Things fall apart
Afghan culture bears some blame
As two characters in Rob Reiner’s charming movie “The Princess Bride” try to outwit each other in a poisoned-wine drinking game, Wallace Shawn’s character describes three classic blunders; one is to get involved in a land war in Asia.
Before the United States in the early 1960s entered such a land war with more than merely funds and advisers, a variety of publications, including a 1958 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe titled “Things Fall Apart,” had portrayed the ultimate consequences of cultural clashes.
The French, who preceded the United States as the primary Vietnam invader, apparently learned something from such consequences.
About 25 years after the Vietnam War ended in defeat for the United States, this country ignored what might have been learned in that conflict; forging patriotically ahead, our executive branch inserted the U.S. military into another foreign war involving cultural clashes, as it jumped into Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City.
The rationale for invading Afghanistan was different from that used to escalate involvement in the Vietnam War, but the result was the same.
This time, instead of fighting a drastically different culture primarily in Southeast Asia’s tropical lowlands and densely forested highlands, the war in Afghanistan involved fighting a drastically different culture primarily in Middle Eastern deserts and mountainous country (although Afghanistan is referenced as being in South or Central Asia).
A common description of Afghan culture is that it is made up of various tribes in which women are allowed few decisions and rights. There are exceptions, of course, and some progress in modernizing tribal viewpoints toward women has been made. In addition, Islam, practiced by more than 99 percent of the population, is a major factor in Afghan culture.
While four U.S. presidents have been responsible for the military intervention in Afghanistan, each has disregarded what has been known before any one of them was born: Underlying cultural mores generally do not change permanently, even though one might force a behavioral change for an extended period.
Although then-Sen. Joe Biden initially supported sending U.S. troops into Afghanistan in 2001, by 2009, according to Bob Woodward’s book, “Obama’s Wars,” then-Vice President Biden had become very skeptical that U.S. military involvement could make any difference in building a strong Afghan government.
According to Woodward, Biden told a meeting of National Security Council leaders that the United States did not have a reliable partner in the Afghan government, though there was no mention of a cultural problem at that time.
Now that President Biden has marked the end of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, nobody should be surprised by the cultural consequences that have been triggered. Recent news stories have shown that communications among members of the executive branch predicted, as early as last year and as recently as this past June and July, the chaos and cultural reversals the world has witnessed. The prolonged insertion of Western values is most likely over.
Blame for consequences of the American withdrawal has been placed on many people, while few have blamed the Afghan culture for them.
For example, in an Aug. 25 opinion piece in The New York Times, Afghan National Army three-star general Sami Sadat wrote that the Afghan military collapsed because (1) President Trump “put an expiration date on American interest in the region”; (2) the military “lost contractor logistics and maintenance support critical to [the army’s] combat operations”; and (3) corruption in the Afghan government crippled ground forces.
Although these reasons seem plausible, they are not complete; no responsibility is assigned to the Afghan culture. An alternative view is that Afghan forces collapsed when traditional cultural values were no longer suppressed by a temporary military support system, and things fell apart.