Snowden weighs in on Afghanistan

At around 8 p.m. yesterday evening, famous whistleblower Edward Snowden published an op-ed detailing where he stands on, and how the war in Afghanistan has impacted his views on,

First reflections

Snowden began detailing his stance by reflecting on a conversation he had with fellow whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg. He recalled that the two had agreed that, “certain wars are wrong, but if one can conceive of a ‘just’ war—or at least a less-injust war—there are wrong ways to fight it, and particularly wrong ways to finish it. There are also, come to think of it, wrong ways to begin wars too—namely refusing to declare them.”

Out of the gate, Snowden lays it all out for readers; he anticipates the reality that war can easily become inevitable, but disagrees that there will always be fundamentally similar ways of actualizing it. There are always going to be missteps on the path to refining warfighting strategies so that they become “just,” but the acknowledged direction of intent is what matters, not each individual falter from it.

Afghanistan is somewhat of a special exception to this idea, since U.S. forces remained there far longer than they likely should have. The missteps in the earlier 2000s continued for so long that they grew to become a misdirection instead.

Immediately after delimiting the poles of just and unjust wars, Snowden asserts, “The war in Afghanistan was not one of those wars—it was not justifiable. It was, is, and forever will be wrong, which means leaving is the right decision.” And yet, he admits, he was not always of this opinion.

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Memories of an earlier opinion

From exile, Snowden says, “Yet there was a time when I felt like picking Afghanistan up by its ankles and shaking it until all the terrorists fell out, like scorpions from a boot.”

Adding to this, he generalizes, “Most Americans felt that way, in the autumn of 2001, and I was no different…I trusted my government, at least I trusted it to know more about Afghanistan than I did, and the government told me this: that Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban were harboring al-Qaeda, and that both the Taliban and al-Qaeda hated us for our freedoms.”

What a familiar sentiment. A majority of the people populating daily life in America have, at times, been compelled to feel the same; to feel the rushing calm that stems from identifying an enemy in hiding.

But that was never the case, as Snowden asserts, “‘You are either with us or you are against us in the fight against terror,’ said Bush the Younger. But he never defined who, exactly, was the enemy. If you look beyond the label, terrorists are just murderers with a political motive: mere criminals.”

If this reflection as a whole is taken as truth, it seems that American culture at-large became infatuated with the symbolic relief that comes from labeling a unified enemy that threatens its peace and freedom. Making it all the more easier to export our internal drive for self-defense in the form of boots on the ground.

Confounding symbols

Adding to his reflections on why he originally enlisted, Snowden recalls, “This was why I signed up: to defeat the ‘enemies of freedom,’ or to make the enemy unto us… fair, equitable, democratic. The motto of the United States Army’s Special Forces was to my younger self a hook so perfectly baited as to be irresistible: De Oppresso Liber—“To Free the Oppressed.”

Elaborating on the way such symbols have melded with actionable consequences, the whistleblower says, “Because for all the talk of democratizing Afghanistan, it was never clear that it was Afghanistan we were fighting. Weren’t we fighting the Taliban? Or Al-Qaeda? And weren’t they backed by Pakistan? And what about Saudi Arabia?”

Answering himself, Snowden concedes: “Ultimately, we Americans were fighting ourselves, or our own governance, as we came to understand how the agony of 9/11 had been politicized. Of all the great cliches to be revived by this new lost war—‘Afghanistan: the grave of empires,’ ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia’—the most banal was also the truest: We are our own worst enemies.”

To sour the taste of these reflections further, Snowden denies both the fact that we can learn from our mistakes, and that intentions are the determinant for manifesting peace.

“Precisely because I had intended to do good, it was difficult to accept the possibility that I had become involved in something bad—perhaps even evil. Intentions are what paved the roads to Kabul, a hell of our own making.” Snowden wrote, while weighing on what caused him to stumble towards an internalized feeling of moral turpitude.

Following his denial of the possibility for lessons-learned, Snowden asserts, “We will just sit by as the people of Afghanistan—many of whom were as deluded by American promises as Americans themselves—cling to hopes and cling to planes and fall, lost to the desert of theocratic rule. Some will say, they didn’t fight! They get what they deserve! To which I say, ‘And what do we deserve?'”

Without a rigidly-defined mission, and with vagabond gesticulations in the form of short-sighted public sentiments, and subsequent militarized actions, why should such a self-fulfilling prophecy even be questioned? It appears that the United States left Afghanistan as aimlessly as it decided to remain. And that, that’s all there is to it.

Final remarks from Snowden

Snowden ends his piece with a long stroke:

“A fractious country comprised of warring tribes, unable to form an inclusive whole; unable to wade beyond shallow differences in sect and identity in order to provide for the common defense, promote general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, and so they perish—in the span of a breath—without ever reaching the promised shore.

Today, the country this describes is Afghanistan. Tomorrow, the country this describes might be my own.”

To those who doubt this: What have you forgotten about the absurdity of the world, which forces you to so regularly question it?

Notions of free-thinking have interceded discourses in nearly every modernized society on the planet at this point, and that leaves only a void for the possibility of completely-unified enemies, and also for any polarity between hatred and love. I for one hope that lessons can be learned, and that soon enough words are afforded their proper weight when they steer America towards the brink of war.

Through Snowden’s perspective, a glimpse at the true freedom of mankind is given. That is, the freedom to make decisions without the use of universalized abstractions of character, which smudge our judgement and force us to recoil and cling to them further, even as these concepts have no bearing on the truth that goodness and civility is within everyone’s capacity, without consideration of their affiliations.

Life is messy, so it only makes sense that human judgement often is as well. For the next decades-long conflict, it appears that the only hope for a “just” direction is acknowledging our creaturely faults, and basing our decisions on those inadequacies.

Not to mention learning from them.