Look At U.S.

By some quirk in my thought process, thinking about our involvement in Afghanistan brought to mind an encounter I had in Edinburgh.

Here in the U.S. we have been focused on the war in Afghanistan. In my recent post on General McChrystal I attempted to clarify some issues of that subject. There are, of course, a multitude of other aspects I did not cover.

Every intelligence report I have heard of puts the number of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan at about one hundred. This means that the authorized force level of 100,000 will give every al-Qaeda member 1,000 U.S. and NATO targets.

That’s our view. Actually, the problem of al-Qaeda is far more complex. Our American Exceptionalism, our self-absorption blinds us to many aspects of that problem.

The Sir Walter Scott Memorial in Edinburgh is impressive. One can climb to the top. It’s only 287 steps. I did that. Not on this trip but 38 years ago. Apparently I was younger and in better shape back in 1971.

I was sitting on a bench near the base, enjoying a beautiful day and getting in a bit of my favorite sport: people-watching. A gentleman from Norway seemed to also be killing some time in the vicinity. We struck up a conversation.

I bragged that I had climbed the tower in the far distant past. He admitted that he too had climbed it in the past. A professor of Tourism and English, he was accompanying a class on a field trip. He was waiting while they made the climb.

It turned out that he had lived in Boston for some time. He asked me for my take on President Obama. I asked for his impressions of America.

He loved America but was struck by how self-absorbed we are. He couldn’t watch or read the news without noticing that nothing seemed to happen outside of America unless it involved America. It seemed that the rest of the world either didn’t exist or existed only to the extent it affected us.

Having been a foreign correspondent and done my graduate studies in international relations, his observation was not new to me. It was more of a reminder.

Many events around the globe may eventually develop into concerns for us. For that reason it might be a good idea to pay attention. Or, some situation may not directly concern us but involve the interests of one of our allies or enemies. That would also be a good reason to pay attention. Whatever, I knew it to be a valid point on his part.

Back to Afghanistan. The membership of al-Qaeda includes almost no Afghanis. Afghanis view al-Qaeda as foreigners, only marginally better than us. al-Qaeda has a much greater presence in Pakistan. So does the Taliban.

Pakistan is a much larger country than Afghanistan. It has nuclear weapons. The paranoia and animosity that are the basis for the culture of Pakistan result in them having a different perception of external threats than do we. They have the bulk of their military forces deployed to protect them from India.

They don’t want either al-Qaeda or the Taliban complicating their issues but the military has yet to be convinced that they are the primary concern. They do, however, feel that an increase of troops in Afghanistan will drive more Taliban across the border. Our drone attacks in their territory will make imposition of the government far more difficult.

That translates to greater instability. A mixture of instability and nuclear weapons would not be my recommendation. But, that is not the entire picture.

Yemen’s government is not one that we use too frequently as a model. It does, however, represent a modicum of stability. al-Qaeda has a far larger and more active presence in Yemen than they do in Afghanistan. The stability of the government is at stake. So, who cares? We should.

Yemen is where the bin Laden family comes from. It is also on the border of Saudi Arabia. Should we ignore a destabilizing force that affects Saudi Arabia?

Another country where al-Qaeda has a significant presence is Somalia. We haven’t sent 100,000 troops to that lovely tourist haven. A few weeks ago we did send in a few Special Forces and were able to rid the world of a score of miscreants.

What we laughingly call journalists are as nearsighted as the general population and our leadership. They are as ignorant of the rest of the world as their audience. They are incapable of providing us useful information on the state of the world. This is true even in matters that really are of concern to us, e.g., Yemen and Somalia.

We are destroying our own military capability by saturating Afghanistan with unneeded forces in an unrealistic hope that we can remake them in our own image. This while we are allowing al-Qaeda almost free reign in other areas. Ignorance may be bliss but it is hardly wise.

We cannot live apart from the rest of the human population. We cannot survive based only on our ignorance. We still are well-regarded by many people outside our borders. That is not deserved if we fail to regard them at all.

Tagged as: afghani, afghanistan, al-qaeda, american exceptionalism, bin laden, boston, edinburgh, english, foreign correspondent, general, india, international relations, journalism, journalist, norway, nuclear weapons, obama, pakistan, professor, saudi arabia, scott memorial, sir walter scott, somalia, stanley mcchrystal, taliban, tourism, troops, yemen