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How Much Is a Little Girl Learning to Read Worth?
Kathleen Parker had an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday lamenting the fact that women's rights are not a priority for the United States and its allies in Afghanistan:
Women, and by extension children, suffer what too many have come to accept as “collateral damage” in theaters of war. We hate it, of course, but what can one do? It isn’t in our strategic interest to save the women and children of the world. Or, as an anonymous senior White House official recently told The Post:
“Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities. There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, no stranger to the importance of advancing women’s rights, promptly repudiated the comment. Even so, the anonymous spokesman’s opinion, though inartfully expressed, is hardly isolated.
I generally like Kathleen Parker's commentary, but this is the worst kind of op-ed because it completely misses the heart of the debate and leads the reader to believe the key question is something that it is not. There is not, despite what you might think, some group of anti-feminist activists out there in the Obama Administration who do not think the empowerment of women is a good thing. No one is running around arguing that promoting the rights of women is something the United States should not be doing. The real debate is over how much of a priority the promotion of women's issues should be when compared with competing priorities.
Here's a hypothetical: What if Mullah Omar, speaking for all the insurgents of Afghanistan, presented a peace deal tomorrow in which he offered to lay down all the arms of Afghanistan's insurgent groups and renounce al-Qaeda on one condition: that girls in southern Afghanistan would not be allowed to attend school. What should the president do? Should he accept the offer, allowing the war in Afghanistan to end? Or should he say, no, we will stay in Afghanistan and continue to lose American and allied lives and spend billions of dollars each year because we cannot accept an Afghanistan in which women are not allowed to attend school?
My intent here is to demonstrate that it is not a matter of believing the rights of women matter or not. The question is, How much are the rights of women worth to you? Are you willing to accept added cost in terms of blood and treasure?
Parker, apparently, is:
Women are not collateral damage in the fight for security. They are not pet rocks in a rucksack, nor are they sidebars to the main story. They are the story — and should be the core of our foreign policy strategy in Afghanistan as elsewhere.
Okay, that's just crazy talk. I'm just going to assume Parker could not think of a better way to end her op-ed and so hastily wrote a powerful conclusion making a really big claim that I do not think she is prepared to back up. Does Parker really think the empowerment of women should be the core of our strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere? Should the rights of women trump the security interests that led us to war in the first place? Is she willing to go to war, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, over gender equality?
I sure hope not. But as Americans, it's true that we do care about the empowerment of women, and we do believe that a society in which women enjoy something approaching equal opportunities is a more stable and successful society. The question is, how much blood and treasure are we willing to spend to realize such a society -- not in the United States, mind, but in a Central Asian state in which we have struggled to understand the norms and culture despite almost 10 years of occupation?* I would have been more interested to read an op-ed by Kathleen Parker in which she answered that question.
*Oh, and has anyone stopped to ask Afghan women what it is that they want? Should it matter?
For consideration: In that
For consideration:
In that we would seem to be engaged in these post-Cold War conflicts for the specific purpose of modernizing and integrating these outlier states and societies, and incorporating them into the modern world, then, by way of this underlying premise, taking on such core issues as the emancipation and empowerment of women would seem to be totally consistent with our overall purpose and the design of our campaign.
In this regard, the United States purpose today in the world might be considered somewhat similar to that which it took on re: the South during the American Civil War -- in which such things as modernization and emancipation were key factors/principal goals.
Only with an understanding and context such as this might we be able to better understand (1) what the current projects and initiatives are truely all about and (2) what such endeavors may actually cost us in blood and treasure to achieve some degree of success.
Nicely argued Andrew,
Nicely argued Andrew, agree.
Gosh, with her conclusion we might as well reinstate the draft and build an army of two million americans and maintained it existentially because that is what it will take to bring about better rights for women in the world's troubled spots.
And you nail the essential calculation in your last point about the worth of it all in terms of american blood and treasure. I wonder if Ms Parker has ever had to speak on the phone to a mother of a young man who was killed by a sniper's bullet to the head trying to do nation building in Iraq, or listen to the stories of a mom and dad remembering their son as he was growing up because he died a slow death after receiving burns on most of his body from an IED strike, again within the overall mission of nation building in Iraq.
My point in agreement with yours Andrew is not that we shouldn't be doing these things, or that there may be times when it is in the interest of the United States to use military force in these ways, but perhaps a little humility on the part of Ms Parker and an appreciation of what this costs in terms of American blood and treasure might be in order and might have led her to answer the excellent question that you offer.
gian
@Bill C, and Kathleen Parker
@Bill C, and Kathleen Parker if she's reading: that's not what led us to Afghanistan, it's an afterthought of dilettantes playing with power and playing at war. We went to Astan over 9/11, that's it. The rest is mission creep.
And to accomplish this bit of social engineering we need to shoot every male from 8 to 80. You first - blood in, blood out.
Do they pay US taxes? The
Do they pay US taxes?
The problem here is skipping straight to the social issue. When did the WORLD become a United States territory? This is were NGO's should be, not the US government. The US government should not he on the hook to make sure that Bill Gates is secure in what ever country to do his NGO work. The US taxpayer should not be securing India, Pakistan, or any other place so that GE's foreign operations make lots of money with OUT HAVING TO PAY US TAXES! There should not be an emergency Special Op, just to save some dumb ass Americans that are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A good example of this is Alan Greyson getting caught up in a Niger Coup. There is no way in hell that you can convince me that Florida taxpayers are served by this Representative taking a trip to fucking Niger! Why is Pelosi taking trips to Afganistan? So she can get sick in Italy eating the rich food there? Don't I pay a fucking GENERAL a six figure salary for the rest of his FUCKING life to run the war? The government wants to cut my SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE cause we can not afford our FUCKING GOVERNMENT.
The US is a large place Greyson can serve his people by visiting places in the US. If he wants to talk to people outside the US, that is what a fucking phone is for. You do not need Xe to hang up the phone for you when the shit hit the fan. If US companies can do business outside the US, they can do it just as well INSIDE THE US and pay FUCKING US TAXES to pay for US DOD to protect them. Isn't the DOD one of the BIG pillars of US spending? Don't GE get fucking defense contracts? IF GE does not pay US taxes, why do the benefit from the US military?
