21 November 2010 Cultural sensitivity begins where the culture exists

Afghans want their country back - and Americans should listen

By David Ignatius

Sunday, November 21, 2010

America's first problem in Afghanistan is that the Afghan people in the key battleground don't understand why we're there: When pollsters read a simple summary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack and its aftermath to a sample of 1,000 young men in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, only 8 percent said they knew about this event.

The poll results convey a stark reality about this war: People in the Pashtun region of southern Afghanistan resent foreign fighters. Most don't comprehend why they have come or how they might offer a better future than would the Taliban. They feel that America and its allies don't respect their traditions…

“The numbers show that Afghans remain wary, even as U.S. troops pound the Taliban: 50 percent of those polled in October think recent military operations are bad for the Afghan people; 58 percent think it's wrong to work with foreign forces; 55 percent oppose military operations against the Taliban in their area; 72 percent say that foreigners disrespect their religion…”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111904376.html



Cassi Creek:

One of the many things the GOP and its minions have found to dislike about President Obama is his program to increase the U.S. government’s apparent sensitivity to the world’s Muslims. They have objected to his Cairo speech, his administration’s policy shift toward Israel, his visits to Muslim nations, and his command to NASA to promote the contributions of Arab/Muslim culture to manned space flight.

Personally, I find the charge to NASA to be poorly founded and of little or no merit. The nature of human discovery is such that if the proto-Arabs had not developed a decimal-based mathematics to use in trade, another culture would have. The proto-Arabs may have put pen and zeros to papyrus or clay. The early Greeks developed higher mathematics, calculated the circumference of the globe, laid the groundwork for ballistics, and many other uses for ten separate numbers. It makes more sense to thank Greece for manned space flight than the current Muslim states.

We’ve seen political correctness run rampant for decades now. We have college courses designed to assuage the anger and angst of nearly every political and ethnic group. We go overboard in what we are told is essential concern for other cultures. Somehow, we’ve failed to figure out that we have failed utterly to demonstrate concern and understanding for the Afghanis and Iraqis.

We invaded and occupied Iraq, deposed an existing government, destroyed what working infrastructure existed, plunged their nation into political and religious turmoil, directly and indirectly caused the deaths of unknown thousands of Iraqis.

We invaded and partially occupied Afghanistan, extending their current period of warfare by at least another two decades, and have wasted time, money, and countless lives supporting another corrupt government, trying to depose a self-appointed theocracy, and pushing them toward a western culture that they have no desire to establish or live in.

And we failed utterly to ask either nation if they wanted our help.

Yes, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 is partially justified by the WTC and Pentagon attacks, planned and launched from Afghanistan by a terrorist who was then sheltered by a government of religious fundamentalists who espouse a 7th century lifestyle for most of the Afghan nation. I supported the hunt for bin Laden, which might have been successful except for the intervention of command authority at Tora-Bora. Our civilian leaders essentially ordered our troops to stand down and to let Afghani forces have the opportunity to capture or kill bin Laden. Their religious affiliation meant more to them than their nationality. Our leadership should have known that but failed to do their groundwork there or in Iraq.

Our plans to modernize and re-equip an Afghan army that has no loyalty to the state or the army are not going to work. In that region of the world, Islam over-rides nearly everything else today. Perhaps we might be able to buy a palace guard in Kabul but we have no hope of leaving a modern and working Afghani army in our wake. We claim we want to provide a culture in Afghanistan that protects children and women from abuse, from cultural and social customs and codes that prevent education for females, that allow treatment of women we consider barbaric. We claim we want to overthrow and replace the Taliban with a western style government.

It is simply not going to happen. Every army that has tried to modernize Afghanistan has failed. The Afghans may want a different political system or they may not. But they do not want anything shoved down their throats; not by Alexander, not by Victoria’s army, not by the Soviets, and not by the U.S. We are all infidel foreigners and they want nothing from us but our departure.

Our current government, which was elected promising to end the Afghan war, has become confused. We have no current justification for our troops to be in combat or in any other role in Afghanistan. In our zeal to reform a backward, hostile, failing state, we’ve allowed our supposed sympathy and concern for our Islamic co-inhabitants on this globe to be forgotten. Of course, the Bush admin had no real awareness of how Afghanistan or any Islamic nation really functions. The Obama admin, if it knew before it was elected, has obviously forgotten.

Therefore, it is time to look at the facts. The Afghanis don’t really know why we are there, don’t want out help in replacing the Taliban, don’t dislike bin Laden or want him captured. They do want us to leave them alone and quit expecting them to change the way their tribal society has operated for centuries.

President Obama, you promised to end this war. The time to bring our troops home is now. If you don’t believe me, ask the Afghanis in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. Then don’t bother to apologize to them, just order our troops home.

If you feel the need to apologize to anyone in this matter, apologize to our troops on behalf of the previous U.S, administration and the Congress that sent them into the hellhole that is Afghanistan today.