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The Three Fallacies That Have Driven the War in Afghanistan
Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation.
Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction in US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping-up of the conflict. The populations of both countries are in close agreement. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 51 per cent of Americans say the war is "not worth fighting" and that ending the foreign occupation will "reduce terrorism". Only 27 per cent disagree. At the other end of the gun-barrel, 77 per cent of Afghans in the latest BBC poll say the on-going US air strikes are "unacceptable", and the US troops should only remain if they are going to provide reconstruction assistance rather than bombs.
But there is another side: General Stanley McCrystal says that if he is given another 40,000 troops – on top of the current increase which has pushed military levels above anything in the Bush years – he will "finally win" by "breaking the back" of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida.
How should Obama – and us, the watching world – figure out who is right? We have to start from a hard-headed acknowledgement. Every option from here entails a risk – to Afghan civilians, and to Americans and Europeans. It is not possible to achieve absolute safety. We can only try to figure out what would bring the least risk, and pursue it.
There is obviously a huge risk in sending an extra 40,000 machine-gun wielding troops into a country they don't understand to "clear" huge areas of insurgent fighters who look exactly like the civilian population, and establish "control" of places that have never been controlled by a central government at any point in their history.
Every military counter-insurgency strategy hits up against the probability that it will, in time, create more enemies than it kills. So you blow up a suspected Taliban site and kill two of their commanders – but you also kill 98 women and children, whose families are from that day determined to kill your men and drive them out of their country. Those aren't hypothetical numbers. They come from Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, who was General Petraeus' counter-insurgency advisor in Iraq. He says that US aerial attacks on the Afghan-Pakistan border have killed 14 al-Qa'ida leaders, at the expense of more than 700 civilian lives. He says: "That's a hit rate of 2 per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It's not moral." It explains the apparent paradox that broke the US in Vietnam: the more "bad guys" you kill, the more you have to kill.
There is an even bigger danger than this. General Petraeus's strategy is to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan. When he succeeds, they run to Pakistan – where the nuclear bombs are.
To justify these risks, the proponents of the escalation need highly persuasive arguments to show how their strategy slashed other risks so dramatically that it outweighed these dangers. It's not inconceivable – but I found that in fact the case they give for escalating the war, or for continuing the occupation, is based on three premises that turn to Afghan dust on inspection.
Argument One: We need to deprive al-Qa'ida of military bases in Afghanistan, or they will use them to plot attacks against us, and we will face 9/11 redux. In fact, virtually all the jihadi attacks against Western countries have been planned in those Western countries themselves, and required extremely limited technological capabilities or training. The 9/11 atrocities were planned in Hamburg and Florida by 19 Saudis who only needed to know how to use box-cutters and to crash a plane. The 7/7 suicide-murders were planned in Yorkshire by young British men who learned how to make bombs off the internet. Only last week, a jihadi was arrested for plotting to blow up a skyscraper in that notorious jihadi base, Dallas, Texas. And on, and on.
In reality, there are almost no al-Qa'ida fighters in Afghanistan. That's not my view: it's that of General Jim Jones, the US National Security Advisor. He said last week there were 100 al-Qa'ida fighters in Afghanistan. That's worth repeating: there are 100 al-Qa'ida fighters in Afghanistan. Nor is that a sign that the war is working. The Taliban or warlords friendly to them already control 40 per cent of Afghanistan now, today. They can build all the "training camps" they want there – but they have only found a hundred fundamentalist thugs to staff them.
Even if – and this is highly unlikely – you could plug every hole in the Afghan state's authority and therefore make it possible to shut down every camp, there are a dozen other failed states they can scuttle off to the next day and pitch some more tents. Again, that's not my view. Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, says: "As we disrupt [al-Qa'ida], they will seek other safe havens. Somalia and Yemen are potential al-Qa'ida bases in the future." The US can't occupy every failed state in the world for decades – so why desperately try to plug one hole in a bath full of leaks, when the water will only seep out anyway?
