Afghanistan served as a playground for liberal morale. If one read the American newspapers in those days, the liberation of Afghani women seemed almost to have been the reason for the war. And what was that liberation? Removing the veil. Never mind that many women welcomed the veil as a safety measure against male harassment. The real problem is Islam’s extreme sexual restrictiveness, which turns males into sexual predators and makes veiling expedient. Unable to tackle the real problem, the liberals fought its consequences. It was perhaps the first modern war openly advertized as an ideological clash with no strategic relevance: the war of liberals and feminists against Islamic fundamentalists and female oppressors. Whoever had lost in Afghanistan, the liberals won by asserting their power to wage wars against those of different views. Unwilling to wait patiently for centuries until the Afghanis developed their own society through affluence to liberalism, fighting and suffering for their freedoms, the Americans imposed paradise on them; no wonder it ended the way the communist paradise did.
Sure, a lot of criticism is leveled against the US unfairly. Though interrogation methods in Guantanamo violated the Geneva rules, those rules were never practiced. No realist can imagine the Allied or Axis military refraining from torturing enemy POWs who were thought to possess valuable information. Indeed, a refusal to torture them would be cruel to one’s own soldiers. Some other allegations against Guantanamo and Bagram were outright silly: the interrogators chained the detainees, abused them verbally, and stripped them. That’s not torture in any meaningful sense. The Americans went so far as to treat the prisoners for clinical depression. Indeed, the Americans offer Israelis a glimpse of normality. Whereas Jews treat jailed Palestinian terrorists to satellite TV, mobile phones, and pocket money, a normal nation’s guards tear the Koran, insult Islamic beliefs, and undress and photograph the Muslims. We can add the suggestion of distributing their naked photos in their hometowns, and offering them pork and wine instead of water. Jewish criminals in American jails cannot get kosher food, why are there better terms for the terrorists?
Treatment of POWs in a war against terrorists is always questionable. There is no need to refuse them Geneva standards: the insistence that soldiers must wear uniforms to be eligible for protection is out of touch with modern realities. Jailed terrorists cannot be treated as common criminals because there is often no hard evidence to convict them; they cannot be presumed innocent. But anti-terrorist wars last for decades, and jailing them for so long a term is unreasonable. The choice is between mutilation and a jail term—but the jail must be harsh compared to the terrorists’ normal living conditions. The horrible way competing mujahedeen groups treat each other’s prisoners offers a benchmark for the West’s treatment of them: presumably, we can rely on the neighbors’ advice.
It will be never known what part oil played in Bush’s calculations, but we know that it was a major thing for Carter. The peace-loving US president launched a brutal civil war because the Soviet Union came “close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow.” Might we assume Bush was no less cynical? Reestablishing an American client state in Afghanistan would mean the US would gain control over the Central Asian oil and gas pipelines, major influence over Pakistan (and therefore on India) and Iran, whose insurgents hide in Afghanistan.
The American war in Afghanistan came at the cost of accepting Pakistani nuclear arsenals. Instead of buying its way into Afghanistan through Tajikistan and ignoring Pakistani sovereignty in occasional overflights, Bush lifted the sanctions against Pakistan. That acceptance of Islamic nuclear weapons was a major factor in Iran’s jump-starting of its nuclear program.
America initially invaded Afghanistan to reestablish its international position and deterrence after 9/11. As the perpetrators were unknown, Al Qaeda was appointed as the culprit and its hosts attacked. A swift, victorious war across the globe could affirm US supremacy. The fact that the superpower failed against cavemen is a slap in its face; never mind that the previous two superpowers were slapped similarly. During the course of the Afghan war, America lost its base in Uzbekistan and its relations with Pakistan soured, hardly adding to its international prestige. The obvious parallel with the recent Soviet defeat will haunt the United States in the Muslim world for decades to come.
In a sense, Afghanistan goes the way of the Philippines, a country servicing American troops. That is unsurprising because the NATO contingent’s budget exceeds the Afghani budget manifold. From pop-culture to brothels, Afghanis have become “American-friendly.” Decades of attrition, an atrocious civil war, and Western influence have turned the brave mountain nation into weaklings who depend on foreign aid and protection. After the US withdrawal local incomes will dwindle, and the population will remain nostalgic for the good Americans.