Word: afghanistanism
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...worked out. Not a SOFA agreement, not the Shah's speechifying about modernization, not a party in desert tents stocked with marble baths and champagne could sustain Jimmy Carter's mirage of an Iran that was "an island of security in a troubled region." Those brave, early hopes for Afghanistan and Egypt, too, quickly turned to frustration...
...ideologies or language can create bitter historical ironies. The nuclear program that the Shah championed as a symbol of his Westernization and modernization is now, in the hands of the Ahmadinejad regime, a symbol of precisely the opposite sentiment: defiance against the West. Ever since the Taraki government changed Afghanistan's official title to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, many Afghans have been skittish about the term democracy, associating it with the communist regime...
When ignored, history tends to repeat itself. Three decades after my father worked to build a codified Afghan legal system, a new generation of Americans are still trying to loosen the hold of pashtunwali, or tribal code, on Afghanistan's legal culture. The 2008 signing of a SOFA between Iraq and the U.S. had Iranian hard-liners once again warning against American imperialism. The treaty "does not allow the slightest grounds for the Iraq people's rule over their country and turns this country into a medieval colony for America," wrote Hossein Shariatmadari in the influential Iranian newspaper Kayhan. While...
Going home is not yet an option in Afghanistan, though voices in Washington and other capitals have begun to mutter about it. With 30,000 more American troops headed to fight insurgents on the ground, the U.S., rightly or wrongly, is going to be there for a while yet. As in so much of the region, they remain stuck, mired in the history of clumsy foreign interventions...
...Obama has ordered a Bush-style troop surge in Afghanistan. Warrantless wiretaps of Americans are still allowed. "Don't ask, don't tell" continues to ruin military careers, and Guantánamo is still open and booming. Unless Obama attacks these issues and leads or drags his Democratic colleagues in Congress into doing the same, his Administration may be seen someday as a curious pause before the Second Reagan Era. Holmes Brannon Woodland Park, Colo...