Joshua Foust cited in Global Post article
Source: Global Post, March 12, 2012
“Afghans protest when something is shocking and surprising,” said Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security project, a nonprofit, bi-partisan public policy and research institute based in Washington, DC. “But this is something that they are used to and expect. They consider all civilian deaths criminal. This is just more of the same.”
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The United States, while often expressing regret at the loss of civilian lives, considers such collateral damage to be the price of war.
“Afghans are not making the moral distinction we are,” Foust said. “[These shootings are] not a game changer, it is just another aspect of the same game.”
As proof, Foust pointed to a case in Kunar in 2011, in which nine boys out collecting firewood were targeted and killed by US helicopter gunships. The deaths sparked outrage among Afghans, while the American military insisted it was simply the inevitable consequence of war.
Numerous examples of civilian deaths have beaten the Afghan people down to the point where they simply do not expect anything else, Foust said.
This is hardly a comfortable commentary on a war that most Americans still think is about freeing Afghanistan from the yoke of fundamentalism, and helping it become a modern, democratic state.
The real change in the wake of the killings is likely to come in the United States, Foust said, where opposition to the war is growing.
“The thing is, Americans’ view of the war has been so sanitized and euphemized by the mainstream media that we really don’t know what is going on,” he said. “This might change that.”
The contenders for the White House will certainly not ignore the issue, he added.
“Opposition to the war is growing even in the GOP,” he said.
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But finishing the job may no longer be a real option, Foust said.
“The thing is, our goals were always so vague that we have either already accomplished them or cannot possibly do so,” he said.
In the wake of the recent murders of six soldiers in Afghanistan, most likely in response to the Quran burnings, calls for an accelerated withdrawal might become even louder.
“It is much more likely now that the withdrawal will go ahead, despite some calls to delay or even reverse it,” Foust said. “It might even accelerate the process. But we do not yet have enough information to make a realistic prediction.”
Americans, he said, should be under no illusion that the shootings, which are the work of a lone soldier most likely suffering from mental problems, will substantially affect the outcome of the war.
“People ask me ‘Is this going to change things? Does this mean the war is lost? I say ‘No. Probably not. The war was already lost by 2009.’”
