{"id":150807,"date":"2019-12-30T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=150807"},"modified":"2019-12-30T09:25:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T09:25:11","slug":"wapos-afghan-papers-propagate-colonial-narrative-of-noble-intentions-gone-awry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/wapos-afghan-papers-propagate-colonial-narrative-of-noble-intentions-gone-awry\/","title":{"rendered":"WaPo\u2019s Afghan Papers Propagate Colonial Narrative of Noble Intentions Gone Awry"},"content":{"rendered":"

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26 Dec 2019 – <\/em>In an earlier article (FAIR.org<\/strong>, 12\/18\/19<\/a>) regarding the Washington Post<\/strong>\u2019s Afghanistan Papers (12\/9\/19<\/a>), I discussed how the Post<\/strong>\u2019s expos\u00e9 also exposed the Post <\/strong>as one of the primary vehicles US officials use to spread their lies, and why it\u2019s impossible for corporate media outlets like the Post <\/strong>to raise more substantive questions about the deceptive nature of US foreign policy.<\/p>\n

But those aren\u2019t the only significant takeaways. The Afghanistan Papers should also be considered an excellent case study of contemporary colonial propaganda, and yet another example<\/a> of corporate media criticizing US wars without opposing US imperialism.<\/p>\n

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky\u2019s famous analysis<\/a> of media coverage of the Vietnam War, in Manufacturing Consent<\/em>, found that questions of the invasion\u2019s \u201ctactics and costs\u201d\u2014to the US<\/a>\u2014dominated the debate, because the media absorbed the framework of government propaganda regarding the \u201cnecessity\u201d of military intervention, the \u201crighteousness of the American cause\u201d and the US\u2019s \u201cnobility of intent.\u201d Decades later, Herman and Chomsky\u2019s propaganda model of corporate media is still a useful tool in understanding the Post<\/strong>\u2019s Afghanistan Papers.<\/p>\n

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Washington Post (12\/9\/19)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Post <\/strong>advanced the centuries-old colonial narrative of the empire\u2019s good intentions gone awry when it argued<\/a> that the US \u201cinadvertently built a corrupt, dysfunctional Afghan government,\u201d and that this illustrated that \u201ceven some of the most well-intentioned projects could boomerang.\u201d In fact, the Post <\/strong>dedicated a whole section<\/a> of the Afghanistan Papers to propagating this standard colonial narrative, called \u201cStranded Without a Strategy,\u201d which argued at length:<\/p>\n

US and allied officials admitted they veered off in directions that had little to do with Al Qaeda or 9\/11. By expanding the original mission, they said they adopted fatally flawed warfighting strategies based on misguided assumptions about a country they did not understand\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

Diplomats and military commanders acknowledged they struggled to answer simple questions: Who is the enemy? Whom can we count on as allies? How will we know when we have won?<\/em><\/p>\n

Their strategies differed, but Bush and Obama both committed early blunders that they never recovered from, according to the interviews.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Washington Post (12\/11\/19)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Post<\/strong> is so eager to push this colonial narrative of noble incompetence that a later report (12\/11\/19<\/a>) on \u201ckey takeaways\u201d from the Afghanistan Papers claimed that US officials \u201cfailed to align policy solutions with the challenges they confronted,\u201d having \u201cstrategic drift\u201d in place of \u201ccoherent US policy for Afghanistan.\u201d As noted earlier<\/a>, one method of discerning whether US officials are being dishonest, not incompetent, is to check whether the pretexts for invading and occupying another country are constantly changing.<\/p>\n

But the imperial utility of a cost\/benefit or tactical \u201ccritique\u201d of US wars is the implication that immoral and illegal invasions<\/a> like the Afghanistan War are justifiable if the US can achieve its goals, and it enables future invasions, provided US wars are better fought next time. It\u2019s an intentionally nebulous criterion, since there are always tactical and cost\/benefit questions to be raised for any military endeavor, which is why this kind of critique can enable perpetual interventions in the service of US imperialism. Indeed, the Post <\/strong>actually admits this<\/a> when it mentioned that the Afghanistan inspector general\u2019s secretive \u201cLessons Learned\u201d project was<\/p>\n

meant to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan so the United States would not repeat the mistakes the next time it invaded a country or tried to rebuild a shattered one.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Furthermore, at several times the Post <\/strong>parroted statements from US officials claiming that some of the \u201clessons learned\u201d about their \u201cstrategic failures\u201d were that the US should have killed more people in Pakistan and threatened to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely\u2014without any pushback.<\/p>\n

