Yesterday, September 3, 2008, United States ground forces swept into Pakistan in a raid that resulted in the deaths of 21 Pakistani civilians. This raid has evoked outrage across Pakistan, and is a clear and unnecessary violation of Pakistani sovereignty. It comes in the context of increasing attacks in Afghanistan that are resulting in the deaths of a growing number of civilians. An example of such raids is the recent one on the Afghan village of Azizabad that reportedly resulted in the deaths of over 90 civilians, 50 of them children.

All of this is occurring during the evolving American election campaign in which both major party candidates, the Republican John McCain, and his Democratic rival Barack Obama, have identified Afghanistan as the “good” war that America should be directing the bulk of her military resources towards. If indeed America decides to expand its role in Afghanistan, then it is headed into a serious confrontation with grave implications for this country.

First of all, any expanded role for America in Afghanistan will necessitate an expanded role for American air power, a role that will inevitably result in more widespread Afghani civilian casualties. The rising number of civilian casualties will lead to a more popular and widespread Afghan resistance. As the Afghan resistance expands into a full-fledge Jihad, it will be far more than a fight against isolated Taliban units, although America will present an expanded conflict as a fight against the Taliban in order to maintain domestic support for what will be an increasingly unjust war.

Just as Al-Qaeda was a marginal element in the Iraqi resistance at the height of the national resistance against the American occupation in Iraq, the Taliban will not be the main engine of a heightened popular Afghan resistance. Despite this similarity, there are significant differences between the situation in Iraq and the possible situation in Afghanistan. First of all, although Iran was providing a level of tactic support and financing for various Shiite groups in Iraq, and the Saudis and other Gulf states were providing financial support for the Sunni insurgency, there was no regional state involved in a strategic conflict with the United States. This would include Iran, whose governing regime, since the 1990/1991 Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations, has maintained a carefully orchestrated détente with the Americans.

Hence, any outside support for various groups in Iraq was for the accomplishment of limited tactical objectives, which having been met, has led to a severe lessening of the support the various groups inside of Iraq are receiving from foreign states. This, more than the “success” of the so-called troop surge, has led to the lessening of hostilities in that ravaged country.

This will not be the case in Afghanistan. A resurgent Russia, having recently flexed its muscles in Georgia, would have tremendous interest, and the means to provide a popular Afghan resistance with weapons, money, and tactical support. The Chinese, wary of American advances in Asia, would also be tempted to support the Afghan resistance, although not as fervently or as openly as the Russians.

Furthermore, by expanding the conflict to border regions of Pakistan with raids whose greatest consequence thus far has been civilian deaths, the war will be tremendously unpopular in Pakistan. That will create circumstances that will lead to an almost unlimited number of Pakistanis joining the Afghan resistance. Furthermore, an agitated Pakistan will serve as the conduit to many fighters from outside of the region joining the fight as happened during the Soviet/Afghan war of the 1980s. This time instead of Afghanistan being the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, it will be America’s new Vietnam.

Should America, under an irrational war regime, and in the face of growing pressure from Israel, decide to attack Iran, then Iranian support for the resistance in Afghanistan will increase exponentially, as the end of an American/Iranian détente will result in the emergence of a far more hawkish Iranian policy towards the United States. This will drastically complicate the American position in Afghanistan, and likely result in the reemergence of an active Iraqi resistance to the ongoing American occupation of that country. Having shifted the bulk of its combat troops to Afghanistan, America will be extremely vulnerable to a rekindled conflict in Iraq.

Should such a scenario unfold the warmongers and profiteers will have a bonanza. The war that will last lifetime would be underway. However, other than those elements there would be no real winners. The funding requisites of such a conflict would strain to the limit the already exhausted, if non-existing reserves of this country, an oxymoronic reality brought about by the wonders of fractional reserve banking. Domestically, the American people, who will be convinced by a complicit, corporate-dominated media that they are sacrificing in order to deal a death blow to “radical” Islam will witness economic conditions reminiscent of the Great Depression. 

The people of Afghanistan will experience another episode of displacement, social disruption and massive upheaval. In the face of growing casualties and domestic unrest, and with Islam and Muslims thoroughly demonized and dehumanized by a the ideological requisites of the “Great Terror War,” as it enters its hot phase, it would not be beyond comprehension to envision America resorting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

The sad part of what I had written thus far is that it is not a far-fetched scenario. With the warmongering rhetoric of both parties high, with a media establishment that clearly works to advance the interests of a war-intoxicated status quo, with the security-industrial complex evolving at speeds that even the military-industrial complex failed to reach during the years of its most pronounced development, and with a numb, largely apathetic citizenry, the likelihood of such a scenario as the one I have outlined above is all too real.

As we Muslims enter into the month of Ramadan, now is the time for us to redouble our efforts to join forces with those elements who are trying to reintroduce sanity into our national discourse. We must courageously move beyond the scare-tactics and irresponsible rhetoric of the political mainstream and move into the realm of principled, courageous and focused opposition to the forces of war, occupation and a jingoistic nationalism that thrives on the fears of cowards and belittles the vision of heroic defenders of deeper human values.

Contrary to the view of the assembled hosts in St. Paul, Minnesota (poorly imitated by their counter-parts in Denver a week earlier), war, environmental plunder, and a fascistic police state, are not solutions to this country’s problems. They will only serve to prolong its slow spiritual death. At the core the reigning American “way of life” is the idea that we can continue our rapacious, wasteful, destructive lifestyle while using our military, and growing security apparatus to silence any one who questions the sanity of the current arrangement, or has the audacity to demand their fair share.

What does all of this have to do with Ramadan? Ramadan, by putting the demands of the spirit first, allows us to imagine that another kind of world in possible. One based on empathizing with the poor, not exploiting their resources and occupying them. Ramadan also introduces to us a different kind of religious reality, one that weds God and community in a way that humbles us before God and does not arrogate us to pretend that we can play God.

For America to change, the reigning popular religion must change. That religion makes it too easy to murder people for profit. It makes it too easy to exploit the natural environment. It makes it too easy, in the words of one critic of the current religious mentality, “To drill and kill for God.” Ramadan, when its lessons are understood outlines a path of change.  I will elaborate on this subject later, God-willing.

In the meantime, may your fasting be blessed and may the disheartening things we can think of never negate those thoughts, messages and practices that lift the spirit and sooth the soul. Ramadan Mubarak!