What does not make sense here. My CUSSING or the spending? If your a Democrat, it is the CUSSING that hurts your ears.
Case in point. The US takes the moral high ground by not ARMING LIBYAN Rebels. At the same time will allow the Rebel be armed by Qatar (or secretly by the CIA, like that has never happened before)! The argument for US interests in Libya was the wider argument of the Arab Spring. Then the US ignores the greater scope of arming Libyan rebels and what the arms will mean to the region as a whole. Fucking Algeria is full of AQIM damn it.
All the time, the US tax payer is on the hook for Libyan government after regime change happens ! Afghanistan and Iraq too. I am getting tired of the Washington double speak.
You want me to worry about a girl learning to read in Libya or Afghanistan....
.........while the one in the US is hooking to get her next drug purchase !
SCREW YOU.
The lives of innocent female
The lives of innocent female civilians are worth EXACTLY THE SAME as the lives of innocent male civilians.
WOMEN ARE NOT WORTH MORE THAN MEN, PERIOD.
Bill C we would seem to be
Bill C
There is a certain amount of
There is a certain amount of tension in our efforts to respect Afghans' religion and culture except for the way they treat their wives and daughters and the way the educate their children.
Now, it seems to me that the religion and culture are major reasons the country has been such mess for the last half century, and I'm with Parker that far. There are plenty of Afghans who chafed under the old Taliban government's backward attitudes toward women, and to the extent Americans and NATO forces press for more opportunities for women it probably helps us. It just doesn't help us everywhere in Afghanistan, or (especially) with the Pashtuns we're mostly fighting. That is what it is. Because progress is not perfection is no reason to sniff at it, or complain that we're not risking enough to make Afghanistan more like Falls Church.
Stupid block-quotes and HTML
Stupid block-quotes and HTML tags. I have enough chutzpah to repost my comment sans the aforementioned HTML tags.
Bill C
"we would seem to be engaged in these post-Cold War conflicts for the specific purpose of modernizing and integrating these outlier states and societies"
I'd clarify and restate as thus: we entered into Afghanistan because of 9/11. We entered Iraq because of a shared worldview among Bush and/or his advisors that it constituted some form of threat (e.g., WMDs), problem (e.g., NFZ) and opportunity (e.g., democratization in the Middle East).
When mission creep and a vague endstate or an impossible goal in Afghanistan created an insurgency in which Americans and their allies found themselves fighting, goals and aims - and/or the articulation of American COIN thinking - changed. When lack of or poor planning and resources and people following the invasion of Iraq created an insurgency in which Americans found themselves fighting, goals and aims - and/or the articulation of American COIN thinking - changed.
In the former case, the idea of rooting out Al Queda arguably changed into defeating the Taliban through modernization of the state, and a minimalist objective of "an acceptable level of violence," became adopted; in the latter case, the goal and aim of an acceptable level of violence was also accepted, although there aspiration levels - e.g., a democratic Iraq and a modern Iraq - always remained higher.
Regards
ADTS
"we do believe that a society
"we do believe that a society in which women enjoy something approaching equal opportunities is a more stable and successful society."
Speak for yourself, sonny!
>The question is, How much
>The question is, How much are the rights of women worth to you? Are you willing to accept added cost in terms of blood and treasure?
To me? I don't really care about the rights of anybody outside the US-not my lane, man. I mean, in a vague humanitarian way, I hope they all do okay, but like Thomas Carlyle pointed out, the biggest humanitarian in England will read about an earthquake in China killing hundreds of thousands, act all concerned, then go to bed and sleep peacefully. But if you were to tell him that the next morning, a joint of his pinky finger would be chopped off, he wouldn't sleep a wink. So this hypocritical assertion that our actions as a nation should be guided by a concern for human rights in other countries is just so much manipulative horseshit, at best aimed at making its spouter look better than his fellow upper-class humanitarians, at worst aimed at manipulating a whole country to go to war, which the spouter will profit off, directly or indirectly. I support an honesty-based foreign policy, not this kind of corruption. In an honesty-based foreign policy, the presumable rights of Afghan women would not get violated by American JDAMs-at least, at no quantifiable benefit to the majority of Americans.
But then again, I've got some skin in the game. Kathleen Parker isn't going to get sent overseas to defend women's rights in Afghanistan, and presumably neither will anybody in her social circle. So if the bill, titanic as it may be, is sure to be paid by somebody else, why not profit a bit, even it's only a little? If you can gain a little cachet, a little bit of self-importance, the perception that "Kathleen Parker stands up for women's rights" at no cost to yourself, what's the disincentive? I mean, aside from any antiquated lip service ideals like honor, integrity, morality and the possibility of answering to a higher power for the outcomes of your words and actions.
I have the intuitive perception that this is mostly how our foreign policy is made. Burnham's essay on Dante's De Monarchia suggests that this phenomenon is not new.
ADTS: >I'd clarify and
ADTS:
>I'd clarify and restate as thus: we entered into Afghanistan because of 9/11. We entered Iraq because of a shared worldview among Bush and/or his advisors that it constituted some form of threat (e.g., WMDs), problem (e.g., NFZ) and opportunity (e.g., democratization in the Middle East).
It seems that you're attempting to sit on two chairs with one ass. Why did 9/11 happen? Is it because of our meddling in ME affairs? Then the answer is to be isolationists (after carpet bombing Afghanistan poor encouraging the otters.) Is it because the ME is backwards, tribal, violent and undeveloped? Then just occupying Afghanistan isn't enough-we need to create a sea change, and even Iraq is just the start of it. Any solution lying between the two is unstable and will drift one way or the other.
Does Parker really think the
Does Parker really think the empowerment of women should be the core of our strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere? Should the rights of women trump the security interests that led us to war in the first place? Is she willing to go to war, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, over gender equality?
I think it's very possible to say the answer to the first question is yet, and the answer to the second question is that it's misstated. Where women have no rights, there will be security problems for the United States. It's much less clear, of course, that war is the solution, but I think there's lots to be said for the notion that people who treat women like shit are generally the most hostile to the US.
B: First, thanks for the
B:
First, thanks for the expression "two chairs, one ass." I've never heard it before, but will use it subsequently when occasion permits.
Second, I see your argument although I think you could expand upon - basically, you're putting forth that it's impossible to have a problem-free Middle East policy that isn't either completely isolationist or completely interventionist.
