American troops in Afghanistan: A worthy expression of outrage that is overdone

It's hard to object to the harsh criticism of the US military in Afghanistan by Malalai Joya Kill Teams in Afghanistan: The Truth, but it is also hard to picture what can reasonably hoped for in Afghanistan, or any of the other countries of the Middle East / Central Asia, if there are no military mechanisms to stand behind social institutions. I agree with her outrage at the behavior of the Americans who intentionally but indifferently murdered several Afghans and then photographed themselves preening over the bodies. But Joya's blanket condemnation of American troops is excessive; indeed, she seems to feel there is no need for American troops to be there at all. My question is, without them, or at least some military support, how could an orderly, just society ever be developed?

She seems to think that public demonstrations will make it happen. There is a line in her statement in the Guardian that stuck out to me:

[W]e are seeing the growth, under very difficult conditions, of another resistance [movement] led by students, women and the ordinary poor people of Afghanistan. They are taking to the streets to protest against the massacre of civilians and to demand an end to the war. Demonstrations like this were recently held in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Farah.
This resistance is inspired by the movements in other countries like Egypt and Tunisia – we want to see "people power" in Afghanistan as well. And we need the support and solidarity of people in the Nato countries.

How is "people power" going to work without the help of a viable military institution? -- that is, the institutional support that the American/Nato forces are supposed to be providing.

If anyone whose situation demonstrates the need of a society for viable institutions of government -- military and police institutions that are subject to just rulership, and an an effective system of adjudication of disputes -- Joya herself is the ideal example, for she cannot live in Afghanistan under present conditions because the threats to her life. She directly, and correctly in my opinion, confronted the warlords of the country for their past crimes, and embarrassed them in a Loya Jirga. Good for her, we said. But they, at least someone, will not leave her alone if she dares to live to Afghanistan. She correctly identified the problem, at least one of the problems: Many of the power holders in the country, some of them in the current government, are former warlords with blood on their hands.

My question is how to encourage the establishment and maintenance of just institutions of governance in any society -- in our own as well as all the rest. I don't think it can happen merely by demonstrations in the streets, as much as I welcome them. Effective institutions of governance have to be developed -- indeed, as happy as we can be for the progress made in Egypt and Tunisia, and we hope elsewhere, we all know that much remains to be done if those countries are to have a just, open, free society. The demonstrations in Afghanistan mimicking those in Egypt and Tunisia are a good sign, but what is to be done with the warlords? with the Taliban? with the Pakistani ISI that has been supporting the Taliban? Everyone would love to have the Americans and Nato forces out of Afghanistan, but what would happen to the Afghanistan people?

Societies have to be structured -- that is, they must have mechanisms of social control and adjudication that are sufficiently effective for the society generally to be in support of it. And such institutional structures can only be established as all sides commit to establishing a working society.

And that entails having everyone with competing interests to seek mutual understanding and agreement, compromise through honesty and mutual respect.

It's the failure to represent others fairly that I have a problem with in Joya' critique. Yes, the behavior of American troops who killed several Afghans for sport and then bragged about it is outrageous, an offense to the Afghanistan military and the American people, and it should be punished. At the same time, though, Joya's blanket condemnation of the American presence in Afghanistan is overstated.

Moreover, she claims that that Afghanistan would be better of without the American/Nato troops. It is hard to envision Afghanistan at this time solving its problems without help in stabilizing the country and controlling the insurgency. In an ideal world none of it should be necessary: the warlords would be tried for criminal behavior, Pakistan and Iran and India would not meddle in Afghanistan affairs, and the Americans would keep their troops home. Tragically, no one lives in an ideal world.

How is the problem of power to be solved in Afghanistan? When mobs can overrun a UN compound and kill several expatriates and a half dozen Afghans because they are offended by another outrageous act [Quran burning by a daft and foolish minister in Florida]; when Malalai Joya herself cannot show herself in Afghanistan for fear of being murdered in the streets -- then there remains a fundamental problem of how to establish a functioning society. Mechanisms for the exercise and control of power have to exist in any society. Also, because human beings have differing opinions and perspectives they must practice the courtesies of social life: describing offenses accurately and fairly; also seeking ways of confronting each other with respect. Such conventions seem critical if progress is to be made in establishing institutions of governance that will ensure safe and effective social relations.

