Pretty much no one on the global stage likes the Taliban. They're cruel to women, they imprison men whose beards are too short and Christians who proselytize, and they blow up big statues of the Buddha. Man, that's like someone in a cartoon kicking a dog on the sidewalk. No one sympathizes with the guys who blow up the big Buddhas. But are they really the enemy here? Let me back up a notch
President Bush addressed our nation several times the week of Sept. 11. I remember one particularly telling moment when he accused the terrorists and the nations who harbor them of following the path of "Nazism, totalitarianism and fascism." Wow, is this redundant or what? But Bush's word choice was clever -- in a way -- because it WAS redundant. "Nazism" makes us think of Nazis, and Nazis are bad. "Totalitarianism" makes us think of Stalinism and Nazism, and Stalin and Nazis are, as everyone would agree, bad. And then there's "fascism," which makes us think of Nazis, and they are you guessed it: bad.
The power in this statement comes from the almost universally accepted doctrine that the Nazis were evil. Bin Laden and the Taliban, however, are not so universally hated. The anti-American sentiment in Muslim nations is not something we can pinpoint, like a nation or a dictator. The days of evil empires and great wars are over.
It was evident from the first time the Sept. 11 attacks were called an "act of war" that this nation wants to deal with this conflict in the same outdated terms that we're comfortable with. But gone are the days of those typical wars of Western Europe. Those wars had rules of courtesy and diplomacy and always ended when a capital city was captured or when one side became vastly outnumbered. Modern wars are not like that. In the new war, popular sentiment, economic strength and civilian lives are all, unfortunately, potential targets for attack. And way of life is the biggest target of all ... for both sides.
Our rhetoric has clearly indicated that the United States will not tolerate governments that permit terrorists to operate in their borders. So we'll do what we always do -- get rid of those governments and open up a power vacuum for someone else to take over. In Afghanistan, we've intentionally left opportunities for the Northern Alliance to gain an edge on the Taliban. And we're surprised they're not going for it? Come on, like the Uzbeks and Tajiks want to rule a country where they're each significantly in the ethnic minority (not to mention quite different from each other). The system of toppling governments and letting equally nasty governments from enemy factions take over failed miserably in achieving peace in former Yugoslavia, ultimately empowering the monster Milosevic.
Now we can see where our rhetoric is useless: all this talk of "totalitarian states," "rogue nations" and such is getting us nowhere. There is no line between a legitimate nation and an illegitimate one. Our allies in that region of the world include Pakistan, which underwent a major military coup only two years ago, and numerous other Islamic monarchies that we'd start calling totalitarian if their next kings were a bit more aggressive. Then we're trying to garner support from China, whose system of government was, for most of the last 50 years, considered the true evil empire, against which we empowered Osama bin Laden himself to fight. As always, our definitions work according to what is convenient for us, and our prejudices are clear: we want the world to be a bunch of democratic, capitalistic nation-states, and everything we say betrays this. When we talk of "developing nations," we mean that they're developing toward our superior system. We laud the progress of the economy of Iran, asking why other Muslim nations can't be more like them. We talk about the Taliban's human rights violations but give China most favored nation status to try to rub off on them.
So where do we go from here? After the obvious perpetrators of recent terrorist acts have been disposed of, what do we do about the terrorist-loving masses that exist in both "enemy" and "ally" nations? When are we going to look past our outdated conception of nation-states and deal with these problems as human beings concerned about what motivates violence? I don't know when this will be possible, but I must wonder when we're going to give up this martial plan of toppling one government we hate after the next.
Nazism is gone, thanks to the economic prosperity we helped create with the Marshall Plan. Is our only choice to go in the same direction in Afghanistan and similar nations? It would be wrong, condescending and typically American to shove our system of government and our economy on a vastly different culture. But do we have a choice? We're fighting not against nations, but against people who are willing to sacrifice their lives, and thus have nothing to lose. The only way we can combat this may be to give them something to lose. It's no picnic, but in a war of ways of life, there may have to be only one left standing. Another Marshall Plan might be our only option. It might not. I know we've got to tone down our American superiority dogma if we want to curb anti-American sentiment. Past that, all I can say is that this martial plan just won't work for the long run.