I suppose, upon reflection, this argument may have some merit. I am open to the suggestion that US intervention in the region, be it Israel or Saudi Arabia, caused 9/11, although I disagree with it. And I am open to the policy prescriptions that only by staying out of the region, or changing it entirely, can the US achieve its foreign policy goals (to reiterate the sentence which comprises the second paragraph of this post).
But while I am open to those prescriptions, I see little that precludes incrementalism or something between the two vastly distant poles that you put forth. What if the US were to do everything *except* give aid to Israel and withdraw support for its government and policies? I don't advocate doing so, but I think one could make the case that this would improve the US's position in the region. Other ready-made policy prescriptions of such a nature come to mind less easily, but what if, say, the US had enforced the NFZ over Iraq only from carriers in the Gulf and bases in Turkey? Similarly, with respect to Libya, I fail to see a domino effect occurring, or even much of a quagmire emerging, from planes overhead and CIA boots on the ground below. Finally, the Egyptian regime change may have occurred less violently (far less violently) than would otherwise have been the case due to IMET and US military ties to the Egyptian military.
More basically, your prescription would seem to be less than feasible, and less than realistic. I hate to bring out the notion that US MENA policy is about oil, because the reality is far more complex. That said, the fact of the matter is, oil is an important commodity, and MENA provides a considerable amount of it. And a capitalist superpower, while perhaps amenable to a policy of retrenchment (see Parent and MacDonald in the new issue of International Security - full disclosure, I have not sat down and read the whole article), would seem an unlikely candidate to write off a whole swath of the earth off the map. (Even Africa now rates a four-star general and regional command, with perhaps equal if not greater suffering than would have occurred in Libya, but, alas, perhaps less strategic import.) At the same time, modernization is not an official policy promulgated by any major bureaucracy per se, unlike, perhaps, the analogues to the State Department of yesteryear. If modernization does occur, and occurs via the spread of capitalism, then its causes are through non-state actors (MNCs and the like) operating in a relatively destabilized fashion. Foreign policy need not be executed by the Departments of State and Defense.
In sum, I am amenable to the idea that one can either avoid a region entirely, or change it entirely, that any course of action other than those two are bound to lead to blowback and undesirable, and perhaps unintended, consequences. Yet while I see the logic of your argument (I think) and find it relatively compelling, I find such a foreign policy or foreign policies unrealistic, and perhaps unnecessary and infeasible as well.
ADTS
"Where women have no rights,
"Where women have no rights, there will be security problems for the United States."
Huh? There is a correlation / causation problem in this statement. Iran / Somalia / Sudan are not a security problem for the United States (to the extent that they are such) because women's rights are not respected in those places. They are security problems for other reasons, and the lack of women's rights is an additional, unconnected issue.
Ya know, some might even say that it is GOOD if our enemies treat their women badly. That takes half the enemy population off the table as a contributor to our problems. How many Iranian women couldn't become brilliant nuclear scientists because they were kept barefoot and pregnant?
The actual question is "How
The actual question is "How much is a society which tends to empower and nurture little girls instead of extremism and insurgents worth?" Your title, and your hypothetical, are ad absurdum - The kind of extremist rule of law that would completely ban education for females is not one in which terrorism would cease to exist. Also, just for the heck of it, see what kind of reaction you yourself have when you imagine a life where you would be banned from an education of any kind. For me the, reaction is quite a visceral one. (I am a woman.) Is it not for you? Education is I right I am willing to literally bleed for, though, no, full-scale military intervention is not the best way to promote that.
Furthermore, I think one can argue that promoting the education of women is in the interests of national security. I'd like to see some empirical research done on gender equality as an indicator of national stability, but I am willing to bet that in societies which extremely oppress women, there is a prevalence of other forms of extremism as well.
I do not consider it the duty of the United States to spread our perceptions of gender equality across the globe, however, when you make the point that there is no one in the Obama administration who is vocally opposed to women's empowerment, that there is no anti-feminist lobby, YOU miss a point - the narrative of social constructions from the beginning of history has been to oppress women. They are oppressed by default, and thus a failure to PROMOTE women's rights is part of this default. Yes, by participating in every day society, we are part of this. I am a woman, and I will admit to that.
When you ask what Afghan women want, you are asking the right question. Yes, it matters. I am familiar enough with feminist rhetoric and with Islamic conservatism to understand that they certainly would not ascribe to some of the brands of feminism we have here, however, I think we can safely assume that they neither want to be stoned nor have acid thrown in their faces when and if they are accused of adultery. Being advocates for the eradication of these and other atrocities does not make us silly cultural imperialists, unless someone proves that Afghan women are, in fact, masochists.
But, you're right - guns aren't the way to fix this. I know I am being idealistic here, but change in the realm of social norms doesn't come from as much from weapons as it does from ideas and education. Perhaps, if, as you mention, our cultural knowledge wasn't so lacking after occupying for ten freaking years we'd have a better chance of effecting a change.
The actual question is "How
The actual question is "How much is a society which tends to empower and nurture little girls instead of extremism and insurgents worth?" Your title, and your hypothetical, are ad absurdum - The kind of extremist rule of law that would completely ban education for females is not one in which terrorism would cease to exist. Also, just for the heck of it, see what kind of reaction you yourself have when you imagine a life where you would be banned from an education of any kind. For me the, reaction is quite a visceral one. (I am a woman.) Is it not for you? Education is I right I am willing to literally bleed for, though, no, full-scale military intervention is not the best way to promote that.
Furthermore, I think one can argue that promoting the education of women is in the interests of national security. I'd like to see some empirical research done on gender equality as an indicator of national stability, but I am willing to bet that in societies which extremely oppress women, there is a prevalence of other forms of extremism as well.
I do not consider it the duty of the United States to spread our perceptions of gender equality across the globe, however, when you make the point that there is no one in the Obama administration who is vocally opposed to women's empowerment, that there is no anti-feminist lobby, YOU miss a point - the narrative of social constructions from the beginning of history has been to oppress women. They are oppressed by default, and thus a failure to PROMOTE women's rights is part of this default. Yes, by participating in every day society, we are part of this. I am a woman, and I will admit to that.
