So I've grown cautious. Knowing that I have exactly zero first-hand knowledge of what it's like to serve in the military (generally) and in Afghanistan (in particular), I now do my best to avoid baseless generalizations. Where I do try to characterize the actions of our troops, I aim to include links and citations. If you catch me getting sloppy on that score, please post a comment and insist that I live up to my own standards.
All this is preamble to explaining why I'm trying to make sure I hear actual voices of actual Americans serving in Afghanistan. It is why I came to be listening to a Defense Department podcast called "Bloggers Roundtable." This particular discussion featured Lt. Col. Pam McArthur, a command judge advocate for the Afghan Regional Security Integration Command South. Before I get to what Lt. Col. McArthur had to say, let me acknowledge that anything that gets released by any organization -- public, private, military, civilian, religious, secular, etc. -- may tend to distort reality in a way that makes the organization itself look its best. So, could Lt. Col. McArthur simply be reading talking points? Sure. But I think there's something more spontaneous and sincere going on here.
McArthur, for example, says "you know" a lot. So do I. I realized this the one time I appeared on radio for my old newspaper. Maybe there's some ultra-clever writer in the military who litters talking points with a scripted "you know" here and a strategic "um" there. But I sort of doubt it.
There's a transcript here and audio here. You can read/listen and decide whether McArthur sounds like someone delivering canned sound bites.
McArthur spoke to a number of issues during the roundtable. The one that stuck with me most, though, has to do with the realities faced by some of her pupils: the police officers who she teaches about the importance of following the rule of law and the Afghan constitution.
As McArthur put it, "the police are facing the same kinds of dangers that an Army faces."
"They are enormously brave men and they -- you know, they -- as I said, they are facing the threats that an army faces. They are not -- you know, it's not like they're walking around in, you know, downtown Long Island and Levittown and, you know, you're sort of generally safe. ... (The Afghan police are) very, very much in a combat situation and they're not -- there is not as much patrolling or general work of that nature going on. They are -- you know, they're driving down the road and getting blown up by IEDs."
A quick aside. No disrespect intended, I'm sure, to either Levittown, NY or to the officers who patrol its streets. Police work, obviously, is dangerous anywhere. Here is a link to a memorial page honoring fallen members of the Nassau County PD as well as crime stats for the precinct that includes Levittown.
Levittown aside, McArthur's perspective is helpful as we try to assess progress in Afghanistan from afar.
The Afghan police do make the news, after all. A recent Reuters story by a correspondent in Kabul characterized the country's police force like this:
"Before Afghan and U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001, Afghanistan had little concept of police and while progress has been made in developing the fledgling force, it is usually seen as corrupt and lagging behind the more professional army.
"In many isolated outposts, the police are the only face of the Afghan government and are vulnerable to insurgent attacks, but they are also renowned for milking the populace for bribes."
Indeed, during McArthur's roundtable, her interviewers repeatedly focused on what's being done to end the "long history of bribery and corruption" among police in Afghanistan.
McArthur acknowledged that "it's impossible to think that we could ever follow around every single ANP officer or, you know, employee and make sure that they didn't do some low level of corruption. I don't think that would be very realistic."
But her role is to educate. The right rules are on the books, she said:
"... you know, innocent till proven guilty. That's Article 25 of the Afghan constitution. ... (There is) a due-process provision under Article 27. Voluntary confessions under Article 30; right to a defense attorney, Article 31. Article 38, can't go in the house without a warrant."
Asked to rate the progress she and others are making in teaching the police about such issues, she said, "I'd have to say we're at the beginning. I couldn't rate its success ..."
Still, it's not a start from scratch, according to McArthur. She rejected the premise of a questioner who asserted that Afghans and Americans lack a common heritage and language for discussing matters of justice.
"Well, what I've found really enlightening since I came here was that their values are the same as ours. They have -- they place enormous value on fairness and on honesty and on telling the truth. ... (Those values are) not really being expressed, you know, very forcefully or very evidently to us, but they are there. And I have sat in court martials where, you know, where the fundamental fairness and an honesty and lack of corruption are things that people are enormously concerned with."
There are aspects of McArthur's first-hand account that simply reinforce my basic hopelessness about our mission in Afghanistan. The very fact of a country where the cops are routinely forced into full-fledged combat deepens my sense that the Bush/Cheney team -- or its would-be congressional critics -- should have anticipated this mess. Prudent leaders don't necessarily choose to conquer countries where cops are forced to cope with combat.
But this -- again -- is my Time-Machine Syndrome. I wish we could go back to 2001 and get this right. But we can't.
So it's good to hear from someone like McArthur. It's consoling to hear the voice of an American who believes in our Afghanistan mission enough to wake up each day and do some actual work toward improving the country. Most of all, it's good to hear from someone who forces us to notice the huge dangers Afghan police face. In our impatience for victory or exit from Afghanistan, it's worth remembering why the people of Kabul or Kandahar may have more trouble recruiting and retaining cops than, say, the folks in Levittown.
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