Robinson Daily News

War, what is it good for?


There is no good scoreboard for war. Being a survivor, we get to say what we think about it afterward but its a hollow pleasure. We know there are many others who earned the right to say what they thought before us who are now silent or too damaged and bitter to voice their views.

Winners and losers both find ways to justify what was done and try to live with the consequences. The ‘never give up’ attitude is admirable in folklore and literature but it does not necessarily lead to victory nor produce a lasting peace. The price of war is high in nearly any way you want to measure it but the greatest loss is always what it would have been like to live in peace instead. We have generations now with no concept of that whatever.

It is not true that any peace is better than any war either. Injustice and murder are real things and must be dealt with so the dilemma of wanting life to be fair and just for everyone, and wanting the world to be peaceful at the same time, is an adult accommodation of sorts that tends to swings back in forth between military force and diplomatic negotiations through time.

Just now we are ending our participation in the wars of Afghanistan. If history is a guide, war will continue there. They are warlike people of strong disagreements and they have a native plant that flourishes and produces an illegal drug that has been profitably traded through the centuries. Opium and its progeny have done much to destroy empires and shape policy through time but it is very hard to say ‘no’ to once experienced. Its evil persists when the good of peace does not.

On September 11, 2021, President Biden has ordered that American troops will leave Afghanistan but our time there goes back much further than you may know. American Josiah Harlan worked as a surgeon for the British East India Company and was employed to overthrow Afghan leader Mohammad Khan in the early 1800s. The British intervened and a series of conflicts fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842. In 1885, Russian forces seized a disputed oasis south of the Oxus River from Afghan forces and Russia began their military involvement in the region which continued on through the Soviet era, with billions in economic and military aid sent to Afghanistan between 1955 and 1978. They ceased finally after the forces opposing them, with U.S. Military support, defeated them in a war of attrition that proved the point that military superiority and superior numbers alone could not insure victory in Afghanistan. Tragically, the lesson we helped teach the Russians we did not believe ourselves.

The event of 9/11/2001 was Osama Bin Laden’s way of recruiting militant terrorists to his cause and Afghanistan was his sanctuary. He was too powerful to be evicted, even had they wanted to, and they didn’t especially want to given the money he brought to the country. Our government responded by driving him out of Kabul and then attacking him in the hills of Tora Bora and on into Pakistan where he was eventually killed.

That did not end terrorism, however, and as it spread. And violent ideologies spread with it. We sought to stamp it out wherever and how ever we could. Their methods were ruthless and secretive, and our most effective retaliations, and those of our partners, tended to be the same. While we negotiated for peace among all concerned, we armed for war and did not hesitate to use force where we thought it necessary.

We are not an innocent victim on the world stage, we are a player, and some have brought us dishonor in the process for fear of being thought weak instead. We assassinate when it suits us, support locally corrupt administrations who allow us to operate covertly in their borders and generally ignore the United Nations and our own allies if it goes against maximizing our own interests at every turn.

That is not to say we are not a force for good, I believe we are and have been, but in my lifetime we have been constantly at war somewhere and the justifications for the costs in lives and treasure are looking weaker all the time. We still have some attractive benefits to offer apparently, given the number of parents willing to drop their children over our walls, but as for our ability to set an example to others I think it’s time to take an honest reassessment of what it is we are doing in the world and get a better understanding of how our might has not always made right the priority it should be.

It’s complicated, as most things of such long standing are, but our cycle of patriotic warfare, international intrigue, entrenchment, indoctrination, and revenge is no longer productive. Did we learn nothing from Vietnam? Those who thought the lesson was that we just didn’t try hard enough now have the 20 years of Afghanistan to measure our efforts against.

Did we win there by staying longer, spending more, losing more American lives? Or is it still a divided country, now ravaged by war and depleted of a generation of its young people to face an uncertain future with a divided political agenda in its population?

The next question will be how much should we aid them with money now that we’re going to stop trying to keep things as we want them with force?

Trillions are now wanted at home for repairs to our own nation and the consequential damage done by the viral pandemic. Will we vote more in aid now thinking our dollars may do more good than we could in person, or would even if we did so?

We’ll see. For now let’s welcome our troops home and rebuild our economy to accommodate them and provide the medical services and housing they deserve for their service and sacrifice. Healing is a real thing too, and I for one think we need a good deal of it.

Peace.

Gregg Bonelli is a former attorney and has earned a Juris Doctor degree with distinction from John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

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