nation. Given the amount of money and time that has been put into these two conflicts, if self-emancipation of the Iraqi/Afghan peoples had been the goal, I can't imagine it not being achieved by now.

The only thing that could hinder the process of self-emancipation this badly is a blurring of the original goal, or not having had "liberation" as a goal to begin with.

[tcpip]

Unfortunately, as Korb rather truthfully said "If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn."

BTW, you were talking about an article for isocracy.org? I think you're on the right track.,, A handful of footnotes, and most of it's done. Also, consider the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to remove the Pol Pot regime and the international opposition (China, US) that it faced to that action. You may also wish to have a read of my address on national and religious self-determination as it touches on the point of limits.

[lifedistilled]

This post, and the impetus to post on Isocracy.org, stem from my recently completed reading of William T. Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down. I honestly don't even know where I'd get any footnotes, or how to 'clean it up' into something worth posting on a public forum. I'd appreciate help in that regard. Footnotes, for example? I'm not even sure I know what the official term is used for. I know what footnotes are, but what should I put in for footnotes? Cited sources? Should I bring the parenthetical comments into footnotes instead?

And yes, I agree that America's foreign policy, and use/misuse of its enormous military strength, has depended far more on selfishness than on justified, violent liberation. I was (and still am, pending complete collapse of outcome) in favor of liberation even as an ancillary goal, but as the consequences stack up, it becomes less and less likely that the citizens of both nations will have anything to gain from our continued presence.