our "foot-soldiers"

[Dan Jizzenberry]

This has been the case since at least WWII, when nuclear politics (not to 
mention two horrendous wars in less than twenty five years) made great power 
confrontations a nasty prospect, indeed. Plus, with the lessons of Vietnam, 
the need for economic stability in the West, and the limitations (in my 
books, the strengths) of democratic governance, western governments realized 
that it's much easier, and probably much cheaper (in both a fiscal and 
psychological sense) to fight proxy wars. In essence, little brother has 
been enlisted to fight big brother's battles, and of course, little brother 
almost always has a brown complexion. Every now and then, the West's 
conventional troops will be called upon to knock over some fruit stand in 
Grenada, Argentina, Haiti, etc. But we all know that Britain, France, 
Russia, the United States, etc have not fought against an equally matched 
foe since WWII. In fact, nearly every enemy of the west these past 50 years 
has hailed from the third world. And yet our record against these largely 
poor, technologically inferior nations is mediocre at best. We've probably 
won more than we've lost (the Gulf War, Granada, Panama, Argentina, etc) but 
not without a number of disastrous defeats (Vietnam, Algeria, Afghanistan, 
Bay of Pigs, etc) as well as a few disastrous ties (Korea). However, I would 
maintain that the affluence of the West could not be maintained without 
these proxy wars. I just don't think a bunch of latte-sipping, SUV-driving 
westerners have the wherewithal to engage in a series of guerrila wars over 
an extended period of time. We'd rather have someone else do it for us--be 
they third worlders or occasionally the lower orders of our own nation. 
World War Two (perhaps Korea) was probably the last war in which you could 
find a substantial middle-class presence among the average foot soldier (the 
officer corps is a different story altogether). This has been the case for 
some time now.

p.s. these Northern Alliance folks are not exactly Thomas Paine in flowing 
robes. They are also intensely religious and hostile to the western POV. 
Plus, they're largely Tajik speakers, a group that represents a mere 15% of 
the population of Afghanistan. But, as with previous Afghani warriors, 
they're more than willing to accept western aid when a mutual enemy is 
involved. And then ten years later we can fund someone else to oust them. 
This last point is probably an unfair assertion on my behalf, but I want to 
ask everyone on the list what you've actually been told about the Northern 
Alliance? I mean, other than the fact that they don't like the Taliban and 
they control 10% of Afghanistan. I fear that we've learned nothing from 
history. No matter how much our leaders try to convince us that we can 
handle substantial casualties, we would still prefer someone else to do it 
for us--no matter how pernicious and barbaric their values are. The Vietnam 
Syndrome has not left us, folks.



From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: our "foot-soldiers"
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 14:20:41 -0700

""America's New War," is what they call it on CNN. And of course, as usual, 
they've got it wrong. Because in our desire to "bring to justice" - let's 
remember those words in the coming days - the vicious men who planned the 
crimes against humanity in New York and Washington last month, we're hiring 
some well-known rapists and murderers to work for us. Yes, it's an old war, 
a dreary routine that we've seen employed around the world for the past 
three decades. In Vietnam, the Americans wanted to avoid further casualties; 
so they re-armed and re-trained the South Vietnamese army to be their 
foot-soldiers. In southern Lebanon, the Israelis used their Lebanese militia 
thugs to combat the Palestinians and the Hizbollah. The Phalange and the 
so-called "South Lebanon Army" were supposed to be Israel's foot-soldiers. 
They failed, but that is in the nature of wars-by-proxy. In Kosovo, we kept 
our well-armed Nato troops safely out of harm's way while the KLA acted as 
our foot-soldiers.And now, without a blush or a swallow of embarrassment, 
we're about to sign up the so-called "Northern Alliance" in Afghanistan. 
America's newspapers are saying - without a hint of irony - that they, too, 
will be our "foot-soldiers" in our war to hunt down/bring to justice/smoke 
out/eradicate/liquidate Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. US officials - who 
know full well the whole bloody, rapacious track record of the killers in 
the "Alliance" - are suggesting in good faith that these are the men who 
will help us bring democracy to Afghanistan and drive the Taliban and the 
terrorists out of the country. In fact, we're ready to hire one gang of 
terrorists - our terrorists - to rid ourselves of another gang of 
terrorists. What, I wonder, would the dead of New York and Washington think 
of this? [...]

...continues at
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=97281
Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com


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