Rigid ideologies suck. If I haven't made it abundantly clear in earlier posts, I hate ideological thinking. What do I mean by this? Ideological thinking is when a person clings so tightly to their preconceived worldview that they shape all situations to this paradigm even if facts say otherwise. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Convenient facts are exaggerated and given undo prominence.
Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill is a perfect case of this type of thinking. Although I found his book on Blackwater and private military contracting (Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army) insightful and important, his views on U.S. foreign policy, especially when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan (or Af-Pak for short), conform to a familiar anti-imperialist ideology.
In Scahill's mind, almost everything the U.S. engages in abroad is evil and imperialistic: Facts be damned!
And facts have readily been damned by Scahill when it comes to Af-Pak, as we can see from his June 5th appearance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. The full clips of his time on the show can be found here, here, here, and here.
What follows are the statements I take issue with. I'll be clear here, however. There are legitimate arguments and viewpoints that can come out against the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and policies toward and within Pakistan. Yet, Scahill's viewpoints on this matter are simply untrue. This is what infuriates me more than anything: not the position in and of itself but rather how that position is sustained and defended.
So let's get started!
Scahill said "Bombings in Pakistan with these drones are indiscriminately killing civilians. Civilians are dying in Afghanistan on a regular basis."
Now we'll deal with the drone issue later. But here's a question: civilians are dying in Afghanistan on a regular basis because of whom? The very language Scahill uses is dishonest. The passive voice here implies the U.S. is primarily to blame for civilian deaths.
So here's the truth. The U.S. is responsible for a large number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and that number has been rising. HOWEVER, the majority of civilian deaths in the country, according to a recent UN report, are from the Taliban and that number is also rising. Now people like Scahill may argue, after sniffing massive amounts of glue, that once the U.S. occupation ends, Afghan civilians will have it much better. Bullshit. With the U.S. gone, fighting would still continue between the Taliban and various other factions within the country, including OTHER outside actors (yes Scahill, the U.S. isn't the only "meddler" in Afghanistan). That's not to mention the widespread systemic violence of the Taliban factions themselves, especially towards women and religious and ethnic minorities.
Later in the show Scahill goes on to make another ideological statement, this time about Iraq:
I actually hold the Bush administration responsible for releasing the hounds of hell on the Iraqi population because there certainly weren’t people being killed in those number under Saddam Hussein’s regime. He was most brutal when the United States was supporting him.”
Scahill attributes any human rights violation, violence or crimes internationally to the United States. When the U.S. supported Hussein, it was their fault. When they didn’t support him, it was their fault. Now the Bush administration does hold large responsibility for its mishandling of post-Saddam Iraq--but so does various ethno-religious factions within Iraq, so does Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. But they aren't the evil U.S., so I guess Scahill doesn't care about those actors.
Perhaps Scahill's most imbecilic statement during the show was on Afghanistan once again, "quoting" a Soviet general who served in the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the '80s:
He called it the biggest mistake of his life. And said if we had it to be over again we wouldn’t have sent one troop. We would’ve helped support the Afghan people.
Ah yes, Scahill, those humanitarian Soviets. I’m sure the Red Army’s main concern was helping the Afghan people during their war in Afghanistan. Give me a break. And this sad excuse for a journalist can’t even draw key differences between the U.S. presence and mission in Afghanistan and the Soviets’ presence and mission there.
And Scahill uses the all-too-repeated "Graveyard of Empires" argument here. That is, he implies that any type of military or outside presence within Afghanistan is inevitably doomed, and draws from history to support this idea.
But let's turn to a real journalist, Peter Bergen, to debunk this historicist idea:
Objections to Obama’s ramp-up in Afghanistan begin with the observation that Afghanistan has long been the "graveyard of empires"—as went the disastrous British expedition there in 1842 and the Soviet invasion in 1979, so too the current American occupation is doomed to follow. In fact, any number of empire builders, from Alexander the Great to the Mogul emperor Babur in the sixteenth century to the British in the Second Afghan War three decades after their infamous defeat, have won military victories in Afghanistan. The graveyard of empires metaphor belongs in the graveyard of clichés.
