Comments on: Bookends to War: Afghanistan by Louis Dupree, and Taliban by Ahmed Rashid

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:14:43 +0000

This is venturing way off topic, but I’ll just note that in 2003 I got angry when people suggested OIF was imperial. Now I just get sad.

You’re on peculiar path then. The project could be more easily misunderstood as imperialism before it had happened. Particularly when you had gentleman like Wolfowitz with convenient ideas about oil revenue and such.

And Lee, I hate pushing this further, but “freedom” as a concept is not nebulous at all; as a policy, it is pretty ill-defined.

As policy it is procurement and perpetuation. No more confused or indistinct than authoritarianism was conceptually vs politically under the Baathist state.

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:45:41 +0000

And Lee, I hate pushing this further, but “freedom” as a concept is not nebulous at all; as a policy, it is pretty ill-defined.

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:40:53 +0000

This is venturing way off topic, but I'll just note that in 2003 I got angry when people suggested OIF was imperial. Now I just get sad.

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:24:54 +0000

Just to clarify, the Iraqi project is not imperial. There is no advocate for the war who wants to govern the country. Its intellectual purposes only become difficult to understand when you believe that it is an imperial venture, and then try to fit its purposes into that template. Your template is the problem, not the purposes themselves. Freedom is only nebulous for those who have it and always have. The Iraqi imagination for its absence is far less confused.

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:13:32 +0000

Not really, and I consented to Lee’s interpretation. But in a manner of speaking, it could be: either the mission is noble, or it is not. If the mission is not noble, it’s a tough sell to then claim that noble men still choose to do it (like Chesterton’s takedown of the “my country right or wrong” argument), though with regards to Iraq I think it’s safe to say we all—even those of us (like me) who have since come to believe otherwise—went into it with noble intentions.

If you want to sell the conquer and subjugation of less advanced peoples and the expansion of Empire as “noble,” be my guest: there is an argument that the English really did bring a form of civilization wherever they went. It is at least a far more honest justification than the ones coming from the White House (meaning: Curzon never pretended he was fighting for nebulous concepts like “freedom” when discussing the invasion the place).

By: MichaelW

MichaelW — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:51:13 +0000

… I don’t think it’s possible to separate the adventurer from his employer.

So, “support the troops, but not the mission” is just a bunch of hooey then?

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:59:19 +0000

That’s fair. Hopkirk is indeed unabashedly pro-adventurer; but I could not speak to his specific emotions of Empire.

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:57:51 +0000

I don’t doubt that you define it that way Josh, the question is whether Peter would define it that way, ergo “unabashedly.” As I say I just don’t think the charge is fair given his stated views. You’re getting into your opinion there, rather than his. It would be better to say “I think Peter is…” no?

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:27:31 +0000

Lee, that’s a fair point to make, and while I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong, I don’t think it’s possible to separate the adventurer from his employer. Forgive me, please, for being quasi-constructivist, but if someone like Pottinger did his daring deeds for his own glory, or, like the unfortunately-derided Masson, for his own ends, he wouldn’t be nearly as heroic, at least not in contemporary popular British culture. It was that men like Pottinger, or Burnes, were advancing Empire, “discovering” the brutal savages of the Asian khanates so they could be conquered and plundered, that made them so heroic and admirable.

I don’t doubt that Hopkirk simply admires the bravado of the quest—hell, I do too, it’s what drew me to the region in the first place (his writings on the irresistable romanticism of the region, and of the period, is 100% true). But I also try to recognize it for what it is, just as I try to recognize what our own push west meant: the intentional, murderous exploitation of those with less power and the wrong skin color and religion. British imperialists were chauvinist, brutal men. They were also heroic (with notable exceptions, like Curzon, or Elphinstone or McNaughten). I think the two can coexist… In fact, the two might have to coexist for all I know. But I don’t think they’re as separable as Hopkirk wants them to be.

Oh and thanks for the compliment!

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:47:58 +0000

I might also add that it’s further revealing about Peter that in his epilogue to “The Great Game,” he laments not the loss of the imperial territory, but the fact that there aren’t memorials to the great characters of the Game. That’s really Peter’s heart. The love affair with the adventurer.

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:41:05 +0000

This is a superb piece Joshua. I’m immensely impressed by it.

On a small note, I’m not really sure it’s fair to call Peter Hopkirk “unabashedly pro-[British] Empire.” Peter would probably say that if the game had to be played, better for the British than the Russian or later Soviet gamer to win. He’s not completely convinced the game had to be played either. And in his books at least, he’s often quite sympathetic to the region’s wish to merely be left alone.

Peter’s worst “sin” is merely a love of adventure and adventurers, rather than a love of satrapies and exploitation. I don’t think anything could be more revealing of that than his belief that MacLean’s swashbuckling “Eastern Approaches” is to this day the best book on Central Asia.