When you ask what Afghan women want, you are asking the right question. Yes, it matters. I am familiar enough with feminist rhetoric and with Islamic conservatism to understand that they certainly would not ascribe to some of the brands of feminism we have here, however, I think we can safely assume that they neither want to be stoned nor have acid thrown in their faces when and if they are accused of adultery. Being advocates for the eradication of these and other atrocities does not make us silly cultural imperialists, unless someone proves that Afghan women are, in fact, masochists.
But, you're right - guns aren't the way to fix this. I know I am being idealistic here, but change in the realm of social norms doesn't come from as much from weapons as it does from ideas and education. Perhaps, if, as you mention, our cultural knowledge wasn't so lacking after occupying for ten freaking years we'd have a better chance of effecting a change.
Let the reporters, pundits
Let the reporters, pundits and intellectuals who started or inflamed this shit form Lincoln Brigades and Zouave Regiments.
In fact since Google and Twitter seem to have had quite the hand in it they can front the money for it. Or call Soros, he's a great pal of the Left and the "Open Society" movement that holds the Nation State in general to be obsolete and America in particular to be the chief threat to World Peace.
And let the three sisters lead them, and bring Ms. Parker along.
And I'm quite brutally right that the men have to "go" to liberate the women.
And no, this is not our job.
Mr. Exum, I generally agree
Mr. Exum, I generally agree with you, but it seems here that you're forgetting a return to rule by the Taliban or a Taliban-like entity would not only lead to uneducated women, but a government where women are beaten and stoned to death, as well as subjected to marital rape and forced marriage at a very young age. You ask if that's worth the cost in blood and treasure, but that, too, is blood, and no less real because it doesn't happen on the battlefield. Should the US continue fighting for that? I think it comes down to whether the US should fight for the human rights and lives of others. People can disagree on that, obviously, but it's not a trivial question.
Huh? There is a correlation /
Huh? There is a correlation / causation problem in this statement. Iran / Somalia / Sudan are not a security problem for the United States (to the extent that they are such) because women's rights are not respected in those places. They are security problems for other reasons, and the lack of women's rights is an additional, unconnected issue.
Except they are not unconnected at all. The basic ideas that motivate segments of these societies to create security problems for the US are the same ideas that motivate them to enslave, beat, abuse and treat their women as property.
We might walk back the problem without resorting to combat, but the security problem and the equality problem are part and parcel of the same thing. From the misogynistic perspective of, say, a hard line Iranian mullah, our visible equality is a security problem for their vision of a proper society, whether we choose to ignore them or not.
Ya know, some might even say that it is GOOD if our enemies treat their women badly. That takes half the enemy population off the table as a contributor to our problems. How many Iranian women couldn't become brilliant nuclear scientists because they were kept barefoot and pregnant?
Indeed, it is good that our enemies are stupid, but it would be much better if they ceased being our enemies. But for that to happen, they'll have to cease seeing us as a threat, and to do that, they'll have to cease keeping their women barefoot and pregnant.
Yeah...I'm sure 'infidels',
Yeah...I'm sure 'infidels', lecturing the various tribes in Afghanistan about how to treat their women (not "their" as in ownership...rather "their" as in kinship) goes over big. In fact, I'm sure all around the world, what men really like is to have foreign soldiers come into their territory, sorta act like they are semi running things, and either 'advise' them on how to treat women, or defend those foreigners doing the advising.
I'm sure that would go over big here as well.
"We might walk back the
"We might walk back the problem without resorting to combat"
We might invent cold fusion tomorrow by accident in a High School Lab, but I doubt it.
Please see above - we have to kill all males ages 8-80. Feminists have to come- you shoot the first lot in every village. Then hand us the gun because we know we can't trust Liberals when it gets ugly, or if ugly pics show up on TV.
Here's a COIN practitioner from that part of the world who actually accomplished his mission. In that region.
General Sir Charles Napier.
""You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
" The best way to quiet a country is a good thrashing, followed by great kindness afterwards. Even the wildest chaps are thus tamed."
""the human mind is never better disposed to gratitude and attachment than when softened by fear."
An implementation of this theory would be after the Battle of Miani, where most of the Mirs surrendered. One leader held back and was told by Napier:
"Come here instantly. Come here at once and make your submission, or I will in a week tear you from the midst of your village and hang you."
And keep in mind...
""so perverse is mankind that every nationality prefers to be misgoverned by its own people than to be well ruled by another"
The United States, since the
The United States, since the Cold War, has frequently seen the world in terms of a battle, a race, a conflict between the "forces of integration and disintegration."
President William Clinton, in April 1999 re: Kosovo said: "We are engaged in a great battle between the forces of integration and disintegration, of globalism versus tribalism; of oppression against empowerment." Over a decade later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used basically the same terms to frame our contemporary view of the world. Herein, in May 2010 when discussing the new National Security Strategy, she stated that "we are in a race between the forces of integration and disintegration and we see this every day."
This "integration and disintegration" talk resembles the ideas and language of American Civil War, as it seems to suggest that expending blood and treasure in the pursuit of "integration" and to preclude "disintegration" is a reasonable, honorable, intelligent and strategically correct idea.
Shedding blood and expending treasure for the specific and related purposes of achieving emancipation, sufferage, modernization and incorporation of outlier states and societies -- and their oppressed citizens -- would seem to be consistent with this line of thinking; which seems to transcend and dominate the post-Cold War foreign policy and strategic thinking.
Last I heard it didn't take a
Last I heard it didn't take a war for Greg Mortenson to build his schools.
Somewhere between Greg (good ideas) and the WNBA (bad idea) there's an answer.
>basically, you're putting
>basically, you're putting forth that it's impossible to have a problem-free Middle East policy that isn't either completely isolationist or completely interventionist.
Not just an ME policy. A FOREIGN policy. Go hard or go home, man.
>I am open to the suggestion that US intervention in the region, be it Israel or Saudi Arabia, caused 9/11, although I disagree with it.
