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When the Dead Have No Say
Official Washington is buzzing about "metrics." Can the war in Afghanistan be successful?
Don't ask the dead.
Days ago, under the headline "White House Struggles to Gauge Afghan Success," a New York Times story made a splash. "As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan buildup, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won."
Don't ask the dead. They don't count.
The Times article went on: "Those ‘metrics' of success, demanded by Congress and eagerly awaited by the military, are seen as crucial if the president is to convince Capitol Hill and the country that his revamped strategy is working."
Don't ask the dead. They won't have a say.
"Without concrete signs of progress, Mr. Obama may lack the political stock -- especially among Democrats and his liberal base -- to make the case for continuing the military effort or enlarging the American presence."
Don't ask the dead. They can't hear you.
"We all share the president's goal of succeeding in Afghanistan," said Senator John Kerry. "The challenge here is how we are going to define success in the medium term, given the difficult security environment we face."
Don't ask the dead. You can't hear them.
The White House "struggles to gauge Afghan success." People in the middle of the Afghan war struggle to survive.
A new ceiling of 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan hasn't been reached yet, but leaks are now telling us that the Pentagon's top commander there will soon request 45,000 more. Apparently, escalating the warfare is much more attractive to Washington's policymakers than actually challenging the main supporters of the Taliban in Afghanistan -- the Pakistani government.
"With the U.S. relationship with Pakistan still locked in a cold war embrace that accedes to Pakistani demands at the expense of Afghanistan, establishing a metric for anything is useless without reassessing the underlying assumptions," Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald said last week. They're authors of the new book "Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story," published after nearly 30 years of research.
"With Pakistan's creation of the Taliban, America's concept of ‘winning' entered a complicated phase that continues to haunt American decision-making to its core," Gould and Fitzgerald added. "Pakistani intelligence knows full well the American political system, its history of compliance with their wishes and the lack of appreciation for Afghan independence. America's war in Afghanistan is an ongoing bait and switch where the U.S. fights against its own interests and Pakistan plays the Beltway like a violin."
Gould and Fitzgerald contend: "The only metric that matters is how far Pakistan's military has moved from supporting Islamic extremism. With the insider relationship the United States has with Pakistan's military intelligence, that should not be a difficult metric to establish."
Meanwhile, few Democrats with high profiles can bring themselves to challenge President Obama's military escalation in Afghanistan. But an important statement has just come from John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party.
"Enough is enough," Burton wrote in an August 11 email blast that went to party activists statewide. "It's time we learned the lessons of history. The British Empire, the most powerful empire in the world, could not subdue Afghanistan. Neither could the Soviet Union, the second most powerful country at that time and next-door neighbor to Afghanistan. Two of the great militaries in history found Afghanistan easy to conquer but impossible to hold. It's time the people of Afghanistan assumed full control of their own country. It's time for American troops to come home -- not only from Iraq, but from Afghanistan too. And the first step is an exit strategy."
Burton made a key connection between the soaring costs of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan and the domestic economy: "Already, $223 billion that could have gone to things like health care reform has been sunk into this war. . ."
Routinely, the dominant political and media calculus renders the dead as digits and widgets, moved around on spreadsheets and news pages. The victims of war are hardly seen as people by the numbed sophisticates who can measure just about anything but the value of a human life.
The dead can't speak up. What's our excuse?
- Posted in
29 Comments so far
Show AllThe combat veterans of the war are the closest you can get to speaking to the dead.
Hoa binh
Just as the US Government is throwing good money after bad money on Wall Street, it is throwing good bodies after dead bodies in Afghanistan. The argument that the US can't leave Afghanistan because that would dishonor those who have already died there continues to be a US rallying cry.
Afghanistan is looking more and more like a neo-Vietnam. First Johnson needed 10,000 more troops, then 10,000 more, then more. Before long there were half a million troops over there, taking and inflicting casualties.
Rather than a jungle quagmire we seem to be heading toward a mountainous desert quagmire.
When will we ever learn? Rhetorical question with a solid answer: apparently never.
Once again, PP you have hit the nail on the head. I believe that humans have not learned their lesson, not because of the horror of war but because we have not experienced the deepest intrinsic expressions of life that would be intolerable if lost. Peace, not the absence of war, love, without an object, compassion, an effortless unlearned flow of infinite caring and the discipline to not re-identify with personality. these natural expressions are without measure and stand by them self, without the need of comparison for their existence. Anything short of this will be trivialized and lost.
