Ted Rall’s “uncomfortable truths” about Afghanistan [View all]

[kpete]

Tell me a little about the ordinary Afghans’ perspective. Do they subscribe to a similar narrative of the U.S. invasion as we do? Namely, that it was a consequence of 9/11, and that the U.S. military is leaving because Americans are sick of the occupation?

I’ve never met a single Afghan who had any understanding of the relationship between 9/11 and the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. In fact, I’ve never met a single Afghan who even understood what happened on 9/11, understood the scale of it. I was repeatedly having to explain it to people, having to explain these buildings and how big they were and how many people were in them and how it affected the American psyche and so on.

Whenever you asked (Afghans), regardless of their age or their politics or their tribal affiliation, they’d all say the same thing: The only reason the U.S. was in Afghanistan was because the U.S. was the dominant superpower in the world; and from their point of view, whoever is the dominant superpower in the world at any given time invades Afghanistan. So we’re just there because we could — they all think that.

If Americans think Afghans understand that whatever suffering they’re going through is somehow tied to 9/11, no; they should be disabused of that, because Afghans just don’t think that. That’s just universally true. They think we’re there because we hate Islam or because we want to steal Afghanistan’s natural resources or because it’s strategically important or “I don’t know, but they’re here, and I just have to deal with them!”


There’s something vaguely Kafka about that. It’s kind of existentially bleak and yet has a touch of black comedy to it as well.

Yeah. They always call us “the foreigners,” which just refers to the inevitable foreign presence that’s always there, whether it’s Soviet advisers in the 1960s and ’70s or the Red Army in the ’80s or whatever it is. “There’s always foreigners here. We’re a weak country. We can’t defend our borders. The foreigners come and go; we shoot a lot of them, and then they leave.” Black humor is absolutely a huge survival tool for people who live in stressful circumstances — and Afghans are very, very funny people.

...........

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/13/ted_ralls_uncomfortable_truths_how_exiting_afghanistan_risks_tremendous_national_trauma/