It's not my suggestion-it's a belief that is nominally shared by OBL and most of the world. Of course, it's what Burnham would call the "formal argument" of the people who hate us. The real argument is "they're weak-GET THEM." So, my personal belief is that the US caused 9/11 by being rich pussies. If it was obvious to anybody with eyes that messing with us would immediately result in your land being turned into a barren wasteland, nobody would do so. Instead, messing with us gets you foreign aid, friendly NPR coverage, etc. I remember listening to Nina Totenberg sympathetically interviewing two dudes from the Gulf named Badr and Abdallah who had been captured in Afghanistan in 2002 and then stayed in hotel Gitmo for a couple of years until being released. Our foreign policy is the equivalent of a yuppie father encouraging his SWPL poli-sci major daughter to go live in Bushwick. The fuck do you expect is gonna happen?
>What if the US were to do everything *except* give aid to Israel and withdraw support for its government and policies?
We'd look even weaker by throwing our ally (sort of) under the bus to appease baboons. The equivalent of the poli-sci major chick walking around the ghetto in booty shorts.
>I don't advocate doing so, but I think one could make the case that this would improve the US's position in the region.
One could make the case for any crazy thing, but when it counteracts both logic and intuition, well...addressing a formal argument and hoping it's going to change an enemy's motivations is about like the poli-sci major telling the dudes about to gang-rape her that she voted for Obama.
>Other ready-made policy prescriptions of such a nature come to mind less easily, but what if, say, the US had enforced the NFZ over Iraq only from carriers in the Gulf and bases in Turkey?
Or, like, what if we dropped ten MREs and a few twenty dollar bills for every JDAM?
>Similarly, with respect to Libya, I fail to see a domino effect occurring, or even much of a quagmire emerging, from planes overhead and CIA boots on the ground below.
Yeah? Let's see what happens when our awesome new friends have been in power for a decade.
>Finally, the Egyptian regime change may have occurred less violently (far less violently) than would otherwise have been the case due to IMET and US military ties to the Egyptian military.
Of course, it's been a couple of months. Our Egyptian military friends have restricted themselves to conducting virginity checks in Tahrir square so far, instead of acting like our Pakistani military friends in Bangladesh, or our Indian friends making big chunks of India Muslimfrei. Ah, it makes one long for the days of naked colonialism and repression, when human rights were a great big joke, Jews and Greeks could live in peace in Egypt, Hindus and Sikhs in modern-day Pakistan, and so forth.
>That said, the fact of the matter is, oil is an important commodity, and MENA provides a considerable amount of it.
MENA is full of people. People like money and, if they have to possess something which they can get money for, usually will trade it. I mean, you don't think that if we pull all troops out of the ME and kick all their students, diplomats etc. out of our country, the Saudis, Libyans etc. will stop selling oil and start chugging it to spite us, or something, do you?
>Even Africa now rates a four-star general and regional command, with perhaps equal if not greater suffering than would have occurred in Libya, but, alas, perhaps less strategic import.
I had no idea that the purpose of four star generals was to alleviate suffering. My interactions with their policies to date would, if anything, suggest the opposite.
>Foreign policy need not be executed by the Departments of State and Defense.
In that case, what makes it foreign policy, or, to be more specific, OUR foreign policy? If McDonalds wants to open a franchise in Benghazi-let it do its own negotiating, security, etc. If Chevron wants to pump oil out of Benghazi-same thing. Why should our government be involved, other than to create rice bowls for more bureaucrats?
>Yet while I see the logic of your argument (I think) and find it relatively compelling, I find such a foreign policy or foreign policies unrealistic, and perhaps unnecessary and infeasible as well.
It's completely unrealistic and unfeasible, given the nature of our government, which is nominally democratic, actually bureaucratic and unaccountable to anything but itself, and growing larger and more divorced from reality daily. However, this is not a stable or sustainable situation, and in the aftermath of the inevitable collapse and rebuilding, we should adopt a foreign policy which is both reality-based and profitable, and doesn't produce externalities such as 9/11, or, for that matter, thousands of American troops sacrificed to ensure that Iraqis can swap one corrupt and evil government for another.
Thus the question: If the
Thus the question:
If the modernization and incorporation of the American South -- and the freeing and emancipating of the slaves -- was considered a cause worthy of expending significant amounts of blood and treasure -- and worthy of essentially "betting the farm" on achieving the desired result,
Then likewise today, is a somewhat similar effort re: the modernization, integration, and incorporation of the "Global South" -- and the freeing and emancipation of various oppressed population groups -- is this also and similarly a cause worthy of expending some amount of blood and treasure -- and, likewise, worthy of some significant degree of risk and effort to achieve?
Interesting take on the Mazar
Interesting take on the Mazar Massacre in Asia Times by a career Indian Diplomat. It may have had little or nothing to do with the Bible burning or the Taliban, and more with a message to DC not to release a Talib butcher who slaughtered thousands there when they took it in 98.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MD05Df03.html
The American Civil War as
The American Civil War as precedent for intervening in Libya's Civil War:
*The American Civil War was fought between Americans. This is not our quarrel. Or at least it wasn't until we started killing Libyans. The ones who will probably win.
* It was more about preserving the Union then emancipating the Slaves, which Lincoln changed his mind about years
into the War. Lincoln couldn't have gotten the North to launch a crusade just to stop slavery.
* We declared war not over slavery but the firing on Ft Sumter. And the battle cry was to preserve the Union.
* At no time do I recall a war aim being modernizing the South, which didn't really start to happen until the New Deal and WW2, and didn't take off until the 70's. The 1970's.
* We had a great national interest in preserving the Union. We don't have any interests in Libya, other than the interests of the breathless bubble-heads in the media and busybody Leftists.
* Europe is there for it's commercial interests, which also include Norway if your watching Fnord.
*"Then likewise today, is a somewhat similar effort re: the modernization, integration, and incorporation of the "Global South" --- OK, please see my notes from General Sir Napier above. Or my remarks about killing every male 8-80 if you want to free the oppressed women. Hell Bill lets just open with nukes, and not waste our own precious blood fighting house to house, room to room. Which is what it takes.
And let me answer Exum's
And let me answer Exum's question, that he poses to Ms Parker:
If the little girl is not American, not one drop of our blood, not one cent, indeed not even a word.
Now this is an amazing
Now this is an amazing American. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Mortenson
Why isn't this guy working as Director for USAID?
As for the education of boys and girls, they should be treated equally. Women of course, should receive extra attention and better protected in countries, where they have less rights or haven't been treated fairly historically. That's common sense.