There are plenty of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan – but they are a different matter to al-Qa'ida. The latest leaked US intelligence reports say, according to the Boston Globe, that 90 per cent of them are "a tribal, localised insurgency" who "see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power". They have "no goals" beyond Afghanistan's borders.
Argument Two: By staying, we are significantly improving Afghan human rights, especially for women. This, for me, is the meatiest argument – and the most depressing. The Taliban are indeed one of the vilest forces in the world, imprisoning women in their homes and torturing them for the "crimes" of showing their faces, expressing their sexuality, or being raped. They keep trying to murder my friend Malalai Joya for the "crime" of being elected to parliament on a platform of treating women like human beings not cattle.
But as she told me last month: "Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords." Outside Kabul, vicious Taliban who enforce sharia law have merely been replaced by vicious warlords who enforce sharia law. "The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women," she said. Any Afghan president – Karzai, or his opponents – will only ever in practice be the mayor of Kabul. Beyond is a sea of warlordism, as evil to women as Mullah Omar. That is not a difference worth fighting and dying for.
Argument Three: If we withdraw, it will be a great victory for al-Qa'ida. Re-energised, they will surge out across the world. In fact, in November 2004, Osama bin Laden bragged to his followers: "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen [jihadi fighters] to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qa'ida" in order to make generals race there, and we cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses – without their achieving anything of note!" These wars will, he said, boost al-Qa'ida recruitment across the world, and in time "bankrupt America". They walked right into his trap.
Yes, there is real risk in going – but it is dwarfed by the risk of staying. A bloody escalation in the war is more likely to fuel jihadism than thwart it. If Obama is serious about undermining this vile fanatical movement, it would be much wiser to take the hundreds of billions he is currently squandering on chasing after a hundred fighters in the Afghan mountains and redeploy it. Spend it instead on beefing up policing and intelligence, and on building a network of schools across Pakistan and other flash-points in the Muslim world, so parents there have an alternative to the fanatical madrassahs that churn out bin Laden-fodder. The American people will be far safer if the world sees them building schools for Muslim kids instead of dropping bombs on them.
He can explain – with his tongue dipped in amazing eloquence – that trying to defeat al-Qa'ida with hundreds of thousands of occupying troops and Predator jets is like trying to treat cancer with a blowtorch. Now, that really would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.
- Posted in
42 Comments so far
Show Allsee pepe escobar democracynow.org 10/19
currently dick armey is on cspan promoting
FREDOMWORKS the rights production company
for the propaganda that is circulated
endlessly by so called conservative
bloggers and email lists what tripe
who will be the last schmuck who believes
repugs stand for smaller govt?
google control fraud theory
click on encyclopedia of white collar crime
by jurg gerber and eric jensen
all you need to know is written in the google
preview
also see frontline tuesday night
the warning pbs online
I have no more questions
only answers
the ponzi that is the american govt dwarfs
madoff, sept 2001 and the election fraud of 2000
Hari is getting close to figuring it all out.
The "Swamp" that needs to be drained is that of the US Empire. Remove the Stormtroopers, close all the bases, and clean up all the toxins they contain, and the vast majority of terrorism will stop because that vast majority is carried out by the US Empire.
Every person bent on controlling the planet is portrayed in print and celluloid as mad--perhaps very intelligent, but deranged by his/her hegemonic goal nonetheless. What makes the US Imperial goal of "full-spectrum domination" any different? Ins't it just as mad? The current US Empire's leaders are no different from Dr. No, Auric Goldfinger, and the rest, while the Shock Doctrine is really no different from SPECTRE/SMERSH.
The difference between al-Qaeda and the above paragraph is they have stated NO desire to conquer the planet. Their stated desire is to defeat the US Empire or at least render its global hegemony impotent--pretty much the same goal the Star Wars Rebels had.
The US Empire's War OF Terror's goal is to maintain its level of hegemony while enriching Imperial benefactors like the Banksters and strengthening their position in the global Class War.
