American foreign policy discussion forever contains two parallel paths: discussion, albeit often false, of authentic situations; and discussion, often truthful, of fictions.

This article seems to me a reasonably truthful discussion of fictions. It would be useful to acknowledge them as fictions.

For instance, we read that the McChrystal plan will

-- Anoint counterinsurgency
-- Embrace Bush's open-ended war as response to jihad
-- military might a principal instrument

Further, "No serious person thinks that Afghanistan . . . matters to the United States."

But empire and military might has been endemic to the States, which has invaded something somewhere every 2 years or so throughout its existence. "Counterinsurgency" suggests that the Afghani fighters work, rightly or wrongly, against a government of some legitimacy, when they straightforwardly resist an invasion. And CD'ers probably do not need to hear again, Obama's wars neé Bush's wars are in no way a response to jihad or jihadis.

And something about Afghanistan and the surrounding region makes it attractive to the US. Some fairly serious people have suggested that this has to do with oil and gas pipelines, Russian access to southern seas, and control over middle eastern resources.

While Bacevich makes some good points and I do not mean to minimize delusion as a factor in American foreign policy, to omit the practical reasons for this violence misframes American rapacity.

The American government appears constant in the bid for Lex Luthor-style world domination described as "The New American Century" by the Neocon group Ray McGovern calls "the loonies."

The American electorate chose 0bama to change this course, but 0 has worsted the most cynical fears: he has not compromised with the Neocon position nor simply maintained it, but actually extended and accelerated it.

The world must cease cooperation with Washington on many fronts:

-- Buy local & union to resist globalization
-- Reduce debt and move credit from lobbying banks
-- Cancel insurance, where possible
-- Divest from companies involved in war
-- Move off of the dollar standard
-- Local referenda for campaign reform: Democracy for the USA!
-- Direct action against hydrocarbon industries
-- Green housing
-- public transport

And, obviously, direct actions against the invasions.

If I could really describe the details, it would probably be too much to keep track of, let alone execute. But a central principal might run like this: We need to quit cooperating with and quit supporting the central imperial governments and economies in at least most things.

"As for the American people, they will be left to foot the bill."

Who's footing the bill? Some of us refuse to pay federal taxes.

Good comments Tonyryan except for agreeing with n60green.

Two parts of timeline:

1. In the month before 9/11, Karzai as UnoCal rep in Asia brought the Taliban leadership to Houston for wining and dining and signing - treaty for pipeline across Afghanistan(Pipelanistan). Taliban opted for 1 & 2 but not 3. They refused to sign such a treaty.

2. After 9/11 the Taliban was willing to turn over Osama (Bin Laden, that is) to the US. Only condition was that they had to provide proof of Al-Quaeda and Osama's involvement in the event. The US could not & did not do so. Rather strange in light of almost immediate "identification" of hijackers.

And so we invaded and occupied (and didn't bother to really go after Osama Bin Laden).

'Oil, Pipelines & Heroin get my vote

I'm with n60green.

Don't be so pompous, guys. This is not a noble or intellectual discourse. We are sliding and tripping in the effluent now engulfing us in the wake of the rampaging war machine, and a little levity helps us maintain cerebral equilibrium.

There are a couple of points made earlier I would like to endorse more succinctly:

(1) Since 1946 the US has invaded 44 sovereign nations; some of them repeatedly;

(2) The US has bases in 130 nations (not 100).

(3) One of the strategic planners and implementers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, and he works directly for David Rockefeller; whose alliances include the Rothschild family and Rupert Murdoch.

(4) Since before candidacy, Brzezinski has been Obama's foreign affairs adviser.

So, the chances of Obama seeking peace? Absolutely zero. Furthermore, all US news, TV, print, and cinematic, media is controlled by Israel. We may as well accept that the Nobel prizes are yet another casualty of the Elite's globalisation.

But Wayout, your despair disturbs me. Sure, there is no entity in the US that can defeat this insane war cabal, but 5.7 billion of the world's people live outside of the US, and some of these people are better informed, sharper, and more cunning than your enemy. America's real Achilles heel is its cultural insularity and a superiority complex, believing all knowledge to be American.

