Worth Dying for?
When It Comes to the War in the Greater Middle East, Maybe We’re the Bad Guys
Danny Sjursen • September 7, 2017
I
used to command soldiers. Over the years, lots of them actually. In
Iraq, Colorado, Afghanistan, and Kansas. And I’m still fixated on a few
of them like this one private first class (PFC) in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, in 2011. All of 18, he was short, scrawny, and popular.
Nine months after graduating from high school, he’d found himself
chasing the Taliban with the rest of our gang. At five foot nothing, I
once saw him step into an irrigation canal and disappear from sight —
all but the two-foot antenna on his radio. In my daydreams, I always see
the same scene, the moment his filthy, grizzled baby face reappeared
above that ditch, a cigarette still dangling loosely from his lips. His
name was Anderson and I can remember thinking at that moment: What will I
tell his mother if he gets killed out here?
And
then… poof… it’s 2017 again and I’m here in Kansas, pushing papers at
Fort Leavenworth, those days in the field long gone. Anderson himself
survived his tour of duty in Afghanistan, though I’ve no idea where he
is today. A better commander might. Several of his buddies were less
fortunate. They died, or found themselves short a limb or two, or
emotionally and morally scarred for life.
From
time to time I can’t help thinking of Anderson, and others like him,
alive and dead. In fact, I wear two bracelets on my wrist engraved with
the names of the young men who died under my command in Afghanistan and
Iraq, six names in all. When I find a moment, I need to add another.
It wasn’t too long ago that one of my soldiers took his own life.
Sometimes the war doesn’t kill you until years later.
And
of this much I’m certain: the moment our nation puts any PFC Anderson
in harm’s way, thousands of miles and light years from Kansas, there had
better be a damn good reason for it, a vital, tangible national
interest at stake. At the very least, this country better be on the
right side in the conflicts we’re fighting.
The Wrong Side
It’s long been an article of faith here: the United States is the greatest force for good in the world, the planet’s “indispensable nation.” But what if we’re wrong? After all, as far as I can tell, the view
from the Arab or African “street” tells a different story altogether.
Americans tend to loathe the judgments of foreigners, but sober strategy
demands that once in a while we walk the proverbial mile in the global
shoes of others. After all, almost 16 years into the war on terror it
should be apparent that something isn’t working. Perhaps it’s
time to ask whether the United States is really playing the role of the
positive protagonist in a great global drama.
I
know what you’re thinking: ISIS, the Islamic State, is a truly awful
outfit. And so it is and the U.S. is indeed combatting it, though
various allies and even adversaries
(think: Iran) are doing most of the fighting. Still, with the broader
war for the Greater Middle East in mind, wouldn’t it be appropriate to
stop for a moment and ask: Just whose side is America really on?
Certainly,
it’s not the side of the average Arab. That should be apparent. Take a
good, hard look at the region and it’s obvious that Washington mainly
supports the interests of Israel, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt’s
military dictator, and various Gulf State autocracies. Or consider the
actions and statements of the Trump administration and of the two
administrations that preceded it and here’s what seems obvious: the
United States is in many ways little more than an air force, military
trainer, and weapons depot for assorted Sunni despots. Now, that’s not a
point made too often — not in this context anyway — because it’s
neither a comfortable thought for most Americans, nor a particularly
convenient reality for establishment policymakers to broadcast, but it’s
the truth.
Yes, we do fight ISIS, but it’s hardly that simple. Saudi Arabia, our main regional ally, may portray
itself as the leader of a “moderate Sunni block” when it comes to both
Iran and terrorism, but the reality is, at best, far grayer than that.
The Saudis — with whom President Trump announced a $110 billion arms deal during the first stop on his inaugural foreign trip back in May — have spent the last few decades spreading their intolerant brand of Islam across the region. In the process, they’ve also supported al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria.
Maybe
you’re willing to argue that al-Qaeda spin-offs aren’t ISIS, but don’t
forget who brought down those towers in New York. While President Trump
enjoyed a traditional sword dance with his Saudi hosts — no doubt
gratifying his martial tastes — the air forces of the Saudis and their
Gulf state allies were bombing and missiling Yemeni civilians into the grimmest of situations, including a massive famine and a spreading cholera epidemic
amid the ruins of their impoverished country. So much for the
disastrous two-year Saudi war there, which goes by the grimly ironic
moniker of Operation Restoring Hope and for which the U.S. military provides midair refueling and advanced munitions, as well as intelligence.