The Post <\/strong>parroted claims that \u201cObama\u2019s strategy\u201d of imposing \u201cstrict deadlines\u201d and promising to \u201cbring home all troops by the end of his presidency\u201d was \u201cdestined to fail,\u201d because the Taliban could just \u201cwait him out.\u201d Why was Obama\u2019s broken promise an \u201cartificial\u201d date for \u201cending the war before it was over\u201d? If the US truly prioritized preserving taxpayer dollars and the lives of US troops and Afghans, the open secret is that the US could simply end the Afghanistan War any time it wanted to, by announcing an unconditional, unilateral withdrawal without negotiating with the Taliban.<\/p>\n

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Washington Post (12\/9\/19)<\/p><\/div>\n

In another \u201cLessons Learned\u201d interview cited in the Afghanistan Papers (12\/9\/19<\/a>), regarding the \u201cstrategic challenge\u201d of Pakistan supporting the Taliban and sheltering their leaders despite receiving billions of dollars a year to \u201cfight terrorism,\u201d the Post <\/strong>uncritically cited a US official\u2019s bloodthirsty support for indefinite occupation and killing Taliban members anywhere in Pakistan:<\/p>\n

In his December 2016 Lessons Learned interview, Crocker said the only way to force Pakistan to change would be for Trump to keep US troops in Afghanistan indefinitely and give them the green light to hunt the Taliban on Pakistani territory.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt would allow him to say, \u2018You worry about our reliability, you worry about our withdrawal from Afghanistan, I\u2019m here to tell you that I\u2019m going to keep troops there as long as I feel we need them, there is no calendar.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2009\u2018That\u2019s the good news. The bad news for you is we\u2019re going to kill Taliban leaders wherever we find them: Baluchistan, Punjab, downtown Islamabad. We\u2019re going to go find them, so maybe you want to do a strategic recalculation.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While pushing this colonial narrative, the Post <\/strong>actually tried to make the absurd case<\/a> that some of the US\u2019s strategic failures stemmed from being too generous<\/em> to Afghans, and lying to the American public about not<\/em> wanting to do \u201cnation-building,\u201d asserting that \u201cnation-building is exactly what the United States has tried to do in war-battered Afghanistan\u2014on a colossal scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Americans praising their own generosity is a hallmark feature of American colonialism<\/a>\u2014which extended to framing atrocities like slavery, the displacement of Native Americans and the extermination of Vietnamese people as \u201cgenerous\u201d\u2014and the Post <\/strong>continues this long tradition by parroting US officials who believed that \u201cCongress and the White House made matters worse by drenching the destitute country with far more money than it could possibly absorb.\u201d Apparently the problem is not that the US intentionally funnels money to enrich US investors and prop up puppet governments subservient to the US, but that the US engages in thoughtless charity:<\/p>\n

The scale of the corruption was the unintended result of swamping the war zone with far more aid and defense contracts than impoverished Afghanistan could absorb. There was so much excess, financed by American taxpayers, that opportunities for bribery and fraud became almost limitless, according to the interviews.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Washington Post (12\/9\/19)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Post <\/strong>(<\/a>12\/9\/19<\/a>) claimed that \u201cno nation needed more building than Afghanistan\u201d following \u201ccontinuous warfare since 1979,\u201d when it was invaded by the Soviet Union. The Post<\/strong> cited frustrated statements from officials working for USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) complaining that the US was wasting too much money on nation-building for primitive people in a largely non-market society who \u201cbartered for items\u201d instead of using currency, and lacked the education and \u201ctechnical expertise\u201d necessary to maintain \u201chuge infrastructure projects,\u201d with officials claiming \u201cWe were bringing 21st-century stuff to a society living in a different time period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Left unmentioned were US efforts in 1979 to sabotage an indigenous Afghan Communist movement<\/a>, that was making strides toward ostensible US goals like the education of girls, eradicating opium production and expanding access to healthcare, by \u201cknowingly increasing the probability\u201d<\/a> of luring \u201cthe Russians\u201d into their own \u201cVietnam War.\u201d (Carter\u2019s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski later defended<\/a> this ruthless strategy: \u201cThat secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?\u201d)<\/p>\n

Nor was there any mention of USAID<\/a> and the NED<\/a> being corrupt propaganda arms of the US State Department to subvert leftist governments, often serving as a pipeline of taxpayer dollars into investors\u2019 pockets under the guise<\/a> of promoting \u201cdevelopment\u201d and \u201cdemocracy.\u201d Some US officials even argued that the rampant fraud and waste from American \u201caid\u201d contractors were so parasitic that it would be better to funnel contracts to corrupt Afghans, who \u201cwould probably take 20% for their personal use or for their extended families and friends,\u201d than \u201c\u2018a bunch of expensive American experts<\/a>\u2019 who would waste 80 to 90% of the funds on overhead and profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

