Foreign vs. Domestic Policy

Earlier today my mother emailed to ask what I thought of this recent piece by David Brooks, Smart Power Setback. Trying to update here more before I leave for Ghana, so thought I'd post my off-the-cuff thoughts here:

My first reaction was to his refutation of "the modern prejudice that bad behavior has material roots. Give people money and jobs and you will improve their character and behavior" and his assertion that violence is really all about "grudges, tribal dynamics and religious fanaticism." He may be right to say that we can't just take away financial problems and expect everything to get better, however, I do think that there's a lot to be said for the role of unemployment and general social discontent that springs from a lack of economic opportunities. Maybe the conflicts do fall along tribal or religious lines--between groups that have already defined themselves as different from each other--but I think most people need an impetus to get involved in the disagreements. I think usually people want to see something changed in their lives or the lives of those around them, and the greater the economic difficulties they're facing, the more likely they are to want things changed (and the stronger they'll feel about those changes).

These things often aren't separated -- even here in the US we can see the economic downturn and especially growing inequality fueling a lot of the religious and political fanaticism that the Tea Party is thriving on, and that makes their violent rhetoric and exclusion of Others acceptable, even honorable as a "patriotic" stance. Just because the news doesn't cover things like the backpack bomb found along the parade route of a MLK Day this January (or the targeted attacks on Planned Parenthood centers) in the same way as they cover the underwear bomber or the bombings that signal a lack of stability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, doesn't make those acts any less terrorism, at least within the contexts of these different places (I mean maybe people would take issue with the comparison of the Planned parenthood attacks and suicide bombers in Afghanistan, but given the war context of Afghanistan, they may be more equivalent than people are happy to admit).

I'm not unequivocally defending aid - definitely it has its problems, and I'm sure the projects in Afghanistan have been seriously flawed in many ways, including the effects Brooks points out. However, I think it's important to bear in mind the difference between the US and Afghanistan - we've created a war zone in Afghanistan, trying to replace entire government structures, legal systems, police systems, etc while we have little legitimacy (anymore) in Afghanistan. Not that we don't have milder versions of these problems here (there are gov't structures that should probably be overhauled--but they're less central than the ones in Afghanistan, our police and criminal justice system is horribly flawed, many people really don't trust US gov't anymore--regardless of who is in office) but they're problems of a different order of magnitude, and I don't think our failure in Afghanistan means we can just give up on people here. The suggestion that we should just tell the poor to suck it up is dangerously close to what politicians (particularly Republican, but also Democrat) are saying, and I frankly think it's an argument that anyone with a conscience has to fight.