Sunday August 29, 2021
Three days left until the last western troops leave Afghanistan – unless President Joe Biden changes his mind at the last minute.
Afghanistan has been the U.S.’s longest war. Twenty years, give or take a couple of months. Longer even than Viet Nam – and with a strikingly similar ending.
Who will forget the pictures of America leaving Saigon. Helicopters lifting Americans to safety. Desperate people clinging to wheels and handles..
It was an ignominious and humiliating ending.
Likewise, who will forget footage of desperate people running along a runway beside a troop carrier the size of a freight train, hoping to hitch-hike a lift out of their country? Who will forget people clinging to the plane’s undercarriage, its doors, its fuselage, as the plane lifts off into the skies?
Distance spared us hearing those stowaways’ screams as they fell thousands of feet to death.
I wonder if the people inside could hear their screams.
Will it haunt them for the rest of their lives? Or did they smugly congratulate themselves that, in the old cliché, they made it into the lifeboats before the ladders were pulled up?
Results?
The war cost America over $2 trillion. About 2,500 American soldiers died, along with about 100,000 Afghan soldiers and police and an estimated 50,000 Afghan civilians (I expect the true figure to be much higher).
That’s not counting losses by other countries in the “Allied” front. Joining the fight in Afghanistan cost Canada about $18 billion. And 148 lives.
And the result of that 20 years of war?
Zero.
The country is back exactly where it was, 20 years ago, with a rigidly anti-western cohort of Islamic males in control.
Russia did not help the Taliban against the occupation armies. It didn’t need to. After its own disastrous ten-year war in Afghanistan, I suspect the Kremlin sat back and smirked at the American delusion that they could succeed where no other invader ever had.
The U.S. did originally have a reason for invading Afghanistan – to capture and punish Osama Bin Laden, the presumed mastermind behind the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York. Even if, as now seems likely, he was in Pakistan all along.
But why would they keep going for 20 years, after U.S. Intelligence knew he wasn’t there?
Flawed metaphors
As a writer, I see the words people choose to use being crucial.
Whenever America, collectively, decides to act against a perceived threat, they call it a war. War on Poverty. War on Drugs. Even a Peace Corps.
War may be a valid metaphor for mobilizing forces around a common cause. To my mind, though, it entrenches the conviction that the way to change things is to go to war.
Thinking, speaking, and acting are inseparably woven together. As an example, consider gender- or race-based language. If you consistently speak of women as broads or bitches, if you think of indigenous peoples as lazy, undependable, or dishonest, you will not treat them with respect.
Your words reveal how you think. Your thoughts influence what you do.
But, you may object, thoughts are involuntary -- “I can’t control how I think!”
Yes, you can. If, just before you blurt out a sexist comment or a racist joke, you have a momentary twinge and realize, “I can’t say that,” you have learned to control your words. And in the process, you will start reforming your thinking patterns.
It’s a circular pattern. Thoughts affect speech, which affects actions, which affect thoughts.
Also the other way around – physical actions set up thought patterns, which influence words.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming, popular a few decades ago, asserted that by deliberately altering your body language, you could alter your reactions to external events.
Suppose you expect a confrontation. You’d probably go into it braced for either fight or flight. In other words, tense.
NLP would suggest recalling some moment when you felt supremely confident, capable, in control. Immediately, your posture will change. And with it, your attitude and your behaviour.
All this is a way of saying that as long as Americans in general, and American leaders in particular, keep thinking in “war” metaphors, the U.S. will inevitably find itself embroiled in Afghanistans around the world. It will see its goal as victory – think of G.W. Bush landing in 2003 on an aircraft carrier proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” Success meant defeating an enemy, not building a friend.
We need to be more conscious of the implications of the words we choose to use. They may have consequences we didn’t anticipate. Like a futile 20-year war.
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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Mirza Yawan Baig managed to anticipate today’s column, with his response to last week’s column on Haiti: “We're raising funds for Haiti in our Masjid.
“Big news of course is Afghanistan where four presidents, a couple of thousand Americans, 415 Brits, a million Afghans, a trillion dollars -- and twenty years later, America managed to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. Any time you're feeling useless, reflect on this.”
