Wings Over Iraq

cjchivers:

QUOTE OF THE DAY

From Graham Bowley’s reminder of the fate of an empire’s ambitions for Afghanistan, in today’s NYT.

“The Soviets came in believing they could re-engineer other people’s societies, releasing Afghans from their medieval backwardness,” said Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow whose book “Afgantsy” is about the Soviet occupation. “They didn’t transform Afghan society any more than we are going to.”

Q: What do those who crafted United States’ expansive policies for Afghanistan say when they read quotes and articles like this?

A: A few years ago, they used to say, “We’re different,” and then list the many reasons why we’re different.

Q: While it is true that we are different in many ways, how does that make the underlying problems different?

A: We’ll leave the answers to you.

Follow Graham on Twitter. He’s in Afghanistan, and can be found at @Graham_Bowley. 

Graham’s article includes this sorrowful slide show by Andrea Bruce.

For more on the same theme, have a look here, at similar places and questions in rural Ghazni Province. The top photo, above, came from there. The bottom photo was of an abandoned Soviet swimming pool on a small hill in Marja, in Helmand Province, that had served as a Soviet Army military outpost in the 1980s. We came upon the pool almost exactly two years ago, when it was the U.S. Marines’ turn to clear and hold the same ground, 25-odd years on. We were there only a few minutes. It was a weird and haunting sight — cracked, emptied and left behind on the arid steppe, overlooking ground where the day before a Marine had been killed. I remember the banter as the grunts swept through. “What were those fucking guys thinking, setting up like that here?” 

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS

By the author. In rural Afghanistan. Top, 2011. Bottom, 2010. (Going through an old hard drive today to dig out that swimming pool pic I found an old cache of photos. If time allows I’ll put up more. But have writing due re Libya, and have to pack and get back out soon.)