Helmintholog

There is a long plug/interview with Robert Kaplan in the Atlantic Monthly online (not sure if it’s paywalled) which fills me with a soft despair. Here’s why:

Instead of the oppressive colonial domination that characterized other empires, Kaplan describes America as spreading its imperial influence through humanitarian aid efforts such as well-digging, medical care, and school construction. These days, imperialism means that soldiers seek to adapt to the mores of the places where they’re stationed, rather than forcing those places to knuckle under to imported ideas. Green Berets in Afghanistan wear keffiyas and grow beards; they drink tea with tribal leaders and take time to know both people and place. Instead of fierce generals or conquest-hungry marauders, Kaplan found thoughtful, caring, and disciplined soldiers who everyday face the impossible task of “making countries out of places that were never meant to be countries.”

I’m quite prepared to accept this as sometimes true, and always, among the decent imperialists, an aspiration, though perhaps a naive one: I don’t remember, from childhood visits to the unimaginable profusions of the PX in Bonn, very much engagement with the German culture around it. And let’s leave Iraq out of the picture for the moment, though it is the central front in the American imperialist project. The most astonishing thing is Kaplan’s assertion that these “thoughtful, caring, and disciplined soldiers” are unlike all their predecessors. What does he think the British empire was like, or even the French? That phrase about making countries out of places that were never meant to be countries translates quite well into French — I think it would be something like La mission civilisatrice. And the idea of our brave soldiers accepted by their brave enemies is one that everyone finds irresistible, whenever they invade Afghanistan. The wars there all seem to have the same outcome, though.

This isn’t (just) point scoring. If American can’t even acknowledge its predecessor empires, let alone learn from their mistakes, what chance does it have of avoiding their fate?

The Wall Street Journal has come out for torture in its leader on Saturday:

“Yet according to many Bush Administration critics, the aggressive and stressful questioning techniques used successfully against the likes of KSM put the U.S. on a slippery slope to widespread ‘torture’ and the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. John McCain (R., Arizona) has pushed an amendment through the Senate that would effectively bar all stressful interrogation techniques. The danger for American security is that this would telegraph to every terrorist in the world that he has absolutely nothing to fear from silence should he fall into U.S. hands.”

updated after the fold

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