Recently, a reader, Bill Kelsey, sent me a nicely considered discussion of why Intervention for Good Reasons is still trouble. Here are his thoughts:
“Here in the States it is illegal for a political party or campaign to accept foreign money. When this happens it is also a scandal and very bad PR for the candidate. We don’t like to believe that we are manipulated by foreigners. A good idea can be poisoned when improperly introduced or imposed by foreigners. And in America we are only talking about money, not military force. Imagine a Chinese occupation enforcing abortion rights and the one child policy in a part of the United States. It is not far fetched to say that is what Islamic societies are perceiving when ideas are brought in and enforced by a foreign invasion. (Whether they are good ideas or bad ones is secondary – they are foreign and are introduced by foreign forces who are getting local folks killed).
“It is true that colonized people accepted and excelled at many things brought in by the foreign armies – soccer, cricket, and bagpipe bands come to mind. But deeper things of religion and gender relations are a lot more delicate. One thing to bear in mind is that whatever the debates are in our society about women’s issues, to many in the Third World their understanding of emancipation of women western style is what they see on the Jerry Springer show (yup they get this stuff over there) and our movies.
“One place where women’s rights got confused as a result of foreign militarism was in Algeria and its independence war in the late fifties and early sixties. Women’s rights French style and Islamic repression of the same were given by the French as a justification for their war and in turn the concept became associated with collaborationism in the minds of Algerian patriots.
“People who support the US invasion of Afghanistan usually don’t realize that just about all their justifications for it are the same as those offered by the Soviets – fighting Islamic fundamentalism and backward warlords, war against terrorism, and most significantly for this discussion – emancipation of women. When Americans of many political stripes were feeling all sorts of warm fuzzy romantic feelings about the ‘muj’ and their patriotic resistance against the Soviets, the women of Afghanistan in Soviet controlled cities had more freedoms than ever before. The muj beat the Soviets, had their own civil wars out of which came the Taliban and greater repression of women than ever before. Women’s freedoms were something associated with Soviet invasion. Now the US is in the position of fighting Afghan traditionalists and many women are somewhat emancipated in Kabul. Indeed they are grateful to George Bush – as their mothers had been to the Soviets.
“It’s not an easy dilemma for someone trying to take a truly principled ethical position. I do believe that if or when the US invasion fails – or the US ‘declares a victory and withdraws’ – the advances of women risk being brutally reversed by virtue of having been brought in by American invaders.”
And for some compelling pictures of and stories about women in Afghanistan, you can see the work of Peggy Kelsey, Bill’s spouse, who traveled around Afghanistan in the summer of ’03.