In fact, Bush “Cut and Ran” on Afghanistan.

Part I: What Bush’s ‘small game’ in Afghanistan Should have looked like:
The hard part of Afghanistan was the follow up, and he just cut and ran on it. Nations from around the world were lining up to turn Afghanistan into a successful model of a state. And Afghanistan was an excellent place to start reform for a model of all of South West Asia.

Afghanistan already had a legitimate King in waiting, residing in Italy. After 30 years of constant war and poverty after the coup that removed him his perceived legitimacy and moral authority was paramount. The institutional underpinnings of parliamentary democracy already existed in the Loya Jerga.

These conditions cannot be understated. A societies institutions are based upon their belief systems and ideologies, all of which are based upon their common share expereinces. This is critically important. Also, “presidential democracies” are less intuitive to the lessor developed (politically) societies.

The most successful democratic models evolved out of fuedalism. In fact there is plenty of evidence to suggest that fuedalism evolves nicely into Democracy. So the goal to democratize the world should procede to a first step where all those dictators out there that carry the title “President” or “President for Life” be turned into a monarchical title. Even in the Arabian world, it is the small emirates (monarchies) in the Persian gulf which are evolving into modern democratics states the fastest and safest.

Afghanistan was a full step and a half ahead of most Southwest Asian Islamic states. Egypt, Syria, Iraq (pre-2003), Iran, Pakistan were all several stages behind Afghanistan and places like Bahrain and Qatar and UAE and Oman – all which have Kings or Emirs and all are taking an evolutionary approach to modernization. The United States, by forcing a Presidential model upon Afghanistan force that nation backward. But Karzai has long and deep connections to the oil industry. Ending the Monarchy and Putting him on the throne was simply a power move by the oil oligopoly and not at all in Afghanistan’s interest. It forced Afghanistan two steps backward and down the wrong road, one which it would never imbarkupon naturally. THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE.

Additionally, contrary to many modern reports, Afghanistan was not traditionally an over zeolus religious community. Traditionally, these very independent people were also known for their hospitalitiy, their sense of humor and the convivialness. Only recent events demonstrated extremism.

Upon establishing the Loya Jerga, the U.S. could have followed that up with encouraging two houses: one for commons, the other traditional tribal representation. The war lords, with perhaps some cojolling from the presence of the U.S. Military and Nato, in Afghanistan, should have then been hurded into become Emirs that function as ducal fiefs to the King. Each warlords territory would be transformed into a sort of dukedome, which would function as a province – similar to a state or province in the U.S or Canada (or the Maharaja’s in British India). They would then have their own two house assemblies installed in their emirates. I know this is fanciful, but Nobility is a trade off that all wise war lords have made through out history. It is natural and even intuitive, for the war lord and for the common people. What’s more, it has been shown to work.

Beyond these type of institutional arrangements, the other big investments would have been in infrastructure and eductation. A huge educational investment would have been necessary from the international community – and at every level: for two reasons, to counter act the muslim massadras and equip the people to participate in the modern world, international commerce and economic development. Universities would have had to have been established in every Emirate/dukedome – with sufficient land grants, to function there as they did here – to facilitate modern agricultural practices. In fact, if I had been calling the shots, I would have authorized two mega Univesities in the capital, and two in each emirate/dukedome – one a royal University, under the auspices of the King, and the other and Emir’s University under the auspices of the Emir – although in fact each would be a function of the legislatures. The point of this is to create rivalries to ensure there was competition to impell progress.

All of this would have been conducted with the help and involvement of the entire International community.

Now take a step back and imagin the impact a successful Afghanistan would have on the entire region. A successful and democratic Afghanistan would put immense internal pressure on both Pakistan and Iran to evolve into succesful modern democracies as well. Both of these nations consider Afghans as crude, tribal hill billies. Pakistan, pinned between two successful democracies in India, its greatest rival which also has a large muslim community, and Afghanistan, the pressure to evolve into a modern democratic state would have been overwhelming. The same with Iran – maybe even more so. Iranians consider themselves the civilized people of the Middle East. To Iranians, they formed the first super power state, the first global power in 500bc. The arabs are ‘sand hill billies’ and the Afghans, who are ethnically cousins, and can even understand each others language, the same way a Londoner can understand an Ozark Hillbilly, are looked down on as well. And the Turkes, to their east, are only 500 years out of nomadism. With successful democracies in Afghanistan, Turkey and a couple of the Persian Gulf Emirates, the internal pressure would be equally immense inside Iran. Given all this, Iran and Pakistan could have had their ‘velvet revolutions’ by right about now.

What that means is that a string of non-Arab Islamic Democracies would run from Istanbul to Singapore. They would also form a buffer between the troublesome Arab states and the developed world.

Part II: What Bush’s Larger Strategy in the war on Terror should have looked like:
This leads me to talking about what Bush’s big game should have looked like. Again this was seemingly obvious to anyone but a Neocon idiot.