Help will come, but it won't be from within.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, probably Iran, Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia where U.S. forces are massing for an "expedition" into Venezuela, and on and on and on.

All of this will continue until the U.S. runs out of willing creditors and decides to just print and print and print more money resulting in massive inflation, so massive that even the U.S. government printing presses will not be able to run fast enough and long enough to pay for more guns and tanks and airplanes. We will be bled white.

Another use for the war in Afghanistan was pointed out in the report on Iran's nuclear development activities, "Meeting the Challenge: Time is running out", written by two U.S. senators and a retired general:

"The Pentagon can maintain tactical and even strategic surprise by bringing in troops and materiel to the region [around Iran] under the cover of Afghanistan."

The report was linked from a CD article. It's at:
http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/BPC%20Iran%20report%20final%20pdf.pdf

THE PIPELINE!!!

Don't fret.....the population or "people" aren't nearly as stupid as you perceive them to be, nor do they need to be "informed" by those who perceive their intellect as superior.

"We all need to be informed for a democracy to work. We are a minimum of 30 years behind the curve. What's worse, is that many Americans seem proud of their ignorance." Wayout

So...how do you convince people they need to be informed? As for me, I'm gonna think about it, and pray about it. It's a very important moment. What will our karma be if we fail to do this? I have no answer, but I wonder. As bad as it is here, it might be tougher elsewhere. It might eg be tougher with Berlusconi as our head of state. Wayout, you leave open a possibility for the internet, and I agree that some solidarity might arise via this medium. As bad as 9/11 was, afterwards I was suddenly reading a ton of great writers that I'd never encountered before. I used to read Institute for Policy Studies stuff in the 80s and iirc in the late 70s...you think I didn't despair in regard to how general knowledge lagged in the US?? We were in the same trouble back then, but now right down this middle column here in CD are nothing BUT informed great writers.

I tried to figure a way all day yesterday to read the latest George Lakoff, but why didn't I go to his site? Because of some block. Yeah, the blocks. The stubbornesses. I'm lookin for Lakoff to get some insight on the tea partyers, cause we gotta figure out how to win'em over. They're prey to the same propaganda machine, aren't they? Do you really believe it's there? Then, they're victims too. Anyway, I can get a Lakoff article for FREE from Sept and that's pretty good. Anyone who bothers to do so could get another little handle...could get a little more empowered. Alternet isn't asking for any dough for that article.

We all have imperfections we can work on, and maybe when they're better the tea partyers'll listen more. Who knows? I wonder in your case: have you heard of Rupert Sheldrake or Norman Macbeth [Harvard trained lawyer who ended up writing about evolution]? Just these two guys might convince you that perhaps...on this issue...you should give conservatives a little more slack for reacting the way they do. To me even this below blows things apart we've been hearing for yrs
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/02.html

Anywhere you can give'm slack...where they really deserve it...I say let'm have it. I say go look for it. Let's go down being polite, it's so hard it's gotta be right. I give Alan Colmes credit for doing this. Look at it the way they must see it. One little thing comes outta the cognitive school and it gets blown up like some fad...and with fads as you know everyone goes around doing mimesis. The meritocracy's not immune. The meritocracy is rife with it! But then you turn around and the modular brain theories get really questioned heavily by "An Anthropoligist on Mars." [I guess you've figured out my idea of solidarity coming out of the net might rest on some agreement re the nature of mind & psyche...or some new insight on'em...or some agreement on the magnitude of our ignorance. I know, a long shot.] We don't know if the universe'll slow down or not. Now they say no, but most of my life they said it could. Quantum physics doesn't support the Higher Power concept anymore than it supports the Trinity concept...it only tells us one electron travels on many different paths at the same time!!! Think of where this puts us. It puts us all almost IN THE SAME PLACE in terms of our ability to conceive the nature of the place in which we find ourselves. So, IMO open it up. IMO keep it open. Let'm believe what they wanna believe WHENEVER it isn't on the triage list (war & healthcare), cause re many, many things we don't know jack either.

George C. Brown - The analysis of Bacevitch is as accurate as accurate can be! We, as a nations and its peoples need to pay attention!

