A friend recently sent me a slideshow that’s been wandering around the Internet. It starts out with a lot of TV nostalgia, and then zooms in on movie stars from yesteryear and glowingly lists their war records in World War II. At the end, it tells us that it’s the soldier who gives us democracy, freedom of press, and the freedom to demonstrate.

I’ve been doing my own little nostalgia thing lately, listening to the music of the past. Yesterday I heard Buffy Sainte Marie singing, “Universal Soldier”. The day before, I heard Joan Baez singing, “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream.” These songs were written in the 50s and 60s. People are still writing and singing songs about peace, but it’s not a cultural trend any more, it’s not a headline.

It’s not surprising that this slideshow, this homage to the military, has been circulating. We’re looking at 30,000 more soldiers going to Afghanistan. People are dealing with their natural and instinctive ambivalence on the subject of war, and one way we all do that is by trying to convince ourselves it’s a noble thing.

December is a very Plutonian month, with the sun, Mercury and Venus all conjuncting Pluto. And that means it’s a month in which we face our demons. Afghanistan has become demonic in the minds of many people in the States, and the natural response is to send out the troops. And all the World War II imagery that’s coming around? Well, that was a “good war” in which it was clear that we were fighting the forces of evil. It serves nicely as our model for the next one.

Pluto has to do with transformation. It’s about our deepest fears, taboos and anxieties, which keep us from doing whatever we need to do to grow. You could imagine transformation as a precious jewel in a deep, dank cave guarded by horrific, snarling creatures. These creatures don’t just come from our own life experiences, but from the place where we intersect with all other sentient beings. On some level, we participate in every cruelty that any human being has inflicted and that any human being has suffered. How can we voluntarily go to this place, fearlessly walk through this phalanx of monsters, and pick up that jewel?

When we are confronted by Plutonian forces, we are thrust into an awareness of those demons, without necessarily recognizing that they are guarding something precious. Often we only see what gives us most anxiety, and this is what we name “evil”. This is why Pluto rules paranoia. It’s not that evil doesn’t exist; all humans are capable of cruelty. But to focus on it, and to try to defeat it, is to spend all your time battling the guards, while ignoring the treasure they’re guarding.

What transformation do we need, as a society? One clue to that is what we revile. Because these monsters that guard the treasure are not randomly horrible. They are the exaggeration of what we need, love and yearn for. So if we look at what we’re attacking, we see what we must become.

What is it about Afghanistan? What is there?

Looking at the natal chart for Afghanistan – drawn for the day in 1747 when Ahmad Shah Durrani unified the Pashtun tribes and founded the country - we see an angular square between the sun in Leo and Mars/Pluto in Scorpio. If this were a person, I would say that he or she might have had a violent father, someone who demanded total obedience. Many Afghans see Ahmad Shah Durrani as the father of their country. As a young man, he was imprisoned in a fortress by his political enemies, and when he got out, he managed to battle his way to a substantial empire, including large chunks of India.

Mother Nature, too, has been exacting in Afghanistan. In the chart for the country, the moon is in fiery Sagittarius, conjunct Mars and Pluto, and also squaring the sun. There is little nurturing or bounty in the endless mountains, the lengthy deserts, and the cold winters. The moon in Sagittarius shows an adventurous spirit, necessary to adjust to demanding conditions. And the sun/Mars square in fixed signs shows a people who can endure a great deal, and who will fight relentlessly – not just for survival, but because of a sense of honor.

When we look from the Afghanistan chart to the U.S. chart, it’s as if we were suddenly dropped into a pillow. The U.S. chart is softer, and much luckier, with the sun/Jupiter conjunction in Cancer. Looking at Jupiter, the planet of good fortune, in the Afghanistan chart, we find it in the rigorous, demanding sign Capricorn. This country doesn’t get a lot of breaks.

So what is it we are looking for in Afghanistan? Perhaps it is the ability to survive.

Now that Pluto is in Capricorn, we are all faced with practical questions about survival. We’re facing shortages, although many of us haven’t quite realized this yet. Suddenly, we need to set limits on things that we once thought were limitless. Suddenly, our future involves a heightened sense of responsibility for the environment. In order to survive, we must develop practical, workable, and mutual commitments, when so much of human history is about fear and territorial aggression.

So here we are, drawn to this country which is tougher than the future that we’re so afraid of. What demons will we have to fight off, before we can find the jewel? And we will recognize the jewel when we see it? Or will we think that something so strong, so tough and resistant, is merely a stone?

We are drawn there. Or rather – thirty thousand young men and women are being drawn there. They will find themselves in a country where there are no clear divisions between ordinary villagers and the enemy. They will be trying to eliminate an elusive foe who knows the terrain intimately. They will be trying to counter an image of Americans as big, bumbling and naïve. They will walk around that inhospitable land, weighted down with protective clothing and equipment, like people walking on the moon.

Their mission is to fight the demons, in all our names. Will we send them to fight until we are all exhausted?

We all – on both sides - say the battle needs to be fought. We always say that. We all say that they did something to us – a decade ago, a generation ago, a hundred generations ago. We’ve all done these things to each other. We are each other’s demons.

And the jewel in the cave? Someday we will happen across it.

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