As for our own problems... I'm afraid the Industrial Complex and corrupt corporations will be our downfall. Corruption, privacy abuses and abuse of authority will continue to increase over the next decade. Some of those abuses are not so well hidden, there are loop-holes for people to benefit and or abuses by people in positions of investigating waste, fraud and abuse.
@ Visitor on April 4, 2011 - 10:50am
N. P. 's husband is heavily invested and a board member for a construction corporation / firm that builds all the Indirect-Fire Protective Structures and Shelters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why do you think she takes all those trips to FOB's, Bases and Camps throughout both countries? Is she checking on the troops, ensuring US taxpayer money is being spent properly and ensuring everyone has the equipment and protective equipment they need? I'm positive she's doing her job.
But does that mean her #2 might also get some friendly business information during breakfast? When you get back from a business trip, don't you talk about the locations you've traveled and things you've seen? Nothing sensitive of course....,but really................................... think about it.
The practical answer is about
The practical answer is about $10 per day per classroom for primary 3Rs as long as USAID people aren't involved and of course with no military involvement. Just a bit of help with texts books and materials is all most villages need.
I've never dealt with Taliban objections to education. One day they did show up at a girls school I was involved with, checked the curriculum and left. They have to walk a fine line. Too much interference in the wishes of the locals could be fatal. They need to stay on side if they want cash, recruits, food and lodging and not to be dimed out.
Mullah Omar's latest directive that students and schools should not be messed with is very smart and goes along way to removing the major remaining objections to the Taliban in rural areas. It's time for NATO to leave and let our conservative Afghans work out a solution with the very conservative Afghans. Something along the lines of "the villages will be left alone by the central government and all foreign soldiers and mujaheddin must leave and stay out" would seem to meet both (all three?) sides requirements.
Somebody has stopped to ask
Somebody has stopped to ask the Afghan women what they want; ACSOR did a survey for ABC/BBC/ARD/WaPo that came out back in December. They used same gender/same ethnicity pollers to conduct in-person interviews and their regional distribution looks sound, so this is about a good a look as any at public opinion in Afghanistan these days.
You may not have seen Anne-Marie Slaughter's piece about foreign policy interests vs. values on the New York Review of Books blog (I certainly don't assume NYRB is one of your daily reads). It's nominally about the intervention in Libya, but I find this part in particular applicable to your discussion here:
"I dwell on Obama’s parsing of values and interests because both the terms and the way that they are typically used in foreign policy debates are heavily freighted with assumptions and associations that typically skew the outcome of those debates. In the first place, any effort to argue for intervention in circumstances where the protection of lives and rights are involved almost immediately gets framed as values versus interests, no matter how hard the advocate of intervention insists that it is interests versus interests. It’s a very smart debating move, because that framing carries all of the following baggage:
Interests / Values
Strategic / Moral
Vital / Optional
Realist / Idealist
Cool / Passionate
Hard-headed / Warm-hearted
Calculation / Emotion
Narrow / Broad"
The whole piece is worth reading; you can find it here .
The "American civil war" as a
The "American civil war" as a model for Libya.
Now that's an interesting one.
A war that killed about a million Americans, and much of the federal political system, to destroy (belatedly described, as Elf points out) an institution that everywhere else in the Western world was made obsolescent through sheer economics. And yet left the South mostly the same as it was before the war - in spite of decades of failed social engineering via military occupation.
I have no doubt that the hawkish part of NATO's leadership wants to believe their actions to be grandiose and progressive - but they're much too clueless and generally incompetent for that to be the case. Exceptions made, of course, for political jackals like Sarkozy and Erdogan (operating at different ends of the pole, interestingly enough), and Obama himself to a lesser extent. (Rice, Clinton, and Powers, appear to be true, if deluded, believers.)
That's right, gender equality
That's right, gender equality came to be the high ideal so universally respected among us all only after armed invasion and forced occupation by a more powerful, more advanced, more enlightened country. How could I have forgotten?
Global war is the best way to be assure that little girls everywhere can go to school.
And the cost benefits! Totally good.
Andrew, While I also like
Andrew,
While I also like your commentary, generally, I do have to take issue with the low priority which you give women's empowerment in Afghanistan. The empowerment of women, especially young girls, is not only possible (http://www.skateistan.org), but critical to Afghanistan's long term stability. Afghan women will not have the same economic and social freedoms of Western women overnight, nor is that the goal, but expanding their access to healthcare, educating women, and giving them a political voice is key to realizing the fruits our labor.
I strongly believe that security comes first, but if security doesn't lead to real changes in the quality of life for people, then we are lost. Empowering women, especially in the urban areas, will increase education rates, reduce drug abuse, and help rebuild Afghan social structures that will be a buffer against the insurgency. The best way to ensure that the next generation of kids don't grow up to pick up guns, is to give their families the ability to give them an education and some form of a stable family home.
I also can't help but shake my head at the dismissal of "small pet projects." The reason they're not worth State Department's time is because very few Foreign Service officers have the desire to fund projects which do not have multi-million dollar expenditures (which look great on brochures), or the capability to complete the task of overseeing the development of small projects to sustainable institutions- since few stay for more than a year's time. The work in Afghanistan will not be done overnight, or in one year, it will take ten. While I wholeheartedly believe that our mission- a stable, democratic and economically prosperous Afghanistan which is not a hot spot for Islamic militants to train, thrive, threaten the region and our own soil- is possible. But I also know that the American public does not have the political will, or pocketbook, to see this mission through. We're too obsessed with the Jersey Shore. That's the real shame.
....instead of acting like
....instead of acting like our Pakistani military friends in Bangladesh, or our Indian friends making big chunks of India Muslimfrei. - "B"
@ ELF:
Can you explain this sort of parallelism to me? Oddly enough, B has done what he or she is decrying: creating a politically correct analogy that doesn't work for American security interests.
I see this everywhere: right, left, up, down, all over the place on American security and milblogs. The South Asia "experts" are particularly bad.
I am not saying we shouldn't criticize communalism and bigotry, but the Indians are against the Taliban and Al Q and Pakistan supports jihadi terror outfits.
So, for American interests, the parallel B is making is dangerous. It is the parallel that is getting Americans killed in Afghanistan today.
What if, after 9-11, we ignored the Durand line and caught OBL? What if we took the Indians up on their offer of using Indian bases? What if we didn't pump in billions of dollars of aid into Pakistan after 2001 and so give the Pak Army/ISI the green light to continue supporting jihadi outfits.
