Colonial Wars, Postcolonial Specters

This chapter examines the colonial anxieties provoked by the war in Afghanistan. The American military’s inability to force their oriental enemies to admit defeat or submit to superior force conjures up the specter of American defeat in Vietnam, and with it lingering doubts about the possibility of ever convincing the oriental other of his/her inferior condition. These enduring, self-referential frustrations manifest in the interplay between order and disorder that permeates elite US accounts of Afghanistan. Failed attempts to reduce American casualties, impose new governance institutions and defeat a persistent enemy reveal how the colonial self becomes captive to the disorder of the oriental other.

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