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Tag: unaware

What Do Afghans Think Of 9/11? Not Much.

A new report from the Wall Street Journal sheds light on one reason that the United States has had such a difficult time gaining traction in the war in Afghanistan. According to the article, a staggering 92 percent of respondents to a survey of 15-30 year old men in Afghanistan’s war-torn southern provinces said that they didn’t know about “this event which foreigners call 9/11,” even after being read a three-paragraph description of the attacks.

“I have no idea why the Americans are in my country,” said Abdul Ghattar, a 16-year-old Afghan who lives in a refugee camp as a result of the decade long war. His teacher, Mullah Said Nabi Agha, echoed Ghattar’s views. Agha claims to have never seen the iconic image of the Twin Towers burning, and all he knows about the event is that some kind of explosion happened in America.

“I was a child when it happened, and now I am an adult, and the Americans are still here,” Mr. Agha said. “I think the Americans did it themselves, so they could invade Afghanistan.”

Such conspiracy theories are apparently very common in Afghanistan; even Abdul Hakim Mujahid — the deputy chairman of the Afghan government’s High Peace Council, which was created to help bring the war to a peaceful conclusion — doesn’t believe that Al Qaeda was responsible for “the unfortunate incident” of 9/11.

The United States has long considered winning over the local population to be the key to success in Afghanistan. General John R. Allen, the current top commander of America’s forces there, was specifically selected because, as a U.S. official put it, he “understands this is a perceptions war, a hearts and minds war, and a diplomatic war.” But how can the United States expect to win Afghan hearts and minds if only a tiny sliver of the Afghan population even knows why we are there in the first place?

This new survey is just further evidence that the United States should not create military policy in a vacuum. Just as it was ridiculous for the Bush Administration to expect Iraqis to welcome the American military with open arms, it is ridiculous for the Obama Administration to expect Afghans who have never heard of 9/11 to wholeheartedly embrace our mission in their backyard. The Obama Administration clearly needs to clarify its mission and objectives in Afghanistan not only to the American people, but to Afghans as well.

Blowing Up The House

WASHINGTON — Media reports are touting the Senate’s Gang of Six and its new budget outline. But the news that explains why the nation is caught in this debt-ceiling fiasco is the gang warfare inside the Republican Party. We are witnessing the disintegration of Tea Party Republicanism.

The Tea Party’s followers have endangered the nation’s credit rating and the GOP by pushing both House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor away from their own best instincts.

Cantor worked amiably with the negotiating group organized by Vice President Joe Biden and won praise for his focus even from liberal staffers who have no use for his politics.

Yet when the Biden group seemed close to a deal, it was shot down by the Tea Party’s champions. Boehner left Cantor exposed as the frontman in the Biden talks and did little to rescue him.

Then it was Boehner’s turn on the firing line. He came near a bigger budget deal with President Obama but the same right-wing rejectionists blew this up, too. Cantor evened the score by serving as a spokesman for Republicans opposed to any tax increase of any kind.

Think about the underlying dynamic here. The evidence suggests that both Boehner and Cantor understand the peril of the game their Republican colleagues are playing. They know we are closer than we think to having the credit rating of the United States downgraded. This may happen before Aug. 2, the date everyone is using as the deadline for action. We have less time than we think.

Unfortunately, neither of the two House leaders seems in a position to tell the obstreperous right that it is flatly and dangerously wrong when it claims that default is of little consequence. Rarely has a congressional leadership seemed so powerless.

Compare the impasse Boehner and Cantor are in with the aggressive maneuvering of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. He knows how damaging default would be and is working with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to concoct a way out.

McConnell can do this because he doesn’t confront the Tea Party problem that so bedevils Boehner and Cantor. Many of the Tea Party’s Senate candidates — Sharron Angle in Nevada, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska — lost in 2010. Boehner and Cantor, by contrast, owe their majority in part to Tea Party supporters. McConnell has a certain freedom to govern that his House leadership colleagues do not.

And this is why Republicans are going to have to shake themselves loose from the Tea Party. Quite simply, the Tea Party’s legions are not interested in governing, at least as governing is normally understood in a democracy with separated powers. They believe that because the Republicans won one house of Congress in one election, they have a mandate to do whatever the right wing wants. A Democratic president and Senate are dismissed as irrelevant nuisances, although they were elected, too.

The Tea Party lives in an intellectual bubble where the answers to every problem lie in books by F.A. Hayek, Glenn Beck or Ayn Rand. Rand’s anti-government writings, regarded by her followers as modern-day scripture — Rand, an atheist, would have bridled at that comparison — are particularly instructive.

When the hero of Rand’s breakthrough novel “The Fountainhead” doesn’t get what he wants, he blows up a building. Rand’s followers see that as gallant. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that blowing up our government doesn’t seem to be a big deal to some of the new radical individualists in our House of Representatives.

Our country is on the edge. Our capital looks like a lunatic asylum to many of our own citizens and much of the world. We need to act right now to restore certainty by extending the debt ceiling through the end of this Congress.

Boehner and Cantor don’t have time to stretch things out to appease their unappeasable members, and they should settle their issues with each other later. Nor do we have time to work through the ideas from the Gang of Six. The Gang has come forward too late with too little detail. Their suggestions should be debated seriously, not rushed through.

Republicans need to decide whether they want to be responsible conservatives or whether they will let the tea party destroy the House that Lincoln Built in a glorious explosion. Such pyrotechnics may look great to some people on the pages of a novel or in a movie, but they’re rather unpleasant when experienced in real life.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com

Copyright 2011, Washington Post Writers Group