'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Afghanistan: "What would Thomas Jefferson do?"

Vampire06 of 'Afghanistan Shrugged' had an informative, well-written post yesterday about the challenges of trying-- as the head of a US Army 'Embedded Training Team'-- to put into place the building blocks of procedural democracy in a place in eastern Afghanistan. (HT: Registan.)

V06 has enough self-awareness to understand some-- but not all-- of the ironies of his situation. Plus, he's a good writer with an engaging, self-deprecating sense of humor.

His immediate challenge is to identify a location for the voter-registration center, in the northern part of Goumal District, right next to the border with Pakistan. The traditional tribal coloration of all the local terrain deeply impacts this issue.

He writes,

What would Thomas Jefferson do?? I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t do what I’m doing which is standing there with my mouth open trying to catch some Afghan upper respiratory disease. Did I miss something along the way? Isn’t there some kind of UN monitor or some PhD in election science around to settle this?? Usually, if the question is really hard I ask my wife for the answer and she tells me and I sell like I knew it all along. You wives reading this know what I’m talking about, but that ain’t gonna fly here.

OK, here we go. If I talk really fast and loud they’ll think I know what I’m talking about...

Now, V06 is in that district, as head of the 'training team' working with a battalion of the Afghan National Army. But don't be in any doubt as to who's really calling the shots here.

He writes:

Because of our proximity to the border we have CAS [combat air support] circling the area, every 15 minutes or so we have them conduct a show of force our way of saying to anyone who might want to drop by unannounced; that we have a big stick to swing if needed. Later in the day we’ll here the gunfire from another unit closer to the border in contact. Be nice to everyone but have a plan to kill them.

Of course, the people flying CAS are Americans; and almost certainly the people able to "call them in" when needed would be the American "trrainers", rather than the Afghan National Army officers. So it's clear that it's the US military that dominates the strategic environment there.

(I imagine our friends in Iraq are well aware this is what would happen there, too, if the US military is allowed to retain 'training units' with the Iraqi army even after US 'combat troops' have all supposedly evacuated the cities... )

But then, there is the also conundrum, very vividly represented by Vampire06, of how anyone can "implant" democracy in a distant foreign country, on the tip of a cruise missile or under the weight of a 2,000-pound bomb such as-- in a big fight-- the CAS people would be capable of delivering.

Democracy is, after all, at its very base a mutual agreement among the participants in a political system that they will not use force or coercion to decide tricky issues of policy arising amongst them, but will do so on the basis of an egalitarian respect for the views and preferences of all citizens, as brought together through a non-coercive process of deliberation and an accepted, well understood, and egalitiarian decision mechanism.

So how can you implant "democracy" in a situation where you have foreigners, backed up by cruise missiles and 2,000-pound bombs, making the decisions on behalf of a people who are living under foreign military occupation?

"Be nice to everyone but have a plan to kill them"? It doesn't quite stack up to the high ideals and timeless principles of the US Declaration of Independence, does it?