With all due respect to the wonderful posts here; the United States is finished. The intellectual capabilities of our fellow citizens is 30 years behind where we need to be to tackle the majority of the issues before us. The HOPE we have that there will be an outpouring of support for reasonable, just and democratic decisions is a long dead pipe dream. We have not done our homework for so long that we can't even understand the problem. Cognitive dissonance is something we have created for ourselves. We All have been participating in this sham from day one. We All have been desensitized to violence. Just to survive, we have been forced to accept and internalize the joke that we call Capitalism. By paying taxes, each of us have directly killed innocent people. Our taxes support the psychological poisoning of our kids who join the military, and the paying of generals who produce nothing more than more destruction and lies. What a waste. U.S. citizens know little about the crimes against our people by the Israeli Zionists (neocons) who run our country, and the list is long. Ask a U.S. citizen how many nukes Israel has. And, how many they have admitted having. Ask them about the Liberty. Israel is no friend of the U.S. yet we fight their wars, feed their kids and send them billions in weapons with which they terrorize innocents. But, Americans don't seem interested in what the rest of the world thinks. Don't Blame Obama. Our democracy disappeared years ago. Some just haven't recognized it yet. When more than a handful of us object, we will begin to see the new weapons for domestic crowd control, here at home. Our national security apparatus has its tentacles in every aspect of civil life in the United States. They have the biggest guns and all the prisons. Full Spectrum Dominance should be understood in its greater context. Civil unrest surely has been thought of by these clever idiots. The Military Industrial Corporate Complex has run roughshod over every aspect of civil life. There is no one alive who can stand against them, and remain alive. Common Dreams posters; consider, in numbers, how many enlightened and educated people there really are in the U.S. I don't mean to be demeaning, but I find most U.S. citizens totally ignorant on the critical issues facing us today. Climate change, collapsing fisheries, loss of arable land, peace, justice, the rule of law, international law, torture, evolution, deforestation, crimes against women, clean water, depleted uranium, health care, foreign relations. These are not disjointed and esoteric topics. We all need to be informed for a democracy to work. We are a minimum of 30 years behind the curve. What's worse, is that many Americans seem proud of their ignorance. HOPE? Please! What are we hoping for? That we'll immediately become knowledgeable, wise and educated while watching Nascar, sports, FOX news, Oprah, Dancing with the Stars? Sorry, but I just turned 50 and I see nothing in the offing that suggests we can, or should, expect any change anytime soon. I hope I'm wrong. But I have been paying pretty close attention to these aspects of our society for a long time now. Intellectually, I see the closing down of our society, the loss of liberty and the theft of the fruits of our labor. Slow, deliberate change will never oust the psychopaths in power. Ever. I'm finished with the U.S. But, for those remaining, I would suggest a more plausible strategy for creating the country you want. The U.S. government is a completely and utterly failed institution. There is a near zero chance that it can be changed. The options for real democracy dwindle by the day. The internet may help, but presently, it serves merely as a distraction. At present, the viable choices available for honest change aren't looking too pretty.

"It's going to tough being a 'War President' with a 'Peace Prize.' "
Cornel West

"Instead of fighting an endless hot war in a vain effort to eliminate the jihadist threat, the United States should wage a cold war to keep the threat at bay. Such a strategy worked before. It can work again....
"In short, the key to winning the current competition is to live up to the ideals that we profess rather than compromising them in the name of national security....
"The war we're fighting can become plausible, sustainable and even morally defensible.
It just has to go from hot to cold."
Andrew Bacevich
"Let's Beat the Extremists Like We Beat the Soviets"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/25/AR2009092502011.html?sid=ST20090925035...

"In short, time is on our side, not on the side of those who proclaim their intention of turning back the clock to the fifteenth century. The ethos of consumption and individual autonomy, privileging the here and now over the eternal, will conquer the Muslim world as surely as it is conquering East Asia and as surely as it has already conquered what was once known as Christendom. It’s the wreckage left in the wake of that conquest that demands our attention. If the United States today has a saving mission, it is to save itself. Speaking in the midst of another unnecessary war back in 1967, Martin Luther King got it exactly right: “Come home, America.” The prophet of that era urged his countrymen to take on “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”

Dr. King’s list of evils may need a bit of tweaking—in our own day, the sins requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first heal ourselves, King remains today the prophet we ignore at our peril. That Barack Obama should fail to realize this qualifies as not only ironic but inexplicable."
Andrew Bacevich
"The War We Can’t Win
Afghanistan & the Limits of American Power"
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2609

I've heard Bacevich called many things on the internet. "Unreadable" is a new one on me.
A new book is exciting news.

