The Early Days of a Better Nation |
Ken MacLeod's comments. “If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders Contact: kenneth dot m dot macleod at gmail dot com Blog-related emails may be quoted unless you ask otherwise.
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Tuesday, May 03, 2011
The US, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia then massively stepped up their aid to the counter-revolutionaries, and organised the flow of thousands of Muslim militants to Afghanistan. One of these militants was a young civil engineer called Osama Bin Laden. One of his former colleagues said Osama was popular with the mujahadin because of his money and his construction skills, adding almost as an afterthought: 'And of course his pleasant personality!' The cascade of unintended consequences just keeps rolling along. There seems no reason to think it will now stop. Labels: Marxism, politics, revolution, War on Terror 53 Comments:
I'll check that out (i.e. I'll buy it if I see it in a charity shop). Just like a lot of other things wrong in the world today, this has it's roots in the ill-advised dismantling of the British Empire. The British empire which never actually managed to conquer Afghanistan in the first place? (and which, by the way, was a criminal enterprise that left behind huge stockpiles of toxic political waste every where it went, from Ireland to Africa, to the Indian subcontinent, and even as far afield as Aotearoa).
this has it's roots in the ill-advised dismantling of the British Empire
To be generous to Anon, he may mean that the Empire wasn't dismantled very competently, not that its dismantling was a bad idea in the first place. And he'd be right (Partition, for one).
I get something of what Anon means, as well. The British Empire was a very transitional phenomenon, at any rate, and would still have been even without the world wars to hurry along its dissolution. Remember that socialism and the welfare state in all its forms (kibbutzim, Fabian socialism, British and Australian Labour, Tommy Douglas and the CCF in Canada) was popular in all it's fragments and successor states. Even Marx saw the British Raj playing the main role in breaking down 'oriental despotism' in India and encouraging modernization (all driven by the desire for profit of British capitalists, not philanthropy). Without the Partition, with the death and hatred it engendered, a powerful "Fabian" India linked to other states in a "left" Commonwealth could have been a powerful force for progress in Asia. (Orwell speculates on this in "the Lion and the Unicorn") The Russian Empire was a "criminal enterprise" as well, a prison house of nations yoked together to serve the Czarist ruling class and foreign capitalists. And yet, one proletarian revolution later, it lead to the Soviet Union. On some level every empire (and many nations) grew out of "criminal enterprises". You've got to work with what you have
I was listening to a National Public Radio report yesterday about OBL's roots in Saudi, in Afghanistan, and in the Sudan, and I immediately thought, 'ah, the British Empire and its awesome impacts!'
Well, Saudi and Afghanistan were never part of the British Empire, but one out of three ain't bad.
Without the Partition, with the death and hatred it engendered, a powerful "Fabian" India linked to other states in a "left" Commonwealth could have been a powerful force for progress in Asia. (Orwell speculates on this in "the Lion and the Unicorn")
Ajay,
In addition to the University of Khartoum, the Brits left other gifts behind them in Sudan.
From: Ajay - I absolutely take your point that Saudi and Afghanistan were not in the British Empire but I think British imperial activities in 19th century Afghanistan included at least three disruptive wars and their resultant bitterness and splitting up the tribal areas that now include so many of the places that supplied the footsoldiers of AQ. The British role in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the time of WW1 certainly facilitated the creation of the modern state of Saudi Arabia. It was a flippant remark, granted, but I'd still stand by its general spirit.
"Another great victory for the Empire"
If memory serves, the National Party instituted apartheid on the foundations of patterns of racial segregation and exploitation already established when the English ran Sath Efrica. ...and the British/Westminster derived parliamentary system of South Africa helped ensure a smooth transition to Mandela's presidency and ANC rule. Or did I miss the bloody uprising and revolution that resulted in the Peoples' Democratic Socialist Workers' Republic of Azania? Feck's sake. You people still want to believe that you were the good guys don't you? Which means you have to ignore all the many ways in which your empire provided the 'proof of concept' for racism, exploitation and yes, even genocide.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Or, perhaps to put it another way, Amin was the leader of the most progressive or revolutionary wing of the PDPA - albeit a revolutionism that, quite mistakenly of course, looked to the Soviet Union for its model or inspiration:
If memory serves, the National Party instituted apartheid on the foundations of patterns of racial segregation and exploitation already established when the English ran Sath Efrica.
DJP O'Kane, who do you claim as your people? If it is the Irish then think how many have benefited from the gift of the English Language to the Irish Writer. If the English had not invaded then Irish writers would be as famous as Icelandic ones.
