The cost of irony

On the cover of TIME magazine there was a photograph of an Afghan woman, whose nose appeared to have been removed; the photo also appears to be retouched for maximum outrage effect, but I have no other reason to doubt its general authenticity. In conjunction with this, The New York Times ran a story about a women’s rights group in Kabul concerned about the return of the Taliban if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan “prematurely.” The Obama administration by now knows that the Taliban isn’t going to disappear any time soon, thanks to the Bush administration’s neglect of the country since its initial incursion in 2002, allowing the Taliban to regroup. It appears that the current administration is admitting that large-scale assaults on urban areas have failed in their aims, and now merely seeks to force the Taliban into negotiations by targeting individuals, and making them feel vulnerable personally.

Any return of the Taliban to de facto authority should be a concern for westernized Afghan women in urban areas where there are opportunities for political and economic advancement, although in the impoverished countryside there is much less opportunity for anyone to do much more than simply farm the sparse land. But at what price to prevent this? TIME magazine and the Times seem to suggest that rather than seeking a quick exit strategy from a war much less “winnable” than in the more urbanized Iraq, American soldiers (almost all male) should fight and die in Afghanistan for as long as it takes to insure that those women are secure from the Taliban—kind of like winning the war in Europe to prevent the Nazis from killing more than 6 million Jews and millions of other “subhumans.” It’s “OK” for soldiers to lose limbs, noses, eyes and pieces of their skull—let alone their lives—in the name of a noble cause. I am being cynical again here, but then again, American soldiers have been portrayed as murderous thugs by some of the same people for engaging in actions that have resulted in civilian deaths, and the troops cannot be blamed for noting the irony.

“Irony” is also palpable in the way most Americans view leaders of the “new left” in Latin America, particularly Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Director Oliver Stone’s latest film, “South of the Border,” has received near unanimous pans from film critics—apparently for the crime of humanizing these leaders and not portraying them as the malevolent monsters of popular belief. Perhaps some of these critics are embarrassed by the fact the U.S. did nothing while hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of people were murdered to maintain the “status quo” under right-wing regimes. I had to laugh when I read Karina Longworth of Village Voice Media’s mean-spirited review, right after she had declared the film “Salt” to be “unpretentious” despite the fact that the 110-pound Angelina Jolie spent the whole movie getting into 110 situations that would have killed 110 people. At least Stone has a philosophy on the issue that required some actual knowledge of the goings on “south of the border,” having directed “Salvador”—while the Reagan administration was keeping the military in El Salvador supplied with sophisticated weapons in their fight against the rebel organization FMLN, and training an “elite” paramilitary outfit that was little more than an assassination squad targeting reformers. Despite gentle prodding by the U.S., the Euro-elites in the country continue to oppose economic and social reform.

Anyways, Stone has been accused of simply allowing people like Chavez to “set the agenda” rather than asking them the “tough” questions. What they mean by “tough” questions are those which a clearly biased U.S. media would ask. The media and public apparently prefers its “tough guys” to have a right-wing flavor. Chavez and Evo Morales are no saints, but they are the face of the long-oppressed indigenous and mixed race peoples in Latin American, and their philosophies were shaped by the social, political and economic inequities perpetrated by the right-wing elites that the U.S. has always backed. The reason is simple enough: the U.S. prefers to see a country’s resources flowing north instead to the people of said country. Oppressive right-wing regimes are regarded as our “friends,” because the few people who hoard a country’s wealth like to “share” some of what they have with us because, as if it is a protection racket. And isn’t it nice have “friends” who really know how to keep those little dark-skinned people in their “place”—except, of course, when those dark-skinned people decide they don’t want to be oppressed anymore, and migrate here. Americans seem to be incapable of understanding why support of such regimes would cause an anti-American backlash when alternative regimes that represent the aspirations of the formerly oppressed come to power. But isn’t it nice to know that the U.S. really cares about the fate of the poor rich elites when their victims come to power?

The reality is that if the media supplied even a smidgeon of the truth, and the U.S. government showed the least support for the aspirations of the majority of the people in these countries, then the anti-U.S. rhetoric might decline to something akin to civilized behavior. In Venezuela, where Chavez has instituted programs to reverse the longstanding inequality, the U.S.’ primary concern is really only about the oil; for U.S. policy makers, it is better for oil profits going into the pockets of “reliable friends” rather than being used to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the impoverished majority. One of the U.S.’ “reliable friends” of the past was Augusto Pinochet. I recall a conversation with a native of Chile named Luis—himself an unabashed Pinochet supporter—who told me that Chile’s leftist president Salvador Allende “blew himself up” after discovering the people were “against him”—this after his party had just won a plurality in the congressional elections. I laughed and asked him if he really believed this; he insisted that this was the “truth,” which led an older man in room who was not historically naïve to quip “Yeah, he shot himself with 46 machine gun rounds.” The CIA is widely believed to have played a part in Allende’s assassination.