And despite the Post<\/strong>\u2019s attempts to portray the US as \u201cinadvertently\u201d building a \u201ccorrupt, dysfunctional Afghan government that remains dependent on US military power for its survival,\u201d it\u2019s hard to see how other candid statements about the US military and agencies like the CIA \u201cgiving cash\u201d to \u201cpurchase loyalty\u201d from Afghan government officials, religious leaders and warlords viewed by many Afghans as \u201ccruel despots,\u201d don\u2019t contradict that assertion. In fact, Herman and Chomsky\u2019s study The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism<\/em><\/a> found that corruption is a primary feature of US client states\u2014like the corrupt Afghan government<\/a>\u2014with US aid and a favorable foreign investment climate being negatively related to the condition of human rights in these countries. Hence the numerous reports<\/a> of Afghanistan being \u201copen for business<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tellingly, US officials in the Afghanistan Papers remarked that while the US actively replaced officials seeking to combat corruption, or knowingly \u201clooked away and let the thievery become more entrenched than ever,\u201d and retained support for US-installed CIA assets like Hamid Karzai who committed mass voter fraud, US officials had a \u201cdogmatic adherence to free-market principles<\/a>.\u201d This is supposed to explain why, despite their \u201cgood intentions,\u201d they consciously imposed economic policies that enriched foreign investors and increased poverty<\/a>, instead of policies that would help Afghanistan, because US officials considered them \u201cincompatible with capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is consistent with Michael Parenti\u2019s study of US foreign policy (The Sword and the Dollar<\/em><\/a>) finding that US commitments to \u201cdemocracy\u201d and \u201canti-corruption\u201d are dispensable and easily abandoned (indicating insincerity), while commitments to opening countries like Afghanistan to foreign investment and free-market capitalism are uncompromisable. What explains the refusal to put Afghanistan on the State Department\u2019s list of states sponsoring terrorism\u2014despite knowing the Taliban were sheltering bin Laden\u2014other than the fact that it would prevent US oil and construction companies<\/a> from entering into an agreement with Kabul to construct pipelines to Central Asian oil and gas fields?<\/p>\n

The immediate construction of US military bases<\/a> and the resulting private businesses servicing<\/a> them generated massive corporate profits for the military\/industrial complex, and served as guardians for US corporations extracting mineral wealth<\/a>\u2014indications of a planned long-term occupation and a launching pad<\/a> for attacks within and beyond Afghanistan\u2019s borders<\/a>. Explicit statements<\/a> from the Bush doctrine<\/a>\u2014which continued to guide the Obama and Trump administrations\u2019 national security strategy\u2014explained that \u201creal freedom<\/a>\u201d means free trade, the \u201cmoral principle\u201d that \u201cif others make something that you value, you should be able to buy it.\u201d These are the serious, logically consistent explanations for the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

The Washington<\/strong> Post<\/strong>\u2019s Afghanistan Papers and trove of documents are worth reading through, but it\u2019s also a contradictory mess containing many distortions and lies by omission. The scandal of the Afghanistan War is not that the US entered into and prolonged an \u201cunwinnable\u201d war; the scandal is that the US empire\u2019s invasion of Afghanistan is a war crime in violation of international law, and has inflicted imperial violence on the Afghan people<\/a>, and it would remain a scandal even if the US accomplished all of its ostensible goals. Even as the Post<\/strong>\u2019s scoop exposes US officials as liars\u2014and highlights the danger of credulously accepting their ideological framework\u2014because they rely so heavily on those officials\u2019 narratives, the Afghanistan Papers still manage to propagate the old colonial narrative of the empire\u2019s good intentions thwarted by backwards foreigners.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Editors note:<\/em><\/strong> On reflection, a passage in the original version of this piece about the oil and the US invasion of Afghanistan was inadequately sourced. A claim about Hamid Karzai formerly working for Unocal does not appear to be true<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

___________________________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Joshua Cho is a writer based in Virginia.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Afghanistan Papers should also be considered an excellent case study of contemporary colonial propaganda, and yet another example of corporate media criticizing US wars without opposing US imperialism. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky\u2019s famous analysis of media coverage of the Vietnam War, in Manufacturing Consent, found that questions of the invasion\u2019s \u201ctactics and costs\u201d\u2014to the US\u2014dominated the debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":112002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[93,94,133,1106,267,1126,487,1050,504,291,91,86,112,880,70,126,492],"class_list":["post-150807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-afghanistan","tag-central-asia","tag-cia","tag-drones","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-occupation","tag-pentagon","tag-state-terrorism","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}