You know, those are neighbors of yours you are calling "Stormtroopers" You might want to knock off the silly Nazi analogies, they don't fit at all.
Henry 10:39 -------- Stormtroopers describes actions and attitudes which is appro po in the case of the Imperial Starwar forces, USA forces, Stalinist or Nazi forces.
Sorry Henry but your neighbors are imperial murderers and the sooner you and others realize this the sooner the USA can become sane, denial does not help.
All the dead are blood on the hands of your neighbors. This is why so many vets go mad, they know they have lost their souls to the imperial empire.
Actually, I was referring to the Galactic Empire's Stormtroopers because they are far more akin to the US Empire's. And, yes, I was once a Stormtrooper myself. That you are blind to the similarities is your problem, not mine.
Down here in the southernest California desert, this bumper sticker can be seen:
If you won't stand behind our troops, at least stand in front of them.
I suggest that people like this can be swayed to Progressive thinking, but not by the use of such 'Stormtrooper' language (I am with Henry8 on this).
I point out that there are a lot of these people around here.
America's problem needs multi-partisan attention.
Progressives nor Centrists nor Regressives alone can get America out of the muck.
It will take nearly everyone. Let's start finding ways to get what we want by getting what others want, instead of using language designed to insult (no matter how good it personally feels to vent).
Yes multi-partisanship is needed to defeat the corporate dictatorship ( is the word dictatorship prohibitively accurate?).
But self censorship and denial are not the way to acheive it.
Would you request the citizens of another country not to refer to their troops who on the whole think and act as stormtroopers, stormtroopers?
If a former stormtrooper can accept his own reality so can and should everyone else.
The basis of propaganda is refusing to accurately describe reality.
If the USA continues to view its soldiers as benign patriots, the nation will continue to be immensely delusional.
when you spend half of your income on the war machine you need a
good little war to justify yourself..If there is a hell who will go
there.. These people in the halls of power can not be believers in Christ or they would indeed be worried about the afterlife.. .
For centuries, the church has been the major source of education and advancement in undeveloped and underdeveloped countries.
In simplest terms, madressas are church schools. There are good madressas and there are bad madressas; just as there were (and are) good and bad western church schools.
My brother-in-law was offered a "scholarship" to a Sunni Madressa is the Sudan. His best friend is Vatican educated and working his way up through the Catholic Hierarchy. They are both from the same village. Both had the same lack of future in underdeveloped Tanzania.
Some madressas are recruiting and educating fighters for Islam. The Christian church recuited cursaders against Islam
Much of this nonsense in Europe ended when there was an alternative to the Catholic Church. Other church and secular education (public education) led to enlightenment.
We need to provide support to good madressas. We need to sponsor public education which is integrated with madressas.
In the west, early, progressive education had close ties to the church. Over time there has been separation.
We cannnot set up a western system and succeed overnight.
We need to encourage a local system which evolves.
It took centuries for some western women to gain rights we are trying to impose on Afghanistan. I am not saying the rights are bad; I am saying we need to develop a system that makes these right meaningful - not imposed.
Al Qa"ida is a terrorist group. They have no claims nor desires to "develop" Islamic Peoples. Most of their success has been in countires which lack a strong central government (Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, The Sudan) or which lack full control over their geographical boundaries (Indonesia, the Phillipines and Indonesia) They have not been sucessful in Iran and even in Iraq. I seriously doubt that they would survive a minute in culturally independent Kurdistan.
We are in Afghanistan for other reasons:
US control of energy in the Middle East and Central Asia
CIA control of poppy and the international drug trade
The US Defense industry is one of the few growth sectors in the US economy.
Millions of Americans are employed in the defense industry
Millions of Americans are employed in the military or as mercenaries.
Control of the energy sector means profits when energy prices go up or when energy prices go down (long and short)
Are we really there to fight Qa"ida, to fight and reform the Taliban, to liberate women from centruries of repression?
Duck 10:28 ------- I agree with your post except the continual stressing of the repression of women under the Taliban is a propaganda ploy.
