STAR*PAC STOP THE ARMS RACE Political Action Committee

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If President Obama wants to understand the problem of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, he might do well to turn to a fairy tale.  I suggest that he take his top civilian and military advisors to the Family Theater at the White House to watch Walt Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia. It tells the story of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” It’s not just for kids, anymore.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is the English name for a 1797 poem by Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling.

You remember from your childhood days the story of the hapless apprentice.  Wikipedia provides a concise synopsis:

“The poem begins as an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. Tired of fetching water by pail, the apprentice enchants a broom to do the work for him — using magic he is not yet fully trained in. The floor is soon awash with water, and the apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know how.

Not knowing how to control the enchanted broom, the apprentice splits it in two with an axe, but each of the pieces becomes a new broom and takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now at twice the speed. When all seems lost, the old sorcerer returns, quickly breaks the spell and saves the day. The poem finishes with the old sorcerer’s statement that powerful spirits should only be called by the master himself.”

Wikipedia tells me that Goethe’s poem can be traced back to a Greek short story, Philopseudes (Greek for “Lovers of lies”) by Lucian, written c. AD 150.  So, the story encapsulates the wisdom of the ages.

Serious policy makers, Afghan families, and friends and family of U.S. military personnel may take offense.  They might ask indignantly, “What possible relevance could this fairy tale have to the tough decisions that President Obama must make about U.S. policy in Afghanistan?  How dare anyone be so shallow as to bring up fairy tales, when so many Afghan civilians are dying and suffering and when so many U.S. military personnel risk their lives daily to make America safe from terrorism?!  Can you really be that insensitive and shallow?!”

No, I take very seriously the deaths, the suffering, and the grief of the survivors.  I want to find a way to free our elected officials from the other fairy tale, the one that tells again and again the story that “when bad people threaten the U.S., only the god of war can protect us.”  That fairy tale promises safety but produces suffering, killing, and quagmires.

The “god of war will save us” fairy tale got us into Afghanistan.  The U.S. and allied forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and deposed its Taliban government.  Today, eight years of war later, the Taliban has regained control of an estimated 70% of the territory of Afghanistan.  The Taliban forces have grown like those multiplying enchanted brooms.  Where did that Taliban broom come from? Who enchanted that Taliban broom to multiply?  What old sorcerer can President Obama call on to break the spell?

To answer those questions, you might take time to read Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban: Islam, oil and the new great game in central Asia (2002) and Stephen Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004).  Today’s problem of the Taliban and al Qa’eda in Afghanistan grew from yesterday’s U.S. solution to Soviet dominance in Afghanistan.

Today’s Taliban broom, in a sense, got its start when the Carter administration settled on a “secret” military strategy to bog down the Soviets in a Vietnam-type war in Afghanistan.  That broom was enchanted into splitting into multiple brooms by the Reagan administration’s recruiting an Arab contingent for the mujahideen to help fight the Soviets there.  Reagan’s CIA chief William O. Casey worked with Prince Faisal Turki of the Saudi intelligence agency and with Pakistan’s intelligence outfit, the “ISI,” to recruit, among others, Osama bin Laden.  With congressional conservatives like Charlie Wilson (TX) and Dana Rohrabacher (CA)—we might call them the “sorcerer’s apprentices”—stoking the CIA budget to train, arm, and equip the mujahideen (Islamic fighters) the brooms multiplied.  The U.S. victory came when the Soviets fled and their client regime fell.  That was supposed to be the end of the story.

Contrary to Wilson and Rohrabacher’s wishes the mujahideen didn’t disarm and didn’t go quietly into the night.  The CIA never thought to collect all the weapons, explosives, communications equipment, and to destroy the reinforced caves and tunnels; in fact, they couldn’t.  Stinger missiles?  Still out there.

Perhaps worse, the “brooms” turned out to have their own agenda!  Who knew “brooms” could think?  They did think: “Hey, if we could defeat the Soviet superpower, then we can defeat the U.S. superpower; we can bog the U.S. down in a war of attrition; we can bankrupt them; we can destabilize their allies; the more they fight us the higher our status; the higher our status the more we recruit to our cause.”

Guess what?  The Bush administration obliged them in every way.  The Bush administration gave them war with the one remaining superpower.  The Bush administration validated their claim that the U.S. is not really a democracy and not really humane: torture, bombing civilians, detaining children for years, supporting a corrupt Afghan government.  Bush handed them their victory, and he called it getting tough on terrorists.

What now? Will Obama have the wisdom and skill of the old sorcerer to be able to dispel these enchanted brooms and stop the killing?  Or will he start the process all over again by enchanting other brooms to split into yet larger armies to continue the war, continue the killing?

Obama has plenty of sorcerer’s apprentices in Congress and at his side.  They are making the magic of military might sound like the best way to mop up the mess in Afghanistan.  I hope he sees the wisdomof the ages and dispels that notion before it is too late.

 

STAR * PAC

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