We Can’t Do Anything

Thursday, December 11th, 2014

A friend of John Derbyshire’s couldn’t see why “we” — meaning the US government — wouldn’t make some simple policy change, when he lamented that, of course, we won’t, because we can’t do anything:

It was that closing phrase that stuck in my mind. We can’t do anything. It’s so damn true.

A few days later I was watching a video clip of looters trashing a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri following the November 24th grand jury decision in the Michael Brown shooting.

The looters were described as “protesters” by Sean Hannity’s voice-over, but that seems to me a bit unfair. There were genuine protesters out there in the streets that night, genuinely indignant about the decision. Personally I think they’re deluded; but they have a right to their stupid opinion, and a right to peacefully protest. Many of them, perhaps a majority, were not looting.

If we are to keep our civic freedoms, the public authorities should be able to perform one of their proper functions, permitting peaceful protest, without abandoning another one, the safeguarding of citizens’ property against mobs and those who incite them. Do we not know how to do this? We have a couple of centuries’ experience of law enforcement. It’s taught to postgraduate level in our colleges. How hard can it be? Yet we can’t do it. We can’t do anything.

Those images of looters were still in my mind on the 29th when my copy of The Economist arrived. It contained a melancholy article about the condition of Afghanistan as the NATO intervention ends.

With its promises of prosperity and gender equality, the reconstruction effort always appeared in pursuit of the unattainable … Output is expected to grow by 1.5 percent this year, less than the population … Even NATO analysts, who are considered optimistic, admit the Taliban have never been stronger … In the absence of a functioning state, illegal drugs, timber, and other rackets have flourished under a Jihadist-themed cover.

So the 13 years of Western intervention were all a waste of time, then. Also of money (“estimated at a trillion dollars, or $30,000 for every Afghan”) and lives (3,481 coalition fatalities). We passed over Afghanistan like a shadow, hardly leaving a footprint. When we are gone, all will be as it was before.

Why was defeating the Taliban not possible?

Their leadership is headquartered in Pakistan, which makes them unconquerable.

Because, I guess, Pakistan is such a formidable military and economic power, it would be foolish for the combined forces of the entire Western world to engage them.

It seems to me there was nothing there that couldn’t have been taken care of by a handful of well-placed thermonuclear bombs, but of course we can’t do that. We can’t do anything.

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