Having waited for Petraeus, Now what?

Like most people, I have always been fascinated with Samuel Becket’s tragicomedy about two tramps waiting for Godot. The tramps are continually aware of hunger, pain, the cold, and at one point contemplate suicide. Pozzo and Lucky, the only passerby, at first are mistaken for Godot. Pozzo is a rich man who mistreats his servant, Lucky. During the play, Pozzo becomes blind. Like the two tramps who are dependent on each other, Pozzo becomes dependent on Lucky. Lucky is even forced to think for his master. The play ends with the tramps still waiting for Godot.

When it was reported that July had been the deadliest month for international troops in Afghanistan, it reminded me of Waiting for Godot. Almost one year ago, the press was abuzz with the news that General David Petraeus was relinquishing his command in Iraq to become commander of U.S. Central Command. Petraeus, who was responsible for “benchmarks” and “troop surges” in Iraq, was to now oversee U.S. military operations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Americans waited for Petraeus to remake Afghanistan.

With great fanfare, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also gave Petraeus credit for turning back the “darkness” that had descended upon Iraq. He was praised for defeating the “merchants of chaos” and “fearsomely beating America’s enemies while teaching them a lesson.” Since General Petraeus had played such a historical role in the history of Iraq, at least according to Robert Gates, Americans waited for him to defeat any opponent that would dare challenge U.S. hegemony. And Americans waited, and waited, and waited.

Last weekend within 48 hours, nine U.S. and NATO troops were killed by roadside bombs and small gunfire in Afghanistan. With an increase of international forces and operations-there are now over 100,000 U.S. and NATO forces-the number of attacks and roadside bombs have spiked. So have civilian casualties. The U.N. just recorded over 1,000 civilian deaths. It is 24 percent higher than in the same period in 2008. It is 48 percent higher than in 2007. Evidently, this is due to U.S. aerial drone attacks and air strikes, and a shift from ambush attacks to suicide bombings and roadside explosives by insurgency groups.

General Petraeus recently painted a bleak picture for Afghanistan‘s immediate future. The solution will require more than understanding local cultures, ordering additional troops to Afghanistan, and the upcoming Provincial Elections. Is the answer in freeing ourselves from dependency on militarism, “troop surges,” and thinking war is always the solution? Maybe this is where the “absurd” (as some would call Becket’s Waiting for Godot) exists: Believing in life and peace more than war and death. It seems nowadays that this has become so irrational and unreasonable, that it must be true.

And what if there never was a Godot? And what if the act of waiting for Petraeus was just as hopeless and meaningless as the dark comedy portrayed? Was this the genius of Beckett? It is we who are the tramps, Pozzo, and Lucky, and it is we who create our own destinies. In other words, are we forever to remain victims of dependency and of the “tyranny of waiting and inactivity,” or are we responsible beings that choose to act? Only we can take that “leap of faith” and liberate ourselves from the inability to believe, think, and do, and not to be enslaved by illusions.

What are the current realities and illusions in Afghanistan? Are they as Samuel Becket wrote in Waiting for Godot: “We are all born mad. Some remain so.” Or, “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.” Or, “The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either.” Or finally, “Let’s go.” “We can’t.” “Why not?” We’re waiting for Godot.”

Thus having waited for Petraeus, now what? Waiting for Rasmussen? Meanwhile, a roadside bomb planted by insurgents just killed twenty-two people, including women and children. In Kandahar, Afghan villagers protested the deaths of four brothers, three of them children, who they said were killed by U.S. attack helicopters. Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has again vowed to halt military air raids that kill civilians. And the boundaries of truth continue to be redrawn to redefine existence. The question is, however, whose existence?