Burning Down a Village to Save It

There is a common theme, especially in religion, which is that in order for true transformation to come about, it is first necessary to destroy the existing order before the new, improved system can be implemented. This is definitely true with Christianity, which expresses the doctrine that one must first “die to sin” in order to be “reborn” through Christ. And the fact that Christianity is the predominant faith in America may partially explain a disturbing tendency that has been embedded within popular opinion about American foreign policy.

Recently, our national policy has been to bomb, occupy, and generally make war against Afghanistan and Iraq. But our government’s rationale is that we are not fighting their people. No, we are actually liberating them from previous oppressive governments by going over there, bombing their cities and countryside, occupying their streets, supplanting their civil authority, operating under a different set of laws than their people have to live under, treating their people like suspects instead of citizens, and overruling their “properly-elected” governments whenever it suits U.S. policy. Because we’re helping them, right?

I am convinced that there is a lot of xenophobia present in American society, and that this has been the case since possibly the inception of our nation. And wily, demagogic politicians seize upon this to enhance their prospects with the voters. But you can’t just come out and say that we should wreak havoc on our enemies abroad. No, instead we are destroying the old orders there in order to build a better society for their peoples.

But still, that old xenophobia comes out from time to time, often with a subtle wink of an eye or a chuckle. Take presidential candidate John McCain’s appeal in last year’s campaign to the xenophobic element in the electorate with his takeoff of the 1965 Beach Boys’ hit Barbara Ann: “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” (while he was dancing across the stage). This was (as I see it) McCain’s way of saying “Yes, I’m saying all of this high-sounding stuff about helping democracy and freedom for other people, but behind it all I’m just a regular, foreigner-hating dude like all of you (so vote for me)”.

In the Vietnam War, the U.S. often burned down Vietnamese villages that were suspected of harboring or supporting the enemy Viet-Cong. The fact that the Viet-Cong may have actually been the most popular political movement among the people there was brushed aside by the argument that the people had no choice in the matter. And for true democracy to exist, the influence of the Viet-Cong had to be eradicated. Hence destroying the people’s homes, a naked act of aggression, was clothed in high-sounding, benign rhetoric.

And now here we are in Afghanistan. Why did we go there anyway? Wasn’t it twofold: (1) To root out and destroy Al-Qaeda and those responsible for the 9/11 attacks and (2) to punish the Taliban in Afghanistan for giving sanctuary and support for Al-Qaeda within their borders? But now, oh-no, here we are again, “helping” the Afghanis build a “democracy” against the “bad guys” the Taliban. But the Taliban, as unpalatable their politics may be to Western sensibilities (especially their attitudes about women’s rights, education, intolerance of other beliefs, and capital punishment), is an indigenous and popular political force in that part of the world. To eliminate the Taliban there would necessitate either destroying the people there or destroying their way of life to the point where they would have to move somewhere else. In former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, this was called “ethnic cleansing” and was almost universally condemned.

We will not win a land war against a popular indigenous movement like the Taliban (just as we couldn’t against the Viet Cong). They need to be separated from their ally Al-Qaeda and then recognized and left alone. Otherwise we are going to be “burning a lot a villages” to supposedly save democracy!

We also need to get over our evangelistic-redemptive ideology of “helping” others abroad with whom we have a bone to pick by turning their societies upside-down with military force. We may think that we’re doing good, but others in the world see it as simple, naked aggression and imperialism. And simply saying that we don’t care what others think about us won’t wash in a world where we are up to our necks in debt to other countries.