Tom Watson realized the column wasn’t just about a country: “If I had to believe in a God who visited such trials and tribulations on Haiti, I'd have given up on any belief long ago.”
Bruce Thomas wondered “if the regular [crises] of Haiti occur so that others have an opportunity to show their true spirit and come to their rescue Unfortunately, all have failed to be there and stay with them in a humanitarian way to REALLY support them and help them pick up the pieces. Is there evidence that I’m mistaken in this thought?”
Florence Driedger: “Your lament is so like the book of Job. We are just coming to the end of a study of Job. Suffering is such a mystery, and only when I meet my maker will I begin to understand the meaning of suffering to a greater extent. Maybe even then we will not understand, but it is not for me to decide.
“As you say, Haiti was a pearl. Job was rich in so many ways. Haiti has been hit again, and again and again, as was Job. Why? Who knows? His friends abandoned him, his wife was critical, and yet he hung in there. Will we abandon Haiti? Will we criticize Haiti? Will we say it is Haiti’s own fault?”
Clare Neufeld found that the column reminded him of a different biblical book: “As I read your prayer (sort of) I was reminded of Lamentations 3:19-38 (or thereabouts).
“It also brought to mind, that the people of the world, we who clearly have matters of our own to address, could surely muster enough resources, as an accumulation of many relatively small contributions from many sources, to provide rapid water, food, clothing, shelter and sanitation, while we also assist in the search for survivors, and the dead.”
Gloria Jorgenson said the column raised “Many of the same kinds of questions I ask myself every day in relation to the existence of what is supposed to be a loving and benevolent God. I know it's not my job to question his motives but I do question his existence.”
Jane Wallbrown asked, “Any answers from God yet?”
Alan and Betty Darby spent years in Haiti as missionaries: “Thanks for this. That line of thinking [JT: that God would deliberately visit tragedy on s country] is so difficult to hear and so frequent! I don’t think I would have survived spiritually if I had believed that ‘God’ was the author of all the misery we encountered in our years in Haiti and what they have been going through ever since. (Broaden that out to the world!)”
Randy Hall also had personal experience of Haiti: “My heart hurts for Haiti, Jim. I've been there a dozen times with a very small ministry of repairing sewing machines and teaching Haitians how to repair them. Much of my work has been done in Le Cayes, the area most strongly affected by the earthquake.
“I have seen several models of mission work there. Two are most prevalent. One is based on the "colonial model" in which other nations go in as the "saviors," with the best intentions, yet acting in superiority. The other is approaching the mission work with an attitude of "serving" the people of Haiti.
“I found grace in Haiti. I found opportunists in Haiti. I found both selflessness and selfishness. In other words, I found people just like us.”
Ted Spencer called the column, “A blistering, absolutely on-the-mark, wonderful bit of prose for which you will be roundly reviled.”
Laurna Tallman: “It’s hard to know what to make of this expression of your grief over Haiti. You couch it in terms of a kind of God you do not believe in. Yet you call it a prayer of sorts.”
Laurna went on to tell of her experiences of prayer effecting real-world situations: “I believe a time will come when enough people have learned how to pray that way so that hurricanes can be deflected, forest fires turned back on themselves, and earthquakes subdued or people moved to safer places. Meanwhile, we can not only cry out to a God of mercy to heal and restore, but we can send money, if we have any, to Haitian relief organizations and we can act to reduce climate change.”
David Gilchrist connected the themes of the last two columns: “I didn’t want to reply to your last two columns, and face again the sadness of lost friends, and the bewilderment and sense of helplessness over both Afghanistan and Haiti. At 93, I know, all too well, what you mean by the void we feel as each old friend leaves this life behind. But I have had to do some rethink, on the old adage about fates worse than death.
“Almost all my deceased friends died in peace -- mostly with loved ones around them. By contrast, so many Haitians suffered the terror of the earth quake, and so many would feel appalled and despairing as they had to helplessly watched family painfully leave this life too soon. And how many Afghans are having to witness the cruelty dealt to their loved ones by the Taliban! So, though I miss the times that were with each friend, I am grateful that they have been spared worse fates.”
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.