Norman Solomon laments, justifiably, the worsening situation in Afghanistan and at the end of his article asks "What's our excuse"?. That question can and should be applied to Solomon himself as he knew [or at least should have known] if he had listened to the content of Obama's speeches during the 2008 campaign that Obama's intention if elected president was to indeed amp up the escalation in Afghanistan, the so-called "good war"' as opposed to Iraq and because of that reason should have backed an antiwar third party candidate. Was Solomon's excuse that he thought he could either trust Obama to "do the right thing" or perhaps it was that he thought if enough people protested enough then Obama, that [alleged] man of the people, would listen to their pleas. If so, Solomon's trust in Obama was sorely misplaced as Obama seems determined to become the next LBJ in the Middle East. It is also doubtful if a moribund antiwar movement will have much of an influence in persuading the militant and compliant Obama from not obeying the wishes of his military commanders.
Solomon cites such war supporters as John Kerry who seems to have forgotten that his younger self had spoken out against another imperial misadventure in a place called Vietnam. John Burton chairman of the California Democratic Party, notes that "it is time for American troops to come home" while apparently never noting, like Kerry, that American troops had no business and no right in invading and occupying a country in the first place that never threatened anyone in these United States.
Will Obama listen to his military commanders or his conscience? If American history is any indication, American imperialism will probably win out over any moral pangs of conscience that would, if that is possible, trouble Obama.
1- can the war in Afghanistan be successful? No war can be successful, unless the very first war is recognized as a mistake and the result of this mistake is that All future wars are averted. Well that didn't happen did it?
2- don't ask the dead? Which dead, the dead dead or the zombie dead, as in the sleep walking public led by lobotomized politicians?
Without a willingness to deliberately engage in Sisyphean military efforts, one's manliness and qualifications for leadership might be called into question, so batting the hornet's nest is a challenge to which every leader must rise when dared. That these symbolic demonstrations involve real human lives is a given for every political question whatsoever – and there will be fatal consequences for some, "sacrifice" in the symbolic language of politics.
Say the word and we will hit the streets.
the only way we will leave the af/pak pipelineistan region is when the american peeps finally stand up and say " NO WAY-WE WON'T GO " short of that there will be endless wars, with america leading nato as the new GLOBOCOP.
the only way we will leave the af/pak pipelineistan region is when the american peeps finally stand up and say " NO WAY-WE WON'T GO " short of that there will be endless wars, with america leading nato as the new GLOBOCOP.
The only way that will happen is if there's a draft. As long as we have a volunteer army the "american peeps" won't care enough to "stand up and say 'NO WAY-WE WON'T GO'".
The oilgarchs have bankrupt America rather than share a pipeline with Afghanistan.
Who has any money to buy their plunder gas now?
But we have to be "successful" in "stabilizing" Afghanistan for the glorious pipeline and resource transportation network to circumvent those bad ol' Russkies and Chinese.
The official propaganda of course, is that those bad ol Talebans and Al Kayder terrsts are a threat to the region and the glorious US of A and we have to make the region and the world "safe for democracy" and all that BS.
You know, they treat their women badly and believe in medieval fairy tales. We have a "responsibility" to civilize these tribal savages and they will thank us later for it (see Rudyard Kipling and Lord Cromer). Even if we have to kill a couple more million of them to do it. (although we don't bother to count their dead, as they are not considered real human beings) Just like the previous English-speaking imperialists did over a hundred years ago right?
Gould and Fitzgerald conclude "America's war in Afghanistan is an ongoing bait and switch, where the US fights against its own interests and Pakistan plays the Beltway like a violin." Very close, but not a full cigar.
If I am Unocal, Boeing, Halliburton, General Electric, or any of the myriad third party contractors reaping millions and billions of dollars annually from the Pentagon's public appropriations and the intelligence community's black budget to prosecute the Af/Pak military fiasco, America's war is very much in my interest. It is also very much in the interest of that 10%-20% slice of the general public who love sabre rattling, shock and awe reality television, knee jerk militarism spiced with imagery of American frontier exceptionalism, and taunting all who disagree with them with accusations of wimpishness and/or lack of patriotism. In Afghanistan, the US does not "fight against its own interests" from their perspective, nor from the prospective of the GOP neocons and Democratic Party hawks who thrive upon fear mongering.
But Gould and Fitzgerald are absolutely correct when they analyze the Af/Pak quagmire as a direct result of perpetual Pakistani political manipulation of the US military and US intelligence establishments. For an exhaustive account of those machinations, from Jimmy Carter through Reagan/Bush through Clinton up to 9/11, check out Steven Coll's fine book "Ghost Wars."
Ah yes, 9/11.
Want to break the impasse Gould and Fitzgerald describe? Well, President Obama still has a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity still to do so. And antiwar members of Congress and the progressive grassroots should goose the White House in that direction.