What if, what if, what if....
Can you explain B's bizarre point in terms of American security? We have lost the ability to see clearly as a society.
Intentions versus results is
Intentions versus results is something people don't seem to understand.
Just because you intend an outcome, it doesn't mean that your programs are resulting in that outcome.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Besides, if we dealth properly with the sanctuaries across the border, the sort of small aid projects that are viable long term and will help women will work.
We really have put ourselves into a fix in "afpak" haven't we?
Asheesh Bhalla Sir or Madame
Asheesh Bhalla
Sir or Madame - Is war the only way to achieve the very laudable goals you discuss? Is there no other way? Is the presence in Afghanistan of armed NATO troops a pre-condition, without which women's empowerment will not occur in Afghanistan?
I find it difficult to believe that women are not empowered by the traditional forms of government within these regions, while not doubting that the forms by which power is wielded may be different from the customs with which I am familiar.
Of all the possible ways for custom to change, killing the people has got to be the worst.
Kill little girls so they can
Kill little girls so they can go to school? Or stop killing little girls and just leave them the f*ck alone. Don't build a pipeline through the country if people don't want it built. If the real issue is paying a fair price for extraction and use of resources, pay that price.
End the crony capitalism that binds US and Central Asian interests into an unproductive snarl.
Novel idea: just stop using other countries for proxy wars.
Stop the wars.
Never forget that everything
Never forget that everything OBL did in Afghanistan was legal.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the Taliban to women, but the silence over that by good people.
"True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to an evil power...it is rather a courageous confrontation with evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart."
RIP- MLK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHcP4MWABGY&feature=related
Except they are not
Except they are not unconnected at all. The basic ideas that motivate segments of these societies to create security problems for the US are the same ideas that motivate them to enslave, beat, abuse and treat their women as property.
We might walk back the problem without resorting to combat, but the security problem and the equality problem are part and parcel of the same thing. From the misogynistic perspective of, say, a hard line Iranian mullah, our visible equality is a security problem for their vision of a proper society, whether we choose to ignore them or not.
ABSOLUTE RUBBISH! Examples of the following have all existed or currently exist:
1. Muslim societies that mistreat their women and represent no threat to us at all.
2. Muslim societies that treat their women well (by Muslim standards) and DO represent a threat to us
3. Non-Muslim societies that mistreat their women and represent no threat to us
4. Non-Muslim societies that treat their women well and do represent a threat to us
In short, mistreating women and threatening the USA are TOTALLY UNCONNECTED.
Your second paragraph is exactly backwards. It is the "visible inequality" of Iran that is a problem for us - an affront to our "vision of a proper society" - not our glorious liberated existence that is a problem for them. If we left them alone and quit hectoring them and meddling in their business, then our so-called "security problem" with women's rights in Iran would go away. Our "visible equality" is only a problem for them because we keep trying to shove it down their throats. If we minded our own business, no such problem would exist.
"If the modernization and
"If the modernization and incorporation of the American South -- and the freeing and emancipating of the slaves -- was considered a cause worthy of expending significant amounts of blood and treasure -- and worthy of essentially "betting the farm" on achieving the desired result, "
This was not what Union soldiers thought they were fighting for at the time. They thought they were fighting to preserve the Union, period.
Freeing the slaves was not worth the blood and treasure expended on it. The institution was going to die anyway.
Madhu- Can you just sack up
Madhu-
Can you just sack up and ask me for clarification if something I say confuses you? I mean, it's not like I'm married to Elf and he knows what I'm thinking before I do.
>Can you explain this sort of parallelism to me? Oddly enough, B has done what he or she is decrying: creating a politically correct analogy that doesn't work for American security interests.
Dude, I once got a perfect score on the SAT verbal. Granted, that was a decade's worth of heavy drinking and non-recreational chemical exposure ago, but I'm still gonna go ahead and say that the first sentence doesn't parse, and the second seems like an unfounded assertion that begs a lot of questions. My idea is that our foreign policy should be driven exclusively by the immediate national interest and not by a bunch of specious bullshit about magical human rights that we all possess, the greatest to the smallest, and which we should at all costs defend. When we base our foreign policy on the latter, we come up with things like this: http://partitionof1947.blogspot.com/
Why were these Sikhs and Hindus getting raped, clubbed, hacked and burned to death en masse (Muslims unfortunate enough to live in India and Bangladesh got it in the neck too)? Why, it was because the British Empire stopped basing its foreign policy on things like profit or at least the White Man's Burden, and started basing it on ideals like equality, the right to national self-determination, and similar magical thinking. This shit always happens when we start basing our actions on the way things OUGHT to be, instead of the way they are. On the other hand, the surviving Indians and Pakis got to enjoy their rights of self-determination etc. in prosperous democracies with rule of law, and India and Pakistan are much better allies for the US to have than the old British Empire. So there's an upside, right? Oh, wait. Shit.
So, assuming you've been able to follow my bizarre ramblings, can you tell me why women's rights are a better ideal to base American foreign policy on than self-determination, equality before the law and all the other things that resulted in those Sikhs having to cut their own wives' throats and fight to the death? Why do you think basing our foreign policy on this ideal will work out better for us or the Afghans?
>Intentions versus results is
>Intentions versus results is something people don't seem to understand.
>Just because you intend an outcome, it doesn't mean that your programs are resulting in that outcome.
Hells yeah, son! Just because you try to clear up your kid's skin condition by taking a belt sander to his face, it don't mean it's gonna work! Still, you'd think that after like the fiftieth belt sanding, you'd start reconsidering your dermatological strategy. I mean, that shit's starting to verge on criminality.
>If the modernization and incorporation of the American South -- and the freeing and emancipating of the slaves -- was considered a cause worthy of expending significant amounts of blood and treasure -- and worthy of essentially "betting the farm" on achieving the desired result,
I'm all about devastating half the country and killing a million Americans so black people can stop being slaves and enjoy leisurely lives of freedom and hedonistic pleasure in Cabrini Green and Marcy Projects. Definitely an awesome idea, which should serve as a template for our future ops.
>That's right, gender equality came to be the high ideal so universally respected among us all only after armed invasion and forced occupation by a more powerful, more advanced, more enlightened country.
