Department of Defense
U.S. Army soldiers conduct a dismounted patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan, Jan. 15, 2010. |
What are Americans to make of our military involvement in Afghanistan, now approaching nine years in length?
Earlier this month Milt Bearden spoke about Afghanistan at the Baker Institute. Bearden is, by any standard, an expert on that troubled country. A CIA officer for 30 years prior to his retirement in 1994, Bearden led U.S. efforts to supply and train mujahedeen in the ultimately successful effort to force the Soviet Union to depart from Afghanistan. He continues to visit the country.
I hesitate to summarize something as informative, subtle and entertaining as Bearden’s presentation. (Full disclosure: Milt and I served at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum in the 1980s. I was a wet-behind-the-ears Foreign Service Officer; he was already a senior officer in the CIA. I liked and admired him then. I still do.)
One word does capture Bearden’s analysis of our current situation: caution. For centuries, Bearden stressed, the remote region now known as Afghanistan has proven to be the graveyard of empires. The Moguls, the British, and then the Soviets all attempted to subdue Afghanistan — and all failed. The pattern for would-be conquerors is almost always the same: a swift initial victory followed by a protracted and painful effort to extend control into the countryside. Since 2001, Bearden said, the American experience has run true to regrettable form. Our early attempts to strike at Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban regime in Kabul have morphed into an ongoing effort to bolster the authority of the new pro-American central government.
My personal take-away from his presentation was general in nature: it is the terrible temptation of pride. Our policies toward Iraq and Afghanistan reflected an excessive faith in both our understanding and our power. I do not say this, let me stress, from some radical critique of American foreign policy. I believe that the United States has on balance been a force for good in world events. I am no isolationist or pacifist. But — as our expensive adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown — there is clearly more room for modesty in our approach to the world. We don’t know everything. We can’t change everything. And pride can blind us to both truths.
This is not an original view. Nor is it a new one. The ancient Greeks had a word — hubris — for overbearing pride. The Old Testament, too, reminds us that “pride goeth before destruction.” Every American foreign policymaker should have that particular verse from “Proverbs” in mind when he or she embarks on decisions of war and peace.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.