In the '60s and '70s, we all loved America - because of the "protest music."
Like Country Joe MacDonald at Woodstock, pictured alongside - and I really wonder why no one there today sings, just as he did:
And it's one, two, three,
What're we fighting for?
Don't ask me I don't give a damn,
The next stop is Af-Pak (or Baghdad).
In Af-Pak, the USSA is engaged in "drone attacks."
That is, no "human contact" at all.
Let us contrast the USSA of today with the British Empire.
The India that the British ruled after the Sikh Wars
included not only the Punjab but had also expanded to the border areas between
Punjab and Afghanistan, the ‘no man’s land’. Sir Henry Lawrence was Resident
and his ‘Titans’ began their rule, first among whom was Herbert Edwardes. Mason
says that ‘the doings of Herbert Edwardes in Bannu are the best illustration of
what happened those days’. If so, it is a story of a ‘civilian’ that deserves
to told:
The Afghans had ceded Bannu
to the Sikhs but neither had ever administered this high desolate valley, where
every man went armed and no one had ever willingly paid a tax. Every three
years, the Sikhs sent an army to punish the Bannuchis for their failure to pay
tribute….
The time came to send out
another of those punitive expeditions. Sir Henry Lawrence agreed, but on
condition that a British political officer went too and tried to make a
peaceful settlement. The Sikhs smiled and agreed; Herbert Edwardes set out, the
only Englishman with an army of Sikhs, recently defeated. He was not even in
command. But he began by enforcing an order that the army must pay for
everything.
This transformed the
situation. The Bannuchis were astonished by an army that did not plunder; they
came and talked. They sold provisions to the army. Night after night, they came
to Edwardes’ tent and sat talking to him…. When he came the next year for three
months, he achieved miracles. They dismantled their forts; they agreed to pay a
reduced land revenue and he began a field-by-field survey that would lead to an
accurate assessment. Finally he decided that they needed a legal code, and
wrote it one night. He turned it into Persian next day and made a beginning of
administering his code single-handed. The Political Adviser became judge as
well as financier, tax-gatherer, commander-in-chief, engineer and legislator –
Moses as well as Napoleon.
Even Edwardes himself seems hardly to have realized quite how miraculous his achievement was. He was alone among these people who obeyed him because of the certainty with which he spoke to them, because of the intensity of his moral fervour…
Sir Henry Lawrence sent a "political officer" - under armed escort. The army did not plunder. The political officer "talked." There was "human contact." It worked a "miracle."
NO FORCE WAS USED AT ALL.
Note: They did NOT try and instal a "democracy." Indeed, nowhere in the vast Indian sub-continent did they overthrow any local ruler for any such purpose. Traditional local rulers were "supported" - and even "instructed." But not "overthrown." There were over 650 of them in 1947 - many of them very small "chieftains," with barely any revenue. The biggest among the were "Salute States" - and these included a "Khan" from this Af-Pak area.
Such "political officers" were also used in the North-East.
The most famous of them is Captain Tod of the Honourable East India Company, whose Annals of Rajasthan was the "textbook" of all these political officers. It was Tod who obtained "signed treaties" between the British Crown and all these Princes of Rajasthan on behalf of the Company.
The "motive"?
Why - peace and peaceful trade, of course.
Not rebellions everywhere.
As now.
Today, the socialist Indian State is in "alignment" with the USSA and the "democratic" Afghan regime. And they are "warring" with Pakistan over the frozen wastelands of Siachen - for 30 years!
And it's one, two, three,
What're we fighting for?
Don't ask me,
I don't give a damn,
The next stop is...
"The Universal Soldier" by Donovan - again, from that era.
Why not NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard?
Peace, Trade, Roads - and traditional local rulers and chieftains.
NOT DEMOCRACY!
Peace, first!
Then trade - for which purpose, TRANSPORTATION.
Roads, rail, air - the works - all PRIVATE.
The USSA is not an "old civilisation." It is an "upstart power," very "nouveau riche," very "lawless." Their Central State is dominated by a "military-industrial complex."
And there is Dylan's "Masters of War."
Indeed, even Mises noted something amiss with the USSA: That, while in Old Europe politicians never commanded public opinion and attention, which was the preserve of "philosophers," the USSA in his time was something entirely different.
Mass democracy, of course.
Read John Rae's Life of Adam Smith to know how this man went about, with David Hume, through all the "salons" of 18th century Paris.
The Babur-Nama tells of Kabul those days: that 7 languages were spoken in its bazaars. Alcohol flowed, along with charas - and there were great parties where poets were invited to recite their verse to a discerning audience. Babur died in Delhi - but ordered that his body be buried in Kabul, in his favourite garden there. The "Afghan tribes" in Babur's time were not city-folk - and roamed around the hills outside the city.
As for Akbar - the only "the Great" among the Mughals - he personally took 1500 workmen along with him and supervised the construction of a road on the Khyber Pass "smooth enough to take wheeled vehicles."
There is also an Old Mughal Road between Srinagar, Kashmir and Delhi - no longer in use, of course.
Philip Mason also tells the tale of the "aristocrat" sent from London because London did not want the Great Charles Metcalfe to become the boss in India: Lord Aucklund. And how this Lord Aucklund was so "bored" with life in India, living and travelling in far greater splendour than his King back home, that he went to WAR in Afghanistan!
And what a Great Disaster that war was.
Soldiers killed in droves.
Treasury wiped out.