Oh yeah, I left out the pipeline.

Good chronology, eileen. I had forgotten, if I'd ever read, about the role of 'channels built with U.S. money' maintained/established by Pakistan. I had read in "A Thousand Brilliant Suns" that a lot of the Taliban come to power were Afghan refugees who'd fled to Pakistan (growing up in refugee camps there), and who then returned.

I'm not one to spend much time looking at poll results but I was SHOCKED by a few of the numbers.

Some highlights:

As of Aug. 31 ZOGBY found...

- 86% of Liberals APPROVE of the job Obama is doing.

- 74% of African-Americans APPROVE of the job Obama is doing.

http://www.zogby.com/news/readnews.cfm?id=1737

As of Oct. 12 Rasmussen found...

- 74% found Obama to be "Politically Liberal".

- 25% believe increases in government spending will hurt the economy.

- 38% believe global warming caused by humans.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/scoreboards/
by_the_numbers2/by_the_numbers

Ann Jones, humanitarian aid worker and author of "Kabul in Winter" recently wrote:

"...you can't understand the Taliban without knowing about America's covert operations in the region in the 1980s. Back then, President Ronald Reagan's administration, mainly through the CIA, used the Pakistani Intelligence services to fund, arm, and train Afghan and foreign Islamist jihadis to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Pakistan subsequently used "channels built with U.S. money" to install in Afghanistan a friendly government -- the Taliban.

"Later, after the George W. Bush administration invaded the country and the U.S. ousted the Taliban, it installed Hamid Karzai as president and returned many of the old Islamist jihadis to power in his government. Thus, this peculiar, well-established fact underlies the current war in Afghanistan: the United States sponsored both sides.

"What's wrong with this new Obama strategy? For one thing, in some areas the local Pashtun population has instead turned out to fight against the foreign invaders, side by side with the Taliban (who, it should be remembered, are mostly local Pashtuns). They're as fed up as anybody with the puppet Karzai. Like millions of other Afghans, they say Karzai has done nothing for the people. But saddled with history, Karzai remains the horse the U.S. rode in on.

"Only the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has called, year after year, for a moral accounting. Its surveys of Afghan citizens consistently find that the people want lasting peace, and to attain it, they would prefer some sort of truth and reconciliation procedure, like the one that took place in South Africa, to cleanse the country and set it on an honest intellectual and moral footing."

Excerpted July 18, 2009: http://www.wearewideawake.org/

"To all the Sharp Dressed Soldiers Shipping Out"

"...maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis."

Finally, AB actually offers real reasons for continued US military action in Afghanistan.

Except, what needs more explaining is why is Afghanistan key to maintaining a global military presence, since we're in 100+ countries already?

And why is Afghanistan important for configuring US forces for global power projection? Seriously - is there anyone in the world who doesn't understand that we can and just might blow you up any damn time we feel like it?

And why is Afghanistan needed to employ those forces to intervene on a global basis? We're deployed on a global basis 24/7 already, including space.

False reasons all, clearly. So: why are we really killing, being killed and spending billions in Afghanistan? Is it possible, as sick and twisted as it sounds, that the only reason we're there is profits? I mean, without Afghanistan, our private military contractors will be out of perpetual 'wars' from which they profit so greatly.

It's not like it'd be the first time in history profiteers perpetuated death and destruction for as long as possible... Do any of us believe Big Weapons is willing to watch trillions disappear without a fight to the finish? Just look at the battle Big Health Insurance is waging - now multiply that by 100...

I'm not gonna drink it, Mordechai.

