CHICAGO -- Good news, bad news; bad news, good news. Plane
crash: bad news. "Just" a plane crash: good news. Our side takes Kabul.
Ooops, our side could be a problem.
My favorite guy on our side is Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the
Uzbek warlord who took Mazar-i-sharif.
According to The New York Times, at age 23, Dostum led a militia
of Uzbeks who sided with the Soviets when they invaded in '79. He rose to
command an armored division and helped the Soviets kill about a million
Afghans and drive more into exile. He sided with the Soviet puppet regime
after the Soviets left in '89, but switched sides in '92 and helped
overthrow them, instead.
In 1996, he joined the Taliban, and since then he has switched
sides again -- first fighting then joining the late leader of the Northern
Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud. Dostum ruled Mazar-i-sharif and six northern
provinces, according to Pakistan intelligence. He seems to have favored
corruption, nepotism and an un-Islamic lifestyle. In other words, this one
is a doozy.
The best news is that the supply roads are now open to the south
in Afghanistan, which means we can get humanitarian aid in. Almost the only
way we could have lost this war was if millions of Afghanis starved while
the world watched on television. Whew.
Now the big concern is that the Pashtuns will break and run into
Pakistan, creating a province seething with discontent, if not actually
provoking civil war. Pakistan is estimated to have between 30 and 40 nuclear
weapons. no shortage of worries, eh mate?
It's rather touching that so many Americans seem to feel that
what we need is better public relations. America has a genius for marketing,
they love to say, and we ought to use it -- make "the Arab street" love us
with an ad campaign, better propaganda, jazzy graphics.
Actually, it's quite difficult to persuade people that you are
bombing them for their own good. It's not a circumstance propaganda can do
much to popularize. Getting it over with is more helpful. Historically,
bombing has served to cement tyrants in power, at least while it lasts.
Since I've always been persuaded that Americans are unusually
nice people myself, I'd like to convince the rest of the world, too.
However, mass starvation is a hell of a public relations problem -- I don't
think a marketing campaign works there.
But we are now in the best of all possible public relations
positions, in that we are able to help bring in massive amounts of
humanitarian aid. And that is not only a great marketing ploy, but also, as
Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing.
It's hard to say what bombing a fragile country will do to it.
The Soviets left Afghanistan such a shambles, a period of warlord rule was
followed by the Taliban, who were initially welcomed simply because the
brought order. We have a responsibility to see that history does not repeat
itself.
As Tom Friedman of The New York Times observed, part of the
resentment from the Mujahedeen stems from the fact that we dropped them
like a used hanky after the Soviets had been defeated.
Many of you are old enough to remember what happened in Cambodia
when it got sucked into a larger war: The Khmer Rouge, a bizarre communist
sect with a strong resemblance to the Taliban, came down out of the hills
and slaughtered millions. Spalding Gray called them "rednecks," for lack of
any better way to describe their ideology, but that same resentment of
modernity that one finds in the Taliban also marked the Khmer Rouge.
Afghanistan is not the only country impacted by the current war.
Pakistan is also so poor that it has been dividing essentially all its
available resources between military expenditures and debt service. One
consequence is the crumbling of its civil society. Because the state school
system is in desuetude, the religious schools -- madrasas -- have emerged as
incubators of jihad.
The good news is that just as it takes a very little in the way
of destruction to unbalance a fragile country, a little constructive effort
goes a long way, too. America has been notably penurious with foreign aid --
most developed countries manage 3 percent of GDP or better. We've been at 1
percent for several years, courtesy of politicians like Sen. Jesse Helms,
who made careers out of attacking foreign aid, as though it had ever been a
great burden on taxpayers.
As we all know, Helms also waged an effective campaign to keep
the United States from paying its United Nations dues. At the beginning of
this conflict, we quietly ponied up the full amount owed. Pace, Sen. Helms.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
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