As early as the 1920's the Shah of Afghanistan declared that all Afghans must wear western clothes.
As you probably know the socialist regime in Kabul, after the overthrow of the Shah, was implementing womens rights and agrarian reform before being overthrown by USA backed foundamentalists and landlords.
Other nations as Saudi Arabia, and Subsaharan nations may be considered more repressive than the Taliban.
As late as 1950 Gay men in England were being castrated by the courts.
Even the propaganda video I saw of a woman being executed in Kabul, was of a woman accused of murdering her husband; not unusual.
My pre wars experience of women in Afghanistan was that they were separate but not oppressed.
An especially fond memory was being awakened, in a barren landscape, from an opium overdose by a beautiful, dark, bespangled, ruby ringed, redclothed, Afghan gypsy woman flanked by her two younger lovers (sons?).
Say, that's quite a "memory" you have there, any chance I could get in on it?
Small town northeast of Kunduz while riding horseback, with another USAan towards the awesome Pamirs, December 1971.My saddlebags had only a chellum and Tarioc(sp?) in it. Want to see my old passport? Got a time machine?
She wanted money, I said I will trade for your huge Ruby Ring, end of conversation.
But not for her shaking me awake my bones might still be lying there now.
" We need to provide support to good madressas. We need to sponsor public education which is integrated with madressas.
In the west, early, progressive education had close ties to the church. Over time there has been separation."
First and foremost, the West needs to stop supporting, stop propping up massively corrupt, repressive, and torturing governments, Egypt and Pakistan for some examples.
"We cannnot set up a western system and succeed overnight.
We need to encourage a local system which evolves."
In many cases no "western" system is being set up. The massively corrupt governments that the US, and Europe, is propping up in countries are not setting up "western" systems. Islamist opposition groups get support because the ruling governments are massively corrupt. The non-elite go to madrassas because they have no (good / decent) alternatives. The elite of course go to elite private schools, and then from secondary school onwards, to private schools in England, in Europe.
I think these are powerful points (also see GreenDragon's comments). The thorny issue that never ceases to confound me is how to end the dominance of the MIC in the United States. I suspect the localized efforts described above would also be part of the solution here in America, ie; education, getting people out of the defense industry, starving the beast, besieging congressional reps of the MIC, etc. But one of the hard truths of history is that empires don't tend to stop what they're doing of their own volition. Rather, they overextend, atrophy from the inside, and implode/go bankrupt. Consider that even the British, after their country was devastated by WWII, persisted in imperial activity until it became fully untenable. And even now, they cling to remnants of their empire and piggy-back off of America's hegemony. At this point, any U.S. administration that behaves counter to the MIC is at risk of a one-term tenure (oh no!) or political violence (JFK). While Obama has said that he wants to end the mindset that gets us into wars, it's unlikely he's willing to risk being a one-term president by backing up his rhetoric. Sadly, few people who want so badly to be president in the first place are willing to sacrifice their ambition for the long-term good of the country. Either he will find a crafty, slow-moving way to disengage from Afghanistan (which won't really alter the dominance of the MIC in a significant way), or he will sink the country gradually into extending our current costly imperial quagmire. Truthfully, America and Americans have yet to receive the full comeuppance that often precedes a more sane approach to living in the world. But it's coming. It's going to hurt real bad. And it needs to happen.
The article is incorrect when it equates the insurgents with the Taliban, as Greenwald wrote the other day on CD only 10% of the resistent fighters are Taliban, the others are just defending their homes from occupation.
Article fails to mention that it was Bush policy to put the Warlords back in power after the Taliban vanquished them.
The Taliban brought peace and order ( albeit harsh order) to Afghanistan. The people appreciated not being murdered and raped by USA backed warlords.
One Afghan man said he rather have no music at the wedding party than have it be bombed.
And the women rather wear Burqas than be raped.
An article on CD a few weeks ago related that the Governor installed in Helmand, after the defeat of the Taliban, is a massive child raper.