"If the Afghan war then becomes the consuming issue of Obama's presidency - as Iraq became for his predecessor, as Vietnam did for Lyndon Johnson, and as Korea did for Harry Truman - the inevitable effect will be to compromise the prospects of reform more broadly." AJB

Yep, that's right. "Occupation" will keep turning'em off. Thus, number one, you have the
non-effective factor.

Number two, whether right or wrong we the people begin to suspect the status quo actually involves the Enterprise paradigm of participating in the full-on shadow economy sector/dimension of shock doctrine [ok this time we simply ship the dope and don't buy it with arms, and yes you're right, there WERE those "sticky bricks" back in Vietnam too]. IOW the purpose militarily is only the status quo, and...we are buying alliegance by facilitating a dope industry that tears up lives. So, we're horning in on the tear-up-lives business, but all we get is a status quo wherein Afghan women say there is more terror than under the Taliban. Is this a good investment even by the standards of the most absurd angles shock doctrine proposes? No. It's a triage problem--we get out. Forget about this stuff. Turn the shock doctrine AROUND in all its phases on this planet, make a big noise about doing so, and convert some of those al Qaeda lovers back to our side for cryin out loud. Yeah, we'll suspect until someone explains this away...

Who is the Enemy in Afghanistan?
By ERIC WALBERG 5/28/08
http://www.counterpunch.org/walberg05282008.html

This is a pivotal moment in US history. Americans owe it to themselves to be clear about what is at issue.

This is something the majority of Americans do not possess. We are destroying ourselves and it doesn't take more than a handful of brains to figure that out. Yet most Americans cannot. We will continue drinking the Kool-Aid with little or no protest because we prefer a quiet and subdued suicide.

"...Or will he reject that plan and accept defeat, thereby inviting the recurrence of 9/11 on an even larger scale?"

Bacevich's article is predicated that the Taliban are out to get the US. A false, and immature belief.

As if any CD readers need to be reminded, the Taliban have no beef with the US. They have reiterated this endlessly, wishing only to be left alone. The Taliban are a resistance group, not terrorists.

Equating the Taliban with 9/11 is also a falsehood, as to date, NO link between Al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden has been made with 9/11. The Taliban were merely accessories in this so-called link, with ZERO evidence linking them with 9/11.

Now it may be that the Taliban harbored A-Q training camps that led to the bombing of the USS Cole, the only terrorist event that the US has a warrant for A-Q leaders. However, Bacevich makes no such association, and as such, his article is ultimately deeply flawed and unreadable.

mr bacevich offers a sober and, for american corporate media, a somewhat stark and straight forward analysis of the truth behind the afghan turkey shoot - alas - though his reasoning is solid and honest - as it always is (he is a man of great integrity who has served his country with distinguished honor) there is a stumble point of great magnitude.

we should also note that mr bacevich lost a son in this conflict and he knows the heartbreak of war on a personal level which i think only garners more attention to his comments

thirdly, he is an educated man and he is thoughtful about his writings - there is a lot to be learned in his words

he sets a blunt tone right off the hop: "No serious person thinks that Afghanistan - remote, impoverished, barely qualifying as a nation-state - seriously matters to the United States"

then he develops his analysis around the truth of the occupation - that being that obama is in a bit of a pinch as he mulls over his next step in afghanistan, correctly describd by the author as being "remote, impoverished, barely qualifying as a nation-state"

the decision mr bacevich says has been framed as a choice that will either support the bush creation of war without end against enemies undefined or it will be a total surrender and an invitation to further attacks of the 9/11 ilk presumably by these persons unknown

he is referring to the political framing of the question

and he is quite right in that assessment of the situation

further he notes the pressure being applied by the hawks (often chickenhawks) is to make a quick decision. hey no need to think war over carefully is there....

i have two problems with the analysis:

1. this is not as disjointed a war as it would appear. this is not a war about afghanistan, as mr b suggests, at all. in fact it is simply the bad luck of those folks to live in this area.