The war on terror is an ideological war. The precedent and the primer for which are found in the cold war. Step one is ensuring that you can’t lose – that means creating overwhemlingly power alliance power bloc. Step two is containment of the adversary. Step three is the carefull and intellegently and intellectually driven, break down of the adversary.

Bush spent his first nine months in office, offending nearly everyone of our allies. He even managed to offend both South Korea and North Korea simultaniously – some thing almost impossible to do at the time. After 9/11, our natural allies along with the rest of the world wanted to close ranks with the United States. The first world Democracies wanting to overlook the first impoliteness of the Bush regime. Bush told all of them to basically go fuck off.

What he should have done, is use the opportunity that 9/11 provided to take the Nato model formed in response to the cold war and forge a similar, though certainly not the same, new Anti Terrorism International Security organization (howabout ATISO) that would include all of the old Nato countries, Ukraine, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Japan, Thailand and perhaps even India. The idea would be to contain terrorism. Modernizing Muslim states would come to the organization, at first as associated status.

For 45 years, NATO was a force multiplier for the power of the United States. The thing about Nato and its sister alliances in the far east, is that it created a hub and spoke system that put the United States in the role of the hub. This meant that for the price of almost token diplomacy, and polite respect and consideration of our allies concern, the next 15 or so richest nations of the world put their defence establishments at our disposal. This doubled the affective power of the United States. It made the free world immensley strong and stable, which made the entire free world safe for trade and investment which greatly improved economic growth in the free world. From 1945-1973 the GNP of the world effectively doubled, most of this economic growth occurred in Nato countries and similar nations in the far east. Also, while not all Nato countries started out as Democracies, they all ended up becomeing democracies.

The follow up to ‘ATISO’ would have been coordination of the security block into an international community based upon precedents set in Europe after World War II. I am not talking so much about the European Union, but more like the European Economic Community or the European Community. The basic response is an agreement of what international law would be, and an agreement that all relations be conducted under the law, and an agreement to institutions to govern such law and an agreement to work to facilitate economic growth and liberalization.

The short of this is: Bush missed an opportunity to do for the non-Muslim International community (and the modernizing muslim international community) what FDR/Truman did for the First world democracies. He could have quite easily, with little imagination and drawing much from existing precedents, forged a block of global peace and prosperity for 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the world. Bush could have been one of the greatest presidents ever: he would have been up there with Washington, Lincoln and FDR in American History. In international history he might have been bigger still. He turned down this opportunity, wantonly, willingly and with reckless abandone. Why? So he could give tax breaks to the rich at the expense of the poor.

I know that suggesting sounds fanciful, but if you think about it certainly was possible. Events have a way of creating their own momentum. 9/11 creates enormous sympathy for the U.S. and a general desire to address terrorism and Islams growing pains. The world looks to the U.S. to take the lead. Russia, has huge concerns here – and out of those concerns and out of sympathy would have just set aside the remaining embers of cold war enmity. The Chinese have less pressing problems with Islam, but they do have a Muslim minority community and they have greater stakes in international trade. The shock and sympathy of 9/11 could have lead to the institutional security arrangement I talked about, leading to better coordination on a host of different levels, including rule of law and policy, and better security arrangements and a lessoning of tensions for members, all of which would have increased trade and economic development between and within the members. Developing nations like China and Russia, would have been hard pressed to jump this course once the moment impelled it farther down the tracks.

The deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 was a terrible tragedy. But had it resulted in a world more peaceful and prosperous, then those deaths would have been made meaningful and less in vain.

The real problem in South West Asia, aside from Israel, which is admittedly a big aside, is Islam’s confrontation with modernism. All other major social systems have found ways to adapting: Hindus in India, Buddhist in Thailand, Confucianistic societies in China, Japan and Korea all seemed to have found ways of coping with modernism as, seemingly Malaysia, though less so, Indonesia.

Therefore the entire intellectual and academic infrastructure, nationally and internationally, could have been invested in addressing this problem, academically. During the cold war, every academic discipline did its part to fight the cold war. Why not the terrorist war?

Unlike the cold war, the terrorist war does not need to vanquis the opposing system. As I stated, there are successful models that are evolving into modernism, both in the Persian Gulf, Turkey, India and Malaysia, and else where.

The essence of the problem has to do with Modernism’s characteristic of specialization of task in general, and within that framework of specialization of tasks, the seperation of the religion and government. The secondary problem is the notion of jihad, or ‘struggle’. These are not unsolveable problems in the context of Islam. Like most religions, Islam has contrasting norms. Its just in Islam the norms that emphasize cohesion, and combining church and state, and ‘externalizing’ jihad into a manifestation of hate, have been ‘activated’ and the norms that emphasize freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and internalization of ones religious struggles have been made ‘dormant’. Islam is a very legalistic religion. Careful and thoughtful research could be evolved to make dormant the anti-modernism norms and make active the pro-moderism norms, all the while paying attention to the steps taken by the modernizing regimes, especially the Persian Gulf. Typically, they adopt civil law for civil matters, and hold sharia law to family matters.