Well, I guess the Union does count-I mean, if the South had won, I doubt female sufferage would have happened. And then we would have never enjoyed the leadership we've had since the 1920's.
Even though I can understand
Even though I can understand your line of thought, I do believe that basic Human Rights should be on the front row of any political solution for the conflict in Afghanistan: after all, no country can live in peace, if its citizens are oppressed and submitted to inhuman violence. Endorsing or not the war in Afghanistan, no country shall be an accomplice of serious violations of humanitarian law. Women's rights are not a currency that can be used by politicians as they wish.
I have been writing about the war in Afghanistan on my blog: http://afghancountdown.wordpress.com Feel free to visit it and leave your comments.
Cheers!
Marco Leitão Silva
Editor, Afghan Countdown
"It's time for NATO to leave
"It's time for NATO to leave and let our conservative Afghans work out a solution with the very conservative Afghans. Something along the lines of "the villages will be left alone by the central government and all foreign soldiers and mujaheddin must leave and stay out" would seem to meet both (all three?) sides requirements."
The last time we did that we lost the World Trade Center, and quite a lot of people since, all over the world.
We lost sight of our war aims almost immediately, just as soon as the Frat Boy who had to wage war but wanted to be liked anyway started dropping food along with bombs. (Bush II).
B has it right, Astan should have been a barren wasteland the next day. And other cities and regions as well. Riyadh.
We have a problem of a loss of cultural confidence and collective Left wing guilt even among those who are blameless.
And there's the simple fact that the Left reduces everything to a government run social welfare program/Civil Rights struggle. We are in Afghanistan because war was waged against us from there. We have met with less success in our attempt to turn the Afghans into Social Democrats in Astan than we have in our own American cities. I get the distinct feeling that our Military is morally paralyzed - as it was in Iraq 06/07 when I was there - due to political correctness and Command's fear of PC motivated prosecution. We can no longer win wars.
If you want to remake Astan in the image of modern Germany or Japan - we have to completely level it and above all utterly break their will to resist anything foisted on them. A nuke or few would be the most cost effective solution.
Mind you they'll never be men again - witness Germany or Japan today. And having observed the much more "evolved" beasties at close range in Iraq I stand by my comments concerning killing all males ages 8-80 if you want to liberate their women. The 3 sisters and Kathleen Parker will be given a quota of 3 each per village. They can get their hands bloody, that way they'll be less inclined to turnabout and prosecute the men they spurred on, and sit in judgment of their "wrongs".
This discussion is
This discussion is meaningless.
Everyone knows the US was fighting terrorist in Afghanistan.
Now people just want their tickets punched. Obama wants spending. The 1% fighting the war have something to do, better than sitting at home unemployed.
@ B: 1. Sorry about that. Elf
@ B:
1. Sorry about that. Elf and I are long time commenters around here and we've had a similar conversation before so that is why I asked him about your comment. You are correct to chastise me. I should have addressed you directly instead.
2. Not a dude.
3. Long time critic on this blog of pop-COIN. One of the main reasons is that I don't believe in social engineering, domestically or abroad, and international aid money is inherently corrupting.
4. The Pakistani Army/ISI has a long history of creating instability in order to bilk the West of cash and I was afraid that our aid money (Kerry Lugar Berman) would make things worse, not better. I been saying that for years around here and I think I've been vindicated on that score.
5. My family is from India. I don't need to read a blog post to teach me about the horrors of the partition. The male to female ratio is something like 10:7 in the part of India my family is from because of selective female abortion. It is a terrible thing. India has a long way to go in terms of governance and treatment of minorities. Gujurat would not happen in the States and complaints about poor treatment of minorities - today - in the US is exaggerated by some on the left.
6. Nonetheless, India and Pakistan are very different countries in 2011. India is a democracy (even if flawed) she, at least, is moving in the right direction. Pakistan is a state sponsor of terror and those jihadi groups target both India and the United States. The money we spend in Pakistan is used against our own troops in Afghanistan. This is an abomination.
7. Pure national self-interest suggests that Pakistan is not an ally in regard to the GWOT but that India is an ally because the same groups target her people, too.
I don't get your point? What are you saying? I think we should focus on the jihadi groups that are trying to kill Americans and not on social engineering programs that are not working currently and won't work with "PC pop-COIN."
A hard headed "America" first policy would not equate the two countries in terms of American interests. Indian assets can move around parts of that world better than CIA types who tend to stand out, if you get my drift....
So, in terms of saving American lives, I would ramp down our involvment in Afghanistan development, focus on FID, focus on squeezing Al Q and the alphabet soup of jihadi groups by going after them hard, and for that you need HUMINT and need to cultivate the correct assets.That was my point. I guess I don't understand your point?....
Okay, take care, B and Elf and others.
(I feel for the women in that part of the world but an unsustainable mission isn't going to help anybody.)
Sounds like an emerging
Sounds like an emerging consensus to me!
Here's a hypothetical: What
Interesting.
Here's another hypothetical: What if Mullah Omar, speaking for all the insurgents of Afghanistan, presented a peace deal tomorrow in which he offered to lay down all the arms of Afghanistan's insurgent groups and renounce al-Qaeda on one condition: that President Obama hand over former President Bush for trial on war crimes (with the corresponding Taliban-inspired punishment if found guilty). What should the president do? Should he accept the offer, allowing the war in Afghanistan to end? Or should he say, no, we will stay in Afghanistan and continue to lose American and allied lives and spend billions of dollars each year because we cannot accept the trial and punishment of one individual?
I'd be interested to hear your answer, Mr. Exum. And if it's not worth it, then I'd love to hear why you value the life of one individual much more than the lives of all those innocent women in Afghanistan.
"What if Mullah Omar,
"What if Mullah Omar, speaking for all the insurgents of Afghanistan, presented a peace deal tomorrow in which he offered to lay down all the arms of Afghanistan's insurgent groups and renounce al-Qaeda on one condition: that President Obama hand over former President Bush for trial on war crimes (with the corresponding Taliban-inspired punishment if found guilty). What should the president do?"
He should say forget it, because he is guilty of precisely the same "crimes" that Bush is guilty of, and he'd be next in the dock if such "crimes" were prosecuted. Thus he will not wish to establish such a precedent.
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