this is not a war about exacting revenge for 9/11 either - nor is it a war about preventing future "attacks"

this is a war for the control of gas and oil in the mid-east and eurasia. this is a war the brits fought when they were the hegemonic leaders of the west (their enemy was germany) and it is the war we fight now

we want the oil and gas and we want to run pipelines through afghanistan - hence we are in iraq, afghanistan, threatening iran and pakistan

the rest of the oil producing countries are already under our control, these are the last holdouts

we want the oil and gas for ourselves but further we want to deny them to our economic enemies in russia and china

as chomsky says: even if america ran on 100% solar energy we would still be there for that reason

whoever gains control of the oil and gas will be the next hegomonic power or in the case of the us it will extend our reign as bully to the world - slaughterer of peasants for empire - for some years

the other issue i have with mg b's article is this: 9/11 was an inside job, not an attack by arabs unknown but an attack committed by corporate persons unknown right here at home - most of us now agree on that - and rather than inviting further attacks from "persons unknown" (read ghosts) it shows how far the hawks in the united states will go to create their unending wars

killing a few thousand americans and millions of arab would be to these warmongering racists, i am sure, "a small price to pay"

the situation is even more stark than mr b suggests and it is this: are we going to continue to allow the psychopaths in the corporations, think tanks and the military to continue the war for the oil and gas brutally under the banner of freedom and democracy

or, are we not

simple really...

the other element of the afghan situation not mentioned is of course the heroin. heroin that is protected by our forces, sold by the cia and then the profit cash is laundered through the all too compliant wall street ponzy scheme otherwise known as the stock market

as we all know, cash makes the world go round...

Good comments, freepressmyass.

I only disagree with one sentence - "They've lost their minds."

Maybe so, but they are all laughing on their way to the bank.

And thank you, amitola, for the obvious - "Oil, gas (and pipelines) and heroin"

This is just an advertisement for Bacevich's new book, as it says in the bio at the end:

"His new book "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War'' is forthcoming."

Path?? We've been in the permanent war mode for most of the last hundred years and Obama will likely continue that MO in Afghanistan. But, let's be honest, these invasions of sovereign nations in the ME have nothing to do with 'keeping us safe at home' - and much more to do with increasing the stranglehold of the global corpora-fascists on the resources available in those areas: Oil, gas (and pipelines) and heroin.

More likely, the Obamanible Prexy War!

Very well put and my thoughts.Tony

So far Obama is relishing in the status quo. I don't expect him to alter this with Afghanistan.

I'm incredulous about Obama, Congress, and our courts determination to continue so many disasterous policies. They're methodically removing Constitutional powers for averge Americans.

To this, I say screw the paranoid national security, protect us from bad men hysteria. It's bullshit and I've had it. I truly don't need them to keep me safe.
I prefer to take my chances. If this is the trade off, they can keep it. Besides, I'm sure we'll all be fine. I'll get run over by a truck before getting killed in a terrorist attack.
They've ruined our lives by bleeding the treasury, spying on our every move, and stripping away our freedoms and rights. The worse this gets the more I see 9/11 as "their" (PNAC) baby. Nnthing's more important than freedom and liberty.

They've lost their minds. They're destroying this country in every way and I believe deep down they understand this. But still they plod along, shutting us out, craven for their own personal wealth and power. That's all I see of them lately.

Obama has already agreed to McChrystal's scheme to vacuum more wealth and power to the Military Industrial Complex and the Bankers who finance their madness.

The delay?

They're merely putting the finishing touches on the propaganda which will explain to the masses that Obama is implementing "change" in Afghanistan while simultaneously doing the exact same thing any bloodthirsty neo-con crank who occupied the office would do.

Sit back and enjoy the show.

It should be spectacular!

Professor Bacevich's observation that the United States may very well become a nation mired in endless war mirrors the title of one of Gore Vidal's books-Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Will this prospect enable the moribund antiwar movement to rise from its ashes or will it continue to remain mute as Barack Obama, like his predecessors, continues to allow American soldiers to be exploited for American imperialism and the American treasury becomes drained while US politicians decry that single payer is not financially sustainable?

"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all"-Tacitus

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent"-Isaac Asimov

What "lessons of 9/11?" How could anything the war pigs are suggesting have prevented 9/11? According to the official conspiracy Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11.

I guess the real lesson from 9/11, is that so many Americans are so fearful and gullible that they will agree to anything the war pigs propose..as long as there are wags out there to imply that our military predations have something to do with 9/11. Please stop furthering this nonsense.