Suggestion: In the next Pentagon/national intelligence budget appropriation, mandate declassification of all the materials withheld from the 911 Commission by the Bush/Cheney White House concerning involvement by the Pakistani ISI in the September 11th highjackings and the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl shortly thereafter (who was exploring that link between the ISI and Al Qaeda). While Congress is at it, declassify all the pre-9/11 contacts with Saudi and Israeli intelligence as well.
Shine some light on that history from eight years ago, and you might be surprized how fast it will become politically expedient - very much in the US national interest - to dramatically reassess our disasterous policy decisions of the recent past and withdraw from Afghanistan immediately.
If we've been being played like a violin for all these years by the Pakistani ISI, then let the public at least read the score before we vote on more funding for the war machine.
Bill from Saginaw
"It is also very much in the interest of that 10%-20% slice of the general public who love sabre rattling, shock and awe reality television, knee jerk militarism spiced with imagery of American frontier exceptionalism, and taunting all who disagree with them with accusations of wimpishness and/or lack of patriotism."
Maybe they'd change their minds if they were on the receiving end. The ONLY way this USA THUGGERY is going to stop is if the USA gets its ass kicked up between its shoulder blades a few times. That 10-20 percent slice needs to experience a little shock and awe and collateral damage of its own and maybe it'd change its collective mind. You have to love all these pro war assholes that have never seen war.
That's a tempting thought, but one that consistently fails.
Take for example the 9/11/01 incident. Whether one believes that was US black ops, bin Ladin & Al Qaeda, or some collusion between them, the reaction of the American population was clear. I had not seen such a childish profusion of flags and flag waving in close to 40 years.
One might note that regimes in postcolonial areas seldom act humanely, despite - if you will - centuries of abuse.
Apparently violence seldom creates awareness.
Apparently violence destroys feeling.
To generalize grossly and putting aside for the moment the resulting unfairness to many individuals, the American population has trouble understanding these things because they are badly mistreated but superficially rich. They have little opportunity work a decent job, buy a home, receive medical care, and raise their children. Despite these privations, they are told that they are prosperous and and even think that they are prosperous because they can buy foreign-built trinkets at prices artificially lowered by the American military's depredations abroad. When they find they are not satisfied, a river of antidepressants, designer-drugs, and erection-producing drugs are available to numb or distract them - for a price.
Interestingly, one gleans a pretty good model of the American psyche from old feminist texts - Betty Friedan or Marilyn French et al's The Women's Room. The life is not the same, by any means, but the sense of malaise they talk about is very revealing, only they have the odd impression that it applies only to women prostituted at home with no identity except in relation to sons or husbands, and not to men prostituted at work, with no identity except as relates to their positions.
The European empire is not dead, the American empire is just the latest extension of it.
The rubes who trained to become thugs who died in Afghanistan died for Bush's lies. Truth is reality. Lies are nothing. U.S. soldiers died for nothing.
USA GO HOME YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU ! ! !
All the "heroes" of all the recent American "Wars" on Islam were/are war criminals.
Those subtle neocons marinated the War on Islam for Israeli hegemony and played the Goyim like a violin.
neocons? Now, if you had not noticed, we have a new regime: The Obamacons.
Please help me, I cannot tell the difference between the Bushcon and the Obamacon foreign policy.
Norman Soloman voted in favor of escalating the Afghan War as AN OBAMA DELEGATE during the primaries when he could have supported Kucinich or McKInney or Nader without consequence.
A Chavez or an Ahmajinedad are dismissed as madmen for their rhetoric and beliefs..yet.
The President of the United States of America, the so called beacon of Liberty and self titled "leader of the free World" called on President Chirac in the prelude to war on Iraq imploring his help and claiming the West needed to do battle against the Satanic countries of Gog and Magog.
This according to a recent news article quoting President Chirac. Indeed so mystified was Chirac by Bushes phone call, he had to ask his advisors exactly what President bush was referring to.
Now President Barack Obama is picking up from where his predecessor left off. Instead of disassociating himself and the Country from the lunatics in charge before him, President Obama promises more of the same and an EXPANSION of those wars.
'the numbed sophisticate who can measure just about anything but the value of a human life'---if they are Americans, life is 'cheap' to them: unless it is their own.
For most Americans, all though their history life, unless it belonged to them, was simply a comodity, measured by comparing the rate of return -v- the expenditure; compared to their percentage of the 'net return/profit'. The 'players' most often calling themselves the 'deciders', have very little personal risk---their lives or those of the ones 'they love' (today anyway)are protected by the corrupt system that puts them in the position to make those 'decisions'. How many people die, whether innocent or not, matters very little, and their history will bear that out. Americans are 'professional killers on extra large scales', and they can justify it with a 'whim'.
