On Blowback

To understand, or rather to begin to attempt to comprehend, America’s position in the Middle East today, it is imperative to understand America’s focus on punishing enemies at the expense of a sober analysis of possible negative blowback. The obsession with bleeding the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and with overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2003 are disturbingly similar examples of the American penchant for instant gratification.

In order to humiliate and weaken the Soviet Union, a goal that any defender of the most basic human liberties would be pressed to endorse, the CIA undertook the largest operation in its history by arming the mujahedin in Afghanistan. The obsession with creating a Vietnam for the Russians led the United States to arm and train its future assassins.

Every penny, every blanket, and every bullet that American sent to the mujahedin during the 1980’s went through Pakistan. Americans were not allowed into Afghanistan; they did not meet with the “freedom fighters” that they so lavishly funded, and they had no say as to which resistance groups would receive the American largesse. All of these responsibilities, these most fundamental strategic and tactical decisions, fell to Pakistan. Pakistan, which was ruled by a military dictator who had hung his civilian predecessor and which used the 1980’s not only to fund and arm their chosen surrogates in Afghanistan, but to build nuclear weapons.

So all encompassing was the obsession with bleeding Russia that the Pakistani nuclear program and the radicalization of an entire generation of Central Asian Muslims were deemed subordinate concerns. One would be hard pressed to make that case today. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who matched American funds to the mujahedin, decided that American arms and funds should not go to secular, western-leaning nationalist groups, which actually did exist in the region at that time, but to medieval obscurantist fanatics. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had their own interests in doing so, of course, and states cannot be blamed for pursuing their own interests. The United States can be blamed, however, for enabling their “allies” in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to transfer American wealth and technology to movements and ideologies that were at their very core virulently anti-American.

The way in which the CIA allowed the Pakistanis and the Saudis to outsource the war was shortsighted enough. American conduct in the aftermath of the Russian retreat was even more so. The last Russian crossing the bridge back into Kazakhstan was taken to be what the pulling down of Saddam Hussein’s statue would be 14 years later; it was taken to be evidence of “Mission Accomplished”, rather than the beginning of a new and even more crucial chapter to the war. What distracted America from Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal? Fittingly enough, Iraq played a part. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait seemed far more relevant to our national interests than did the outcome of a convoluted and barbaric civil war in war-torn but commie-free Afghanistan.

We now know that the civil war in Afghanistan resulted in the rise of the Taliban, who willingly and knowingly hosted al-Qaeda through the 9/11 attacks. Only three nations on earth had full relations with the Taliban, all “moderate” American allies of course: the United Arab Emirates and our favorite bagmen, Saudi Arabia and a nuclear Pakistan. After the 9/11 attacks, our “allies” “supported” our assault on their “former” proxies.

The horror of the 9/11 attacks drowned out any assessment that included even a hint of American responsibility. Pointing to the fact that America may have had a role in funding and training their murderers was equated with justifying the attacks themselves, and willful blindness maintained its insidious power, evident in the manner that the United States attacked Afghanistan.

The Americans did not pour troops into Tora Bora to capture and kill al-Qaeda’s leadership; it hired local Afghan warlords who opposed the Taliban for any number of reasons, very few of which involved any hints of warm feelings for the United States. And what would we do when our enemies reached the border? No worries, our great friends the Pakistanis would apprehend them for us. We would not enter our “ally’s” territory in pursuit of our killers. This staggering betrayal of the dead of 9/11 soon was subsumed by an all too familiar distraction, however.

The United States funded and armed our future enemies in order to achieve the instant gratification of bleeding our arch-nemesis the Soviets. We then abandoned the country with an inconceivable disregard for who would ultimately use their American-supplied weapons and money to gain control of Afghanistan. After the 9/11 attacks, the Americans again largely outsourced a war in Afghanistan and lost focus after the ostensible enemy had been “defeated”, again betrayed a lack of concern over who really controlled Afghanistan which was even more incomprehensible after 9/11. Most of Afghanistan is now “governed” by a group of narco-militias and Taliban insurgents in what appears to be a sickeningly familiar cycle, especially since American attention was again diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq.

The obsession with overthrowing Saddam Hussein had the same effect on American policy as the obsession with bleeding the Soviets did; it led to a fatal failure to imagine possible blowback. The act of removing Saddam Hussein from power was infinitely easier than driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and Americans did most of the fighting themselves rather than recruiting unsavory mercenaries, but the flaw was identical; their entire operation betrayed a laser-like focus on who would be assaulted, accompanied by a cosmic ignorance of who would be empowered by the action.

The CIA action in Afghanistan and the American invasion of Iraq appear increasingly to have been short-term tactical successes and long-term strategic disasters. Both wars are historically colored not by who was overthrown by Americans, but by who assumed local power after America’s enemy had been bested. Can anyone today honestly say that bleeding and weakening the Red Army in Afghanistan was worth the cost of the global radical Islamist insurgency that rose from its ashes? Can anyone today honestly say that toppling Saddam Hussein was worth the cost of empowering Iran, attracting al-Qaeda to a resurgence in the heart of the Arab world, and dragging American credibility and prestige to dust in much of the world?

This is not an argument for ignoring enemies or coddling potential aggressors. Rather, it should serve as evidence that a perceived moral superiority over an enemy like the Red Army or Saddam Hussein does not translate into the inherent rationality of attacking and destroying them. Somewhere, deep down, don’t we all miss Gorbachev with his broken elevators and his rusty submarines? Don’t we all miss the no-fly zones and the weapons inspectors?