Letters to the Editor

Seeking alternative policies against terrorism

Michael Frazer GS's Oct. 10 column "Empire Strikes Back" unfairly caricatures the premises and aims of the antiwar movement. We are fully aware of the atrocities committed by the Taliban government, and we have no desire whatsoever to see it, or any other form of brutal and reactionary despotism, triumph anywhere in the world. However, we are deeply skeptical of the capacity of U.S. military intervention to effect a meaningful change in the Afghan political structure.

The Northern Alliance — only the most recent in a long line of Afghanistan's anointed saviors — has a record of slaughter and repression almost as despicable as that of the Taliban, as the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (among many others) has frequently pointed out. The most likely outcome of the present war is not the establishment of a legitimately democratic government in Afghanistan but some combination of the following: a multiparty civil war among the Northern Alliance factions, a reactive upsurge in Islamist extremism leading to the destabilization of the Pakistani government or perhaps even a full-blown nuclear standoff on the subcontinent — all coming at a tremendous cost in human lives. As for scattershot food drops in a country with 10 percent of the world's landmines, Medecins Sans Frontieres — which presumably knows a thing or two about helping those in need — has censured the U.S. government, noting that "untargeted and unmonitored relief is generally ineffective and can be potentially harmful."

It does not require great moral insight to declare the Taliban and Osama bin Ladin evil; such gestures demonstrate only the ability to state the obvious. Unfortunately, real politics does not take place in an abstract, agonistic contest of good and evil; it occurs in a shifting field of possibilities and limitations, conditioned by the complex interrelations of history and power. Ethical and political judgement does not lie in the hollow invocation of "good" against "evil," but in the difficult task of deciding on the best of a very imperfect slate of options. We maintain that, under the present circumstances, unilateral military intervention is by no means the best available option. We are willing to listen to Mr. Frazer's arguments on this point — but he would rather decry our putative "anti-Americanism" than offer a concrete analysis of the issues. Beau Madison Mount GS