For almost a century they killed millions of Native Americans, with absolutely no remorse. They made it a 'national project', and took pride in it. But the blood 'stained their hands and turned their minds; they developed a taste for 'blood and death, death and blood'.
Then, they turned that trait upon themselves. They showed the world one weakness that they still have not over come. They showed the entire world that Americans are also capable of killing more of themselves, than all of the others combined; they did from 1861-65. They resolved very little from the conflict. That was before 'electronics'--- and hundreds of mass weapons of destruction that the participants of the last "civil war" could never have imagined.
Then they resumed killing others in many parts of the world. They never have shown much remorse---except for a few individuals---as a nation, they have shed 'oceans of blood'
The Americans are showing many of the same symptoms that took them to that level of destruction then. They also show a penchant for repeating the same mistakes. With this possibility in the realm of the plausible, the 'Dead will have a Say'--some day-------'they will say to the Americans who were killed by other Americans----we told you so.
And if the world is lucky, the Americans will kill enough of themselves to make the world a safer place for others to live.
Good Luck America, you need it.
Millions of dead Native Americans? You are not supposed to say this, because it is the truth.
We said it best in the 60's:
"The majority isn't silent.
The government is deaf..."
As long as we keep electing front men for our military-industrial complex, we won't see a change in our empire, oops...republic.
The argument that the U.S. can't leave Afghanistan because that would dishonor those who have already died there continues to be a US rallying cry.--raydelcamino Aug. 13th.I agree and it continues to defy common decency and common sense.The Bush Administration insists that history will prove that his illegal invasion of Iraq was justified, I wonder if the dead in that war would agree. Since the US government does not do body counts, we may never know how many dead have no say.
Apparently, any U.S. journalist must sign a pledge to spew the official story. Until General Musharraf was forced out, no story about Pakistan was complete without a reference to him as our "key ally in the war on terror." This is a strange description for the man who wouldn't allow us into the place where bin Laden was supposedly hiding.
One of the justifications for staying in Afghanistan and fighting the Taliban is that they are the primary force in the opium trade. No story about the Taliban in Helmand is complete without a reference to the Taliban and how the "insurgency is fuelled (or bankrolled) by drugs." Various stories have them making between $30 million and $400 million a year from drugs. It is never presented as a possibility that the Karzai govt. is "bankrolled" by drugs.
The NY Times last Monday revealed that the U.S. has added 50 names of "suspected" drug dealers tied to the Taliban to a "kill or capture" list. Funny, the day before in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, Elizabeth Rubin reported that the man who organized a campaign event for Karzai was Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, "the five-foot-tall ex-governor of Helmand and probably the country's most infamous drug trafficker." Karzai's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is also "suspected" of being one of the country's most powerful drug dealers. Are they on a hit list of "suspects"? Probably not.
So what do we have here? Our soldiers are shooting down the members of a gang of drug-running, cruel, woman-haters (the Taliban) while protecting a much larger gang of drug-running, cruel, woman-haters (Karzai and his warlord buddies.) It's not the fault of the grunts, they don't make the policy. Most of them probably truly believe they are defending the people of Afghanistan from monsters (and a few are probably caught up in their personal perverted macho vision quest.)
The NY Times doesn't try to resolve this. One of the services that the Times provides is to give more space to liars than to truth-tellers, bringing us confusion and irresolution, its main objective. The Times has always bravely called for war and then meekly criticized the results.
I spent 9 months in Vietnam in 1968 and that was too much. Some of us know that we cannot give up searching for peace even though we find ourselves up against the biggest war and propaganda machine in history. Every effort we make may end up saving one life, or a thousand lives. It's worth the effort. Let's keep trying.
The US policy is not merely that the dead don't count. It is also that the US won't count the dead, except for the minor fraction that died to kill others. The US has made no serious effort to resolve the full order of magnitude discrepancy in the various estimates of Iraqi dead due to the war. In a very literal sense, the US military does not know what it is doing.
I'm reading a book called Iraqi Girl {Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq} [developed by John Ross, published by Haymarket Books], which is a chronological collection of a blog kept by a teen-ager in Mosul (when there was electricity to run the computer, that is) from 2005 till recently. What with her speaking for the living and this article speaking for the dead, some filling-in is achieved of that void of silent suffering behind the "news" of what our military has been, is and will be doing in other peoples' lands. Indeed, one can ask what we can do on behalf of the victims of this nation's ongoing crimes against humanity. Can't really call them war crimes because one can't call what's going on 'war'. Maybe it's just more European emigrants continuing to 'discover' new territory the way they 'discovered' America - by killing or displacing people who got in their way, etc. Aha! Hip hip hooray! Eureka! We're discovering the Middle East! What style! What elan!