To continually apply the adjectives vile and fanatical to the Taliban but not to the Imperial forces or the warlords is disingenuous.
"Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction in US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping-up of the conflict."
First, I don't see why Obama would suddenly decide to side with the American people? He hasn't up to now.
Secondly, there is no small military clique demanding a ramp up...thats such farcial crap, they have simply told this President what they need to fulfill his strategy. It is Obams choice, no one else's. He carries the blame or credit for every decision he makes.
This decision is his alone.
"Secondly, there is no small military clique demanding a ramp up...thats such farcial crap, they have simply told this President what they need to fulfill his strategy. It is Obams choice, no one else's. He carries the blame or credit for every decision he makes."
Yes of course. McChrystal never did say that without more troops the war would be lost.
All he said was that without more troops he wouldn't be able to fulfill Obama's strategy.
Right.
Let me ask you a question. Do you think George W. Bush really ran the country the last 8 years? The very thought is ridiculous, right? No way that fool could have been in charge.
So what makes you think Obama is in charge now? He has no real power. The MIC controls foreign policy. Goldman and Morgan control economic policy. Obama is just a spokesmodel.
As Chris Hedges wrote a couple of days ago, it's time to stop thinking like doctors and start thinking like the disease.
I was trying to be sarcastic in response to Henry8's claim that it is Obama and only Obama who is responsible for this mess, and every other mess. I was trying to be sarcastic in response to Henry8's attempt to portray the military as being merely disinterested technocrats whose goal is only to fulfil Obama's strategy to the best of their abilities.
My point is that the way that McChrystal chose to frame his argument for more troops that the war will be lost without more troops, is a deliberately slanted framing of the issue.
Maybe I was too subtle.
Or to put it another way, I agree more with your position than Henry8's position.
Rather than access in terms of "risk", why not call it what it really is? How much murder is enough??
The fourth fallacy of Afghanistan is that people think it's a war (of course, the Brits aren't even guarding that one airport in southern Iraq anymore, so maybe Afghanistan is all they've got left).
The author points out that al-Qaeda can go running to other countries. He mentions Iraq. Yet he doesn't put it all together, and seems to think each theater of terrorist activity (real/imagined/created) is to be treated separately.
Afghanistan is just one theater of this absurd war. Trying to solve it by itself will continue to fail.
"That's a hit rate of 2 per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It's not moral."
What neither Kilcullen nor Obama nor McChrystal is telling you is: who gives a damn about morality; what's morality got to do with it? After all, Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, didn't he? Peace is our profession (the former motto of the Air Force, prominently on display in "Dr. Strangelove").
A few months ago I saw a picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton when they were in the 20's. They both were wearing hippy attire and looked as if they just smoked a sizable blunt.
And it made me wonder: How is it possible for these two dreamers to have become part of the establishment they wanted to change so badly?
How can someone change his or her views so drastically once they enter the White House? Is that place possessed by some kind of rightwing demon who takes over you once you step inside?
Just what the hell happened to the Barack Obama we knew from only a year or two ago?
The Clintons were never "hippies", especially her. They were poseurs, sporting the uniform of the day and they did not inhale. Clinton plays the saxophone and thinks he's in Tommy Castro's horn section. Wipe the mist off the mirror and what you see are a couple of power mad yuppies who had (and still have) their turn at rampaging through the world. Obama is no different. He, too, bamboozled millions. He even fooled Gore Vidal, no small task.
Exactly! " He bamboozled millions. He even fooled Gore Vidal, no small task ". That is a good definition of what I said last year. OBOMBA: THE CONSUMMATE CON MAN!
Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses?
_________________________________________
Let me answer this with another question: Why do you think that the first thing Obama did when he got into the driver's seat was to remove the rear-view mirror?
And the next thing was to install McChrystal, another ambitious military superstar who looks like an overly-decorated Christmas tree in a dress uniform?
McChrystal is Obama's hood ornament, and Obama won't take his eyes off that tinsel-hung icon as he presses the pedal to the metal.