The point is, the problem can be solved with careful thoughful work, in the context where the problem is contained and the stresses minimized. The problem with the approach the Bush administration has taken, is it has applied a blunt instrument, like a sledge hammer to an anvil, where a tweezers makes much more sense.

Agian, the question has to be why?

Part III: The consequence of George W. Bush’s presidency

Note: the following is largely fanciful speculation, and gets more fanciful as it goes. The reason for such speculation is simply one doesn’t want to be caught wrong footed by events – by the time you realize a situation, the real facts have moved on, that is to say, ones cognizance of reality is always a step behind reality, so speculative reasoning has a purpose only to make sense of events when they happen, not after they happen, which is what we are all trying to do when it comes to 911. As climatic as that has been the events keep unraveling and shockingly so.

Why did Bush turn down and opportunity, the greatest in history, to forge an era of global peace and prosperity? My thinking is he is pursuing a renegade rogue vision of the world that is intrinsic to Neoconism. That is a global arrangement of Banana Republics that looks more like Latin America or Saudi Arabia then it does Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. The latter group was the prime beneficiaries of the triumph of FDR/Truman at the end of WWII. The difference between Mexico and the United States is that Mexico didn’t have FDR/Truman. FDR was called a traitor to his class. Essentially, Bush’s goal is to undo FDR’s legacy. Everywhere FDR triumphed, social democracy, pluralism, peace, prosperity prevail.

The first hint that Bush wasn’t going to do the right and logical thing for the interest of the public and the interest of our descendents, was when he failed to call for a draft after 9/11. A draft would have been possible on 09/12 – and it would have enlisted the nation to working on the problem that the war on terrorism represents. But a conscripted army cannot be used for private wars or fanciful wars using antithetical tactics. Bush wanted to go into Iraq, for ideological, political, and monetary reasons none of which had anything to do with the public’s interest, but instead had to do with the narrow interest of the neocons.

The neocon dream is a global medievalisitic world where uber-wealthy upper class rules over disempowered masses that is both controled and aussaged by religiosity, with the help of a small but effective military corp whose ranks are saturated with righ wing religious fundementalist who will be willing to pull the trigger to put down any social democratic athiestic revolt. This view of the future is not that different from Bin Laden’s view of the future. This is why Bush won’t win the war on terror. Bush and Bin Laden are in essence, theological and theoretical allies.

Another scary sign post of the Neocon progress to transform our society has to do with the fundementalist dominance of the military academies, the funding by wealthy neocons of institutes whose main focus is to have right wing fundies take over – such as has happened in the evangelic movement and Catholism, which leaves only the mainline protestant sects (of which are being attacked by the Institute for Religion and Democracy). Keep in mind, if the right wing dominates religion, and religion dominates the military academies, those academies’ graduates will dominate the officer corp within two decades. On top of this they also have control of most of the media.

This also means that the 2000 election was more than just an attempted coup. It seems likely that had Gore been elected president 9/11 would not have occurred. In fact, it may not have even been attmepted – for a variety of reasons. (At the very least, had Gore won, Clinton in cooridnation with Gore, might have used the USS Cole instance as the pretext to go after Al Quaida. Clinton waited for determination of who would be President, then sought ouht Bush’s position – Bush didn’t want to do anything concerning Terrorism, nor did he do anything after he was sworn into office, despite Clinton, Hart-Rudman, Richard Clark and the CIA warning him of the situation).

As small minded, incurious and evil a man as George W. Bush is, it is hard to believe that he gave up a blatent and obvious opportunity to become one of the greatest people in history to instead become one of the most ridiculed. A nation that longed to be united to fight terrorism has been divided. Also a world that long to be united to fight terrorism has also been divided. A global golden age was at our fingertips. He need merely step forward and simply say, let it be and it would have. Instead he chose to lead us to a global dark age which in actuality was much harder to arrive at than the golden age pulled back from. Instead of falling into a golden age, he chose instead to dive into the abyss, taking all of humanity with him. I don’t trust the electoral process anymore. I don’t see the Neocons giving up power, ever. Civil war will emerge in the U.S. before they give up power. No they surely don’t want civil war because it will dilute their power, so they’ll do everthing short of that before the elections. If for somereason their electioneering fails to win the election, especially in both houses and if things continue to flow away from the Neocons then you can expect a coup by the executive over the legislature before 2009. Like the Nazi’s if they can control everything by legitimate means they will, but if they can’t then they’ll go to illigitimate means – they are too close to their goal now, not to. Everything is on the line for them. Because of all of this, especially the lost opportunities, I cannot consider the anniversary of 9/11 without become immensely angry.

For the first time in our nations history, we have the wrong man in the top job at the wrong time. All the world will suffer as a result. Never in history had there been such an opportunity for peace and prosperity. Its mind boggling – but it was all thrown away out of an interest to make the rich richer.