The Dismissing of America's Covenant with God

The clash of East-West cultures. Once again American Idealism and the hard realities of a complex world would clash violently. Just the case of “freeing” the women in fundamentalist Afghanistan provides a vivid example of the complexities. Certainly equal education and equal professional opportunities for women are well-acknowledged rights of every woman in Western culture. But in traditional Muslim culture such personal rights do not exist. In fact the whole Western idea of personal rights itself is not the point of Islamic culture, which instead teaches submission as the primary directive in life. Everything, from children up through families, through local clans and tribes, through anointed rulers, to Allah himself, is a construction of correct submission. To talk of personal rights throws the whole sense of Islamic order into confusion. In fact it is one of the major points in the hostility of traditional Muslims against the invasion of their culture by Western values. When Muslims hear of Westerners crusading in their lands to bring individual rights, this touches the nerves of devout Muslims, not just in Afghanistan but also in other parts of the Muslim world. And in many cases, it merely makes them all the more deliberate in their sense of opposition to the Westernizing of their culture.

To be sure, there are many, very many, in the Muslim world who find these Western values attractive. These are the people that Westerners are most likely to deal with in their contacts with the world of Islam. It is thus easy to get the impression on the basis of this personal sampling that pro-Western attitudes are much more prevalent in the Middle East than they actually are.

It is thus also hard, very hard, for Americans to understand how Muslims who have lived among us in America (as most of the 9/11 perpetrators had) could hate us as they do. Do they not see the good in what we stand for? The answer is obviously “no.” Contact with our culture has made them all the more committed to the idea that the evil ways of our culture must be destroyed—just as we Americans believe that the evil ways of their culture must be destroyed.

Thus it was that in Afghanistan, America became drawn into a much larger challenge, one that had been brewing for a while and was about to become monumental in size. The war on terrorism in Afghanistan was quickly to become a war of global cultures.

The attempt to "democratize" Afghanistan. In December a select group of Afghans met in Bonn, Germany, under U.N. sponsorship to put together an Agreement providing for a provisional authority and a constitution drafting committee. Hamid Karzai, of a well-respected Pashtun political and diplomatic family background, and backed personally by America, was selected to serve a 6-month term as chairman of a Transitional Administration. The Bonn Agreement also called for the convening of a loya jirga (grand council) which by Afghan tradition was required to select any Afghan leader. A loya jirga of June 2002 in Kabul reappointed Karzai as head (this time as its president) of the Transitional Administration for a term of two years. The title was mostly honorific since there was little direct government outside of the capital itself but only loose arrangements or alliances with the many Afghan warlords who were in fact the real leaders here and there around Afghanistan. But Karzai did an excellent job of keeping this rather traditional Afghan political system functioning fairly effectively (that had been the pattern by which the Afghan Shah had once “governed” the country).

There seemed little more that could be done against bin Laden, who had obviously slipped into Pakistan—where the Pakistani government refused to allow American or NATO troops into their country in pursuit of al-Qaeda. Pakistan allowed supplies for American and NATO troops to pass through its territory on its way to Afghanistan. But the Pakistanis were unbending in their refusal to allow U.S. troops on Pakistani soil. In fact, it seemed that at times elements of the Pakistani government, military, and intelligence agency (ISI) were still actively supporting the Taliban. There seemed to be no way to get either bin Laden or the remainder of al-Qaeda as long as Americans could not enter Pakistan—and as long as Pakistan played a confusing game of conflicting political and diplomatic loyalties.

In 2004 there were actually national elections held in Afghanistan, at least in the parts of the country not still under Taliban control. And Karzai was decisively elected over his 22 opponents, with victories in 21 of the 34 provinces. What America and the West understood as “democracy” had finally come to Afghanistan ... or so it appeared anyway.

But by this point, Bush had shifted his priority from Afghanistan to a matter of greater interest to the president: Iraq. For reasons known only to Bush, he had by this time taken on the goal of ridding the world of Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein—and bringing Iraq to “democracy” as his primary foreign policy goal. He would pour the bulk of America’s military assets into this new anti-Saddam campaign. This left the situation in Afghanistan now very problematic.

Thus with the shifting of the diplomatic focus west toward Iraq, the Taliban were clearly able to make a political comeback in Afghanistan—by 2006 able to once again take over villages that they had been chased from, terrorizing the local population back into submission.