To the merry band of jingoists who have been commenting here. I am disgusted when fellow Americans pretend to be the aw shucks benefactors of World Democracy, but these days even we don't generally go around saying Native Americans have roads and schools now because of the white man; so really they should be thankful we happened by. PrivateIron: a little thought might have let you to conclude that someone who posts an excerpt from "The Brown Man's Burden" is unlikely to be an unabashed and ignorant jingoist. But then someone who compares the British Empire unfavourably to ancient Rome probably isn't going to go to that sort of trouble.
I was reading Michener's (note proper use of apostrophe) 35 years ago, during my lunch break. I was a labourer in an engineering factory at the time. I put the book down briefly, and came back to find it gone. At the time, I suspect an Irishman of the theft (well they were blowing things up left-right-and-centre. Anyroad up,there was a better novel hatching, about the noble Afghan: I should have added (above) that the author of Kara Kush, Idries Shah,was born to an Scotswoman from an Afghan father.
"You people still like to believe that you're the good guys, don't you?"
PrivateIron,
To clarify, when I said we saved the people who saved the world, I was of course referring to our glorious refueling of the Red Army, not to mention the numerous incentives we gave the Chinese to seek the Marxist alternative. Reverse psychology, see.
"And the British Empire? Seriously. The Enlightenment happened all over the place. A world overrun with the Dutch and Portugese wouldn't be any better or worse than an Anglo/French one."
I was reading Michener's (note proper use of apostrophe)
Hi Ken - enjoyed the Fall Revolution series!
"The White Man's Burden" is Kipling, of course.
Hi Ken- O/T have you seen Dawkins' latest?:http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/624093-support-christian-missions-in-africa-no-but#
Jimmy Levendia: "Britain, in the name of the greed of its capitalists, unwittingly broke down the feudal village system that perpetuated despotism and tyranny and opened a road for India's future development."
So, according to Dylan Brady, unless there's a magic method that instantaneously kicks a society directly from feudalism and oriental despotism to interplanetary travel, flying cars, gene therapy, and the classless society of pure communism, it's better that the society not progress at all? Nicely done! I'm sure you'd be the first to be preaching to the peasants that they should have faith, there'll be pie in the sky, bye and bye. They and their great, great, great grandchildren will be a long time waiting for anything else.
Jimmy Levendia: Hmm, I'm not sure that even counts as straw. A cloud-man argument, perhaps? All that is solid does melt into air, I suppose.
A comments thread about the British Empire was certainly an unintended consequence of this post.
I happened to run into a copy of Mitchner's Caravans just a few months ago, and heartily second the recommendations.
Dylan Brady, it is sand-poundingly surreal when a Maoist, of all people, lectures me on my "simplistic view of Progress-with-a-great-big-capital-P". Wasn't it the Great Helmsman himself, he of the Great Leap Forward, that demanded a blast furnace in every household's back yard? Wasn't it Mao who hoped to harness China’s enormous man-power to “surpass England and catch up to the United States” in economic development and living standards within 15 years by the end if the Second Five Year Plan? Sweet Zombie Jesus, Mao's optimism made the most optimistically Whiggish of Victorians look like angsty mascaraed Goth teens! Whatever Mao's failings, the man wasn't nuanced when it came to the belief that industrializing China was an absolute necessity. To make a Fall Revolution reference, he wasn't a Green Slime.
Oh, and by the way Dylan Brady, thanks: "subaltern intellectuals" was the phrase I was looking for when casting about unsuccessfully to describe the local colonial accomplice sub-elites. My memory was uncooperative.
Jimmy Levendia - It's the shirt that's Maoist, not my brain. (What can I say, I have a weakness for CCP propaganda prints.) Mao's views of progress were simplistic to the extreme; among other things, he apparently believed that one could industrialize through sheer strength of will, knowledge be damned.
The Stapledon story actually IS called "East is West". http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2034/east-is-west, as well as an HTML version or two floating around the net. A fun story; I like the "Asian" version of modernity he imagines. Stapledon wasn't exactly an orthodox Marxist, but Marxist he was: I suppose others may have seen it earlier, but I didn't realize it until encountering some of his nonfiction.
Dylan: It's the shirt that's Maoist, not my brain.
Jimmy: I suppose you could get away with that title for that sort of story in the 1930s. Thanks for the link.
Dylan Brady: Yes, I see what you mean. I suppose even a writer like Stapledon, who truly took the cosmic view of human societies and civilizations, would unconsciously have a small blind spot or two as a product of his place and time.
Hello All,
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For all James Michener is so popular in the US, no-one ever mentions his novel Caravans. Written in the early 60s, set in post-WW2 Afghanistan, it's remarkable prescient, and links the Flashman / Raj view to the mess of the 70s. Every American should have been made to read it at least 20 years ago.
By Anonymous, at Tuesday, May 03, 2011 11:35:00 am