If you’re a human rights enthusiast, it’s also worth asking just what
kind of states we’re working with here. In Saudi Arabia, women can’t
drive automobiles, “sorcery” is a capital offense, and people are beheaded
in public. Hooray for American values! And newsflash: Iran’s leaders —
whom the Trump administration and its generals are obsessed with
demonizing — may be no angels, but the Islamic republic they preside
over is a far more democratic
country than Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy. Imagine Louis XIV in a
kufiyah and you’ve just about nailed the nature of Saudi rule.
After Israel, Egypt is the number two recipient of direct U.S. military aid, to the tune of $1.3 billion annually. And that bedrock of liberal values is led by U.S.-trained General Abdul el-Sisi, a strongman who seized
power in a coup and then, just for good measure, had his army gun down a
crowd demonstrating in favor of the deposed democratically elected
president. And how did the American beacon of hope respond? Well,
Sisi’s still in power; the Egyptian military is once again receiving aid from the Pentagon; and, in April, President Trump paraded the general around the White House, assuring reporters, “in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President el-Sisi… he’s done a fantastic job!”
In
Syria and Iraq, the U.S. military is fighting a loathsome adversary in
ISIS, but even so, the situation is far more complicated than usually
imagined here. As a start, the U.S. air offensive to support allied
Syrian and Kurdish rebels fighting to take ISIS’s “capital,” Raqqa —
grimly titled Operation Wrath of the Euphrates — killed
more civilians this past May and June than the Syrian regime of Bashar
al-Assad. In addition, America’s brutal air campaign appears unhinged
from any coherent long-term strategy. No one in charge seems to have
the faintest clue what exactly will follow ISIS’s rule in eastern Syria.
A Kurdish mini-state? A three-way civil war between Kurds, Sunni
tribes, and Assad’s forces (with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly
autocratic Turkey as the wild card in the situation)? Which begs the
question: Are American bombs actually helping?
Similarly, in Iraq it’s not clear that the future rule of Shia-dominated militia groups and others in the rubble
left by the last years of grim battle in areas ISIS previously
controlled will actually prove measurably superior to the nightmare that
preceded them. The present Shia-dominated government might even slip
back into the sectarian chauvinism that helped empower ISIS in the first
place. That way, the U.S. can fight its fourth war in Iraq since 1991!
And keep in mind that the war for the Greater Middle East — and I fought in it myself both in Iraq and Afghanistan — is just the latest venture in the depressing annals of Washington’s geo-strategic thinking since President Ronald Reagan’s administration, along with the Saudis and Pakistanis, armed, funded, and supported
extreme fundamentalist Afghan mujahedeen rebels in a Cold War struggle
with the Soviet Union that eventually led to the 9/11 attacks. His
administration also threw money, guns, and training — sometimes illegally — at the brutal Nicaraguan Contras in another Cold War covert conflict in which about 100,000 civilians died.
In those years, the United States also stood by
apartheid South Africa — long after the rest of the world shunned that
racist state — not even removing Nelson Mandela’s name from its
terrorist watch list until 2008! And don’t forget Washington’s support for Jonas Savimbi’s National Movement for the Total Independence of Angola that would contribute to the death of some 500,000 Angolans. And that’s just to begin a list that would roll on and on.
That,
of course, is the relatively distant past, but the history of U.S.
military action in the twenty-first century suggests that Washington
seems destined to repeat the process of choosing the wrong, or one of
the wrong, sides into the foreseeable future. Today’s Middle East is
but a single exhibit in a prolonged tour of hypocrisy.
Boundless Hypocrisy
Maybe
it’s because most Americans just aren’t paying attention or maybe we’re
a nation of true believers, but it’s clear that most of us still cling
to the idea that our country is a beacon of hope for the planet. Never
known for our collective self-awareness, we’re eternally aghast to
discover that so many elsewhere find little but insincerity in the
promise of U.S. foreign policy. “Why do they hate us,” Americans have
asked, with evident disbelief, for much of this century. Here are just a
few hints related to the Greater Middle East:
*Post-9/11, the United States unleashed chaos in the region, destabilized it in stunning ways, and via an invasion launched on false premises created the conditions for ISIS’s rise. (That terror group quite literally formed in an American prison in post-invasion Iraq.) Later, with failing or failed states dotting the region, the U.S. response to the worst refugee crisis since World War II has been to admit — to choose but a single devastated country — a paltry 18,000 Syrians since 2011. Canada took in three times that number last year; Sweden more than 50,000 in 2015 alone; and Turkey hosts three million displaced Syrians.