The Soviets, of course, spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan, only to retreat ignominiously in 1989, an important factor in their own empire’s consignment to history’s dustbin. But today’s American-led intervention in Afghanistan is quite different from the Communist occupation. The Soviet army killed more than a million Afghans and forced some five million more to flee the country, creating what was then the world’s largest refugee population. The Soviets also sowed millions of mines (including some that resembled toys), making Afghanistan one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. And Soviet soldiers were a largely unprofessional rabble of conscripts who drank heavily, used drugs, and consistently engaged in looting. The Soviets’ strategy, tactics, and behavior were, in short, the exact opposite of those used in successful counterinsurgency campaigns.
Unsurprisingly, the brutal Soviet occupation provoked a countrywide insurrection that drew from a wide array of ethnic groups—Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns, and Hazaras—and every class in Afghan society, from mullahs to urban professionals to peasants. By contrast, the insurgents in Afghanistan today are overwhelmingly rural Pashtuns with negligible support in urban areas and among other ethnic groups.”
The final piece of bullshit that stood out to me in this panel discussion was Scahill's statements on a "colonial fortress in Islamabad [the capital of Pakistan]" that "is going to be the point of operations going into Afghanistan."
From the phrase "point of operations" one would deduce that this embassy will be involved in military operations. Well guess what. It's not. Scahill is either lying or ignorant (the bolding is mine):
The US is embarking on a $1 billion crash program to expand its diplomatic presence in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, another sign that the Obama administration is making a costly, long-term commitment to war-torn South Asia, US officials said Wednesday.
...
Senior State Department officials said the expanded diplomatic presence is needed to replace overcrowded, dilapidated and unsafe facilities and to support a "surge" of civilian officials into Afghanistan and Pakistan ordered by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Scahill also appeared on Bill Moyer's show, Bill Moyer's Journal, on PBS where he continued to spew his misinformation:
During this interview, Scahill stated:
I think that the fact is that, when you are killing civilians, in what is perceived to be an indiscriminate way certainly by the people of Pakistan you're going to give rise to more people that want to attack the United States. They view themselves as fighting a defensive war. But never are the statistics cited that come out of Pakistan. 687 people are documented to have been killed. That the Pakistani authorities say are civilians since 2006. In the first 99 days of this year over 100 people were killed.
Now the fact that the U.S. drone attacks have killed a disconcerting number of Pakistani civilians is indisputable. But what is disputable, what is downright false are Scahill's implications that 1) the Pakistani people are united in their opposition to the Predator drone strikes in their country and 2) the Pakistani government is also strongly opposed to the drone strikes.
Here are some facts for Mr. Scahill...
The Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy recently conducted a poll (if their website is down you can find an article on the poll here) within the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) and Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan and found....guess what...
A slight majority of those polled supported the drone strikes, found them accurate and wished the Pakistani government to act against the Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda elements within their countries:
-- Do you see drone attacks bringing about fear and terror in the common people? (Yes 45%, No 55%)
-- Do you think the drones are accurate in their strikes? (Yes 52%, No 48%)
-- Do you think anti-American feelings in the area increased due to drone attacks recently? (Yes 42%, No 58%)
-- Should Pakistan military carry out targeted strikes at the militant organisations? (Yes 70%, No 30%)
-- Do the militant organisations get damaged due to drone attacks? (Yes 60%, No 40%)
Note: THIS IS NOT A DEFENSE OF PREDATOR DRONE STRIKES IN PAKISTAN! Frankly, I'm conflicted on the issue. The reason behind me bringing this up is to demonstrate that the issue is not as simple as Scahill makes it seem. The Pakistani people are neither overwhelming united for or against the use of Predator Drone strikes against Taliben and Al Qaeda targets.
And where does the Pakistani government stand on all this? They want the U.S. to stop performing drone strikes within their sovereign territory, damnit....so that they can carry the drone strikes out themselves, under the primary control of the Pakistani government:
Pakistan's president has called on America to provide his country with an arsenal of drones and missiles to target militants blamed for a wave of violence rather than carrying out independent operations that violate the nation's sovereignty.
If you think civilian casualties are too high now, while the drone strike are under the U.S.'s purview, you'd hate to see how high those numbers would fly if the Pakistani military got their hands on the operations. As one can observe from the Pakistani military's actions in Swat Valley, they aren't the best at counterinsurgency, protecting civilians, preparing for displaced peoples and minimizing collateral damage.
What I fear is missed in Scahill's analysis of Af-Pak is his almost casual dismissal of the brutality and oppression of the Taliban movement and the effect this has and may have upon millions of innocent men, women and children; on Shia and Hazaras; on Christians and Tajiks.
I leave you with a reminder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqNTXdjljnY&feature=ytn%3Amptnews
