Afghanistan and American Fundamentalism

The problem with American involvement in Afghanistan is fundamentalism, but not of the Muslim variety. True, many of Afghanistan's problems are rooted in the Taliban's militant Islamic fundamentalism. But America first must grapple with the religious roots of its fundamental belief that it is entitled to prevail in Afghanistan before going all-in.

American exceptionalism, the thought that the United States of America is a uniquely felicitous political institution, has religious roots. From America's first European immigrants seeking religious freedom and commercial opportunity in a new land, our national mythology has drawn from stories about Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Abraham's migration to the land that God showed him and the capture of the Promised Land by his formerly enslaved descendants have fueled the self-mythology of both dominant and oppressed Americans for the last three hundred years.

Believing that America is a special place is an appropriate, patriotic sentiment. But the abiding belief that America has a unique, inevitable destiny is a dangerous fundamentalism. It leads to unrealistic expectations that the perceived rightness of an American cause will promptly produce military and cultural victory. This is particularly ahistorical thought concerning Afghanistan. Greece, Persia, Britain, Russia all invaded and were driven out of Afghanistan multiple times over hundreds of years; each one was a dominant military power.

The moral debt that Americans owe to fellow human beings in Afghanistan is to avoid the fundamentalism of American exceptionalism. If America continues to intervene militarily, it must be motivated by an abiding belief in the Afghan right to self-determination and the human value of every Afghan. If America fights for Afghanistan simply to remade in the image of America, the fight sanctifies American values, but desecrates Afghan life.