*Meanwhile,
Donald Trump’s attempts to put in place a Muslim travel ban haven’t won
this country any friends in the region either; nor will the president’s
— or White House aide Stephen Miller’s — proposed “reform” of U.S. immigration policy,
which would prioritize English-speakers, cut in half legal migration
within a decade, and limit the ability of citizens and legal residents
to sponsor relatives. How do you think that’s going to play in the
global war for hearts and minds? As much as Miller would love to change
Emma Lazarus’s inscription
on the Statue of Liberty to “give me your well educated, your highly
skilled, your English-speaking masses yearning to be free,” count on one
thing: world opinion won’t miss the duplicity and hypocrisy of such an
approach.
*Guantánamo — perhaps the single best Islamist recruiting tool on Earth — is still open. And, says
President Trump, we’re “keeping it open… and we’re gonna load it up
with some bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up.” On this, he’s
likely to be a man of his word. A new executive order is expected soon, preparing the way for an expansion of that prison’s population, while the Pentagon is already planning to put almost half a billion
dollars into the construction of new facilities there in the coming
years. No matter how upset the world gets at any of this, no matter how
ISIS and other terror groups use it for their brand of advertising, no
American officials will be held to account, because the United States is
not a signatory to the International Criminal Court. Hypocritical? Nope, just utterly all-American.
*And
speaking of prisons, thanks to nearly unqualified — sometimes almost
irrational — U.S. support for Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank
increasingly resemble walled off penal complexes. You almost have to
admire President Trump for not even pretending to play the honest broker
in the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He typically told
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “One state, two state… I
like whichever you like.” The safe money says Netanyahu will choose
neither, opting instead to keep the Palestinians in political limbo
without civil rights or a sovereign state, while Israel embarks on a settlement bonanza in the occupied territories. And speaking of American exceptionalism, we’re almost alone on the world stage when it comes to our support for the Israeli occupation.
The Cost
Given
the nature of contemporary American war-fighting (far away and
generally lightly covered by the media, which has an endless stream of
Trump tweets to fawn over), it’s easy to forget that American troops are
still dying in modest numbers in the Greater Middle East, in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and — almost 16 years after the American invasion of that country — Afghanistan.
As
for myself, from time to time (too often for comfort) I can’t help
thinking of PFC Anderson and those I led who were so much less fortunate
than him: Rios, Hensley, Clark, Hockenberry (a triple amputee), Fuller,
Balsley, and Smith. Sometimes, when I can bear it, I even think about
the war’s countless Afghan victims. And then I wish I could truly
believe that we were indisputably the “good guys” in our unending wars
across the Greater Middle East because that’s what we owed those
soldiers.
And
it pains me no less that Americans tend to blindly venerate the PFC
Andersons of our world, to put them on such a pedestal (as the president
did in his Afghan address to the nation recently), offering them eternal thanks,
and so making them and their heroism the reason for fighting on, while
most of the rest of us don’t waste a moment thinking about what (and
whom) they’re truly fighting for.
If
ever you have the urge to do just that, ask yourself the following
question: Would I be able to confidently explain to someone’s mother
what (besides his mates) her child actually died for?
What
would you tell her? That he (or she) died to ensure Saudi hegemony in
the Persian Gulf, or to facilitate the rise of ISIS, or an eternal
Guantanamo, or the spread of terror groups, or the creation of yet more
refugees for us to fear, or the further bombing of Yemen to ensure a
famine of epic proportions?
Maybe
you could do that, but I couldn’t and can’t. Not anymore, anyway.
There have already been too many mothers, too many widows, for whom
those explanations couldn’t be lamer. And so many dead — American,
Afghan, Iraqi, and all the rest — that eventually I find myself sitting
on a bar stool staring at the six names on those bracelets of mine, the
wreckage of two wars reflecting back at me, knowing I’ll never be able
to articulate a coherent explanation for their loved ones, should I ever
have the courage to try.
Fear,
guilt, embarrassment… my crosses to bear, as the war Anderson and I
fought only expands further and undoubtedly more disastrously. My
choices, my shame. No excuses.
Here’s
the truth of it, if you just stop to think about America’s wars for a
moment: it’s only going to get harder to look a widow or mother in the
eye and justify them in the years to come. Maybe a good soldier doesn’t
bother to worry about that… but I now know one thing at least: I’m not
that.
Major Danny Sjursen, a TomDispatch regular,
is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point.
He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He
has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @Skeptical_Vet.
[Note:
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed
in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or
position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the
U.S. government.]
(Republished from TomDispatch by permission of author or representative)
No comments:
Post a Comment