What the terminus of the American renditions program looks like

The American program in the rendition of international prisoners is and has always been a secret program. Reportedly the CIA has been sending prisoners off to other countries "for questioning." That is, what cannot be done to prisoners on American soil by American officials can be left to the devices of the police in other countries who have no similar legal restrictions. Egypt has for some time been one of those places to which prisoners were "renditioned." What took place there was a black hole.

The Egyptian protesters are now finding and exposing what at lest two of those locations for interrogating prisoners look like, in Cairo and Alexandria. An ABC report on what the Egyptians are finding in the chambers of the secret police are sobering -- and should embarrass the United States.

Barbara Miller of ABC reports what these Egyptian young people are finding.

"the documents they found contain evidence of phone-tapping, election-rigging and torture."

One person said of the Egyptian State security,

it "has never served to protect this state's security. It's real function was to protect the regime. The state security was never there to protect us. All they did was set their thugs on us and spy on us."

Another said,

"We want it dissolved and turned into an information gathering authority, nothing more. We don't need them to torture people and label them terrorists".

This is what they found in these torture chambers:

"We found torture tools. Basically in one of the rooms we found a number of electric shocks. It is not the usual electric shock that we used to see with some of these officers, ..." "This time it was a bit long, it was black. The electric rods at the end of it were a bit like the teeth of some animal or something. It was really outstanding and if you turn it on there is a blue type of a spark that starts working and former detainees showed us how it actually, how it was used on them.
"Another torture tool was basically a cube-like frame made of rods and sticks attached to it and there is an electricity charger attached to this structure with some electricity plugs.
"There are a number of ways that detainees used to be tortured using this device. The thing was so scary, some people started crying after seeing all this."
…
"We found also plans for rigging the elections, the parliamentary elections in 2010," he said.
"Exact plans telling how many votes will go to each candidate in every district in the country and how the state security and some state security agents working in the media are going to support certain candidates."

Miller says that some of the protesters were attacked by men with knives. Who could they be? Who was paying them? Or were these merely criminals? The situation is still fluid.

"It is the first time since the fall of Mr Mubarak last month that there have been reports of a violent crackdown on protesters."

How Many of Our Constitutional Rights Might We Have Lost?

Last Monday’s disclosure of the post- 911 policies of the Bush administration suggests how easily and quickly our cherished conventions can be put at risk. And the revelation that the CIA destroyed 92 tapes of torture sessions reveals how much could be [and has been?] kept from the public. That these things have come to light is a great gift to the American poeple, for only by the open exposure of what our government does can the public effectively and wisely exercise its responsibility to hold its leaders accountable.

Here are some of the most egregious policies that were formally promoted within the Bush White House [but not made public at the time]:
• The president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants. [Formally presented on Oct. 23, 2001 by John C. Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, and Robert J. Delahunty, a special counsel in the office.]
• The president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.
• “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” [Indeed, …] “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”
• “The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense, …. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, … since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force.
• [Memo of Sept. 25, 2001:] [J]udicial precedents approving deadly force in self-defense could be extended to allow for eavesdropping without warrants.
• [Memo of March 2002:] Congress lacked any power to limit a president’s authority to transfer detainees to other countries [“rendition” that was widely used by Mr. Bush and by Clinton before him].
• Congress had no right to intervene in the president’s determination of the treatment of detainees [subsequently invalidated by the Supreme Court].

These judgments were officially repudiated by Steven G. Bradbury, the last head the Office of Legal Counsel under Bush, five days before the end of the Bush term. He did so in order to acknowledge in writing “the doubtful nature of these propositions.”

Connect these policy statements with the news that the CIA had and destroyed 92 videotapes of the harsh interrogation of two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. detention. The tapes were destroyed at the very time that Congress and the courts were intensifying their scrutiny of the agency’s detention and interrogation program.