What To Expect in 2010…. The Afghanistan War
Posted By thestatedtruth.com on January 4, 2010
What To Expect in 2010
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by J. R. Nyquist
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Weekly Column Published: 1.04.2010
In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of gateways, portals and bridges. He has been used to symbolize the march of time, the transition from one age to another. He is often represented as having two faces: one peering into the future and the other into the past. Janus was the god of beginnings, and so we have named the first month of the year January. The Roman temple to Janus was a small wood building located on a street connecting the Roman Forum to residential areas. This same street was used by Roman consuls who were leaving the forum to make war on Rome’s enemies. It is no wonder, then, that the temple to Janus had a set of double doors called “the gates of war,” always kept open during times of military conflict. The ancient biographer Plutarch wrote that the temple was rarely closed because peace “was a difficult matter, and it rarely happened, since the realm was always engaged in some war.
Peace, indeed, is a difficult matter. If America had a temple to Janus, its “twin gates of war” would be flung open at this very hour, exposing (in the words of Virgil) “the dread presence of heartless Mars.” As strange as it sounds, the United States is fighting a war in Afghanistan, though Afghanistan is on the other side of the world, a landlocked country. Stranger still, American troops  must trace their line of supply through territory controlled by enemies or potential enemies. This situation is unprecedented. Only an American general of the present generation would think it acceptable to deploy so many troops into a battle where they could be so easily cut off.   Â
There are four ways into Afghanistan: (1) through Russian-dominated South-Central Asia, (2) through China, (3) through Pakistan, (4) or through Iran. To secure a route through Central Asia, the United States government has named Russia as an ally, even though Russia actively supports anti-American forces in Latin America and Africa (especially, in Venezuela and Cuba). The route through China is not practicable, and China is no more an ally of the United States than Russia. Iran is openly hostile to America which the Iranian clerics have denounced as the “Great Satan.” Tracing the U.S. supply line through Pakistan may be ill-conceived as well, since Pakistan is allied with China and sympathetic to the Taliban (which was supported by Pakistan in the past). An August 13 Pew research poll shows that 64 percent of Pakistanis regard the United States as an enemy.
Last year President Barack Obama went to Cairo Egypt and gave an apologetic speech, confessing to his Muslims listeners that they had been abused by Western colonialism and treated as proxies during the Cold War. He went on to describe himself as a Christian sprung from generations of Muslims, without realizing the Muslim implications of this stated apostasy. “The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America’s goals, and our need to work together,” he told the Muslims. “Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support.” (Quite clearly, the support has largely evaporated.)
About 1900 years ago the Roman historian Tacitus wrote that the substitute for wisdom adopted by most men was to wait on the folly of others. Such has been the policy of al Qaeda and the Muslims who support bin Laden. President Bush could not win over the Muslim world, and neither can President Obama. “Make no mistake,” Obama advised his Muslim listeners in Cairo: “we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.”
There is no escape by admitting the agony of it all. The logic of war is the logic of history. People want to kill you, so you must fight. As the temple of Janus was kept open during wartime, it was seldom closed because peace — as Plutarch explained — “rarely happened.” If we look back into history we see war. If we look ahead, we must also see war. The past is prologue to the future. The great Edmund Burke once wrote, “In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.” Burke further explained that, “History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same.”
If you want to know what is coming, it is best to know what always comes.
Copyright © 2009 Jeffrey R. Nyquist
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