If you are ever looking for a dictionary definition of American arrogance, that lovable American tendency to take credit for anything and everything actually accomplished by someone else, you could do a lot worse than this New York Times article about the recent and shocking «discovery» of vast mineral reserves in Afghansitan that, just maybe, will enable the country to become a marginally less poor and corrupt hellhole than it is today.
Although the opening paragraphs talk breathlessly about all of the exciting possabilities opened up by the wonderful and talented Americans, if you are able to read more than halfway through the article you suddenly learn that:
In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989...
Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country
Somehow this makes the whole «discovery» seem a lot less significant, right? All respect to the American surveyors and geologists working in what amounts to a giant war zone, but doesn’t exactly take a path-breaking genius to find a large deposit of iron ore when you have a map that says «THIS IS EXACTLY WHERE THE IRON ORE IS LOCATED.»
Going on something of a tangent, the above paragraphs are but further evidence that the American decision to arm the most backwards, tribal, and religiously fanatic elements of Afghan society in order to oppose the Soviets was incredibly shortsighted and disastrous. I have no illusions about the brutality of the Soviet-backed regime, but does anyone think that we would have American soldiers fighting and dying in Afghanistan today if, instead of a 30 year period of chaos and anarchy, there had been a communist government which suceeded in achieving some minimal level of industrial development?
Afghanistan would almost certainly still be extremely poor and underdeveloped had the Soviets succeeded in instituting a «socialist» government which was capable of building mines and extracting minerals, but I don’t think it would be quite the midieval dystopia it is today. Probably it would resemble the Central Asian countries which were also subject to crash modernization a la Russe. Does Tajikistan really pose a threat to anyone? Is Uzbekistan a profound threat to world peace and stability? No, of course not.
I hope that these mineral deposits can be exploited in a way that will generally benefit most Afghans, but it’s darkly humorous that the United States is congratulating itself for boldly «discovering» despots that were actually first discovered by the Soviets
