From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Wed Feb 19 2003 - 10:49:23 MST
From: Lee Corbin [mailto:lcorbin@tsoft.com]
> I agree, but you are proposing to *change* the culture of an
> entire nation. This sounds distantly familiar: a century ago
> it was believed that war and poverty could be abolished by
> educating people properly.
There are in fact strong correlations between wealth, education, and
democracy. Countries that have a high median standard of living are
almost all democracies.
In any case, Afghanistan has a democratically elected government
today. That government has very little real power because it doesn't
have an adequate standing army or police force. The military power is
the hands of the regional warlords. Hamid Karzai asked the US to help
correct this and the US refused. Why would we do that?
Regardless, I agree with you that building democracy in a place that
has never known it is a long hard job. Nevertheless, it's the best
investment we can make in the future safety of the world and of the
United States.
> It's easy to wave one's hands and say "schools,
> infrastructure, and investment", but, as the old saying goes,
> you can't teach someone how to fish by throwing a fishing
> pole his way, especially if he'd rather do something else,
> like fight other tribes.
I just don't agree with this. You can hire local workers to build
roads, a power grid, schools, and hospitals. That sort of
infrastructure has a huge effect on a nation. The process of building
it also pumps money into the economy in a more distributed and organic
manner than the IMF or World Bank can.
>
> > Currently the UN has a peace keeping force that patrols Kabul, the
> > capital of Afghanistan. There are exactly 0 US personnel in this
> > peace keeping force. Hamid Karzai, the president of
> > Afghanistan, has repeatedly asked for a larger peace
> > keeping force that can patrol the
> > entire country and help reign in the warlords. His
> > requests have been
> > denied. He has also asked for US assistance in training an Afghan
> > police force and Afghan military that would be under the control
of
> > the democratically elected government. The US has denied these
> > requests as well.
>
> This is a *tough* question! If you help a country too much,
> even in fighting its rebels or its wars, it becomes
> dependent. It does not develop the ability on its own, which
> is absolutely crucial.
Goodness. What we're talking about here are the basics. We destroyed
a country and toppled its government. Do we want to help train the
security forces of the new government or not? Are we willing to help
keep the country stable until those security forces are ready, or not?
> It may be that wiser heads than yours or mine have deemed it
> impossible. It's likely that at this stage of Afghan history
> the choice is either anarchy or cruel despotism.
I have an alternate theory: the people running US foreign policy are
myopic. They're focused on the current threats (individual terrorist
groups) vs. the long term threat (terrorism in general and the
increasing ability of one person to kill millions).
> But the U.S. did do the right thing after World War II?
>
> If so, then let's see what's different:
>
> I think that the crucial difference is that Japan and Germany
> were already extremely developed nations, and had the talent
> to assimilate the habits of democracy. Surely you don't
> suppose that Afghanistan is as capable as they were.
Japan and Germany were both fairly rich, educated countries, and that
certainly helped in their reconstruction. At the same time, Japan had
no democratic tradition at all. In both places it took decades of
heavy US involvement to get the country back on its feet.
Iraq also has a fairly well educated population. It has natural
resources that can produce tremendous revenue. What it will lack
after the US invasion is a democratic tradition, a force to guarantee
the country's stability while a new government is put in place, and a
huge amount of infrastructure that will have been destroyed in our
attack.
So in many ways, Iraq will be in a similar situation to Japan post
WWII. Is the US willing to spend decades getting Iraq back on its
feet? I hope so, but I've seen no indication of that so far.
cheers,
mez
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