PS: Ouch, another bogus 9/11 reference.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"Trying to defeat Al Qaeda with hundreds of thousands of occupying troops and Predator jets is like trying to treat cancer with a blowtorch." Amen. Great imagery, Johann Hari.
"Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction of US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping up of the conflict..... General Stanley McCrystal says that if he is given another 40,000 troops - on top of the current increase which has pushed military levels above anything in the Bush years - he will 'finally win' by 'breaking the back' of the Taliban and Al Qaeda..... How should Obama - and us, the watching world - figure out who's right"?
Well, we can start figuring out who's right by candidly reflecting upon the history of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, and how wrong, wrong, wrong LBJ and Nixon were when those US presidents kept blindly following the CIA and Pentagon's latest troop escalation strategy recommendations deeper and deeper into the Vietnam quagmire. That perpetual light at the end of the tunnel, with every newly relabeled counterinsurgency campaign a "tipping point" predestined to finally "turn the corner", is a snare and a delusion.
Next, the Obama White House inner circle braintrust should take heed of the three points Johann Hari so cogently makes as they formulate future US policy. Facts on the ground are stubborn things. Barack Obama has spoken eloquently about the need to scale back the military approach as a response to real or imagined threats of international terrorism. It's time to match words with action.
Finally, we should all recognize the long term danger lurking in General McCrystal's recent foray into domestic partisan politics as a field commander on active duty in a combat zone. Like General Petraeus before him, and General Boykin, and General Miller, and others, this emergence of top active duty Pentagon brass (and career spies) into naked DC beltway political gamesmanship should be dealt with, up front and forcefully, by our elected civilian Commander-in-Chief. This is not a MacArthur/Truman moment, a clash of egos. It's much deeper than that.
It is true that there's a choice for President Obama to make here - as Hari so aptly couches it, a choice between siding with the American and Afghan people on the one hand, or siding with a militarist "clique demanding a ramping up of the conflict" which Obama inherited from George W. Bush. Precisely.
This choice was fully ventilated on the campaign trail first in the Democratic primaries, and then in the general election of 2008. We had a vote. The candidate who advocated a reversal of course away from the Bush/Cheney approach to waging an endless global war on evil doing terrorist boogeymen won when the ballots were counted, and the John McCain/Sarah Palin ticket lost. Fair and square.
Elections do matter. Regardless whether General McCrystal, Faux News, Dick Cheney from exile, and a whole cabal of other powerful neocon dead enders don't like the final result, Barack Obama should stand up and assert civilian control over military policy decision making.
As the lyrics of a fine old country and western song put it, you got to know when to hold, when to fold, and when to walk away.
It's time to pull the plug on the pipedream of global Pax Americana.
Time to take the toys away from the boys.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill,
The lyrics (by Kenny Rogers)as I remember them are "know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away and know when to run" with the last part being the most pertinent in my mind to America's current situations in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
OYE
Sioux Rose
BILL: You're a better, more informed diplomat than most of what resides in D.C.
I would only add to your post the following. Defining "what's right" for Obama in Afghanistan gives a very patronizing and minor consideration to the wishes of the actual populations living there. It's as if the U.S. is, and has grounds to remain, the sole determinant of another people's fate. Second, this whole shindig reminds me of the war on drugs. The U.S. military infiltrates Columbia, but the drug lords move on to other nations. I watched a televised debate some years ago that made mention that all of the world's cocaine could be grown on a small number of acres. It's a similar situation if the TRUE reason for being there was to wipe out the Taliban or another organized group of "insurgents."
Last, the idea of saving money on this war and using it for peace initiatives leaves out the true reason for the invasion: oil/gas/energy/control the industrial & MIC economies. IF all that's already been squandered could be put back into the genie's bottle, or what we are yet to spend be instead directed at greener technologies, along with campaigns that encouraged and taught conservation, we would not need to be there in the first place!
So much of what media reports leaves the public in a state of shadow boxing.
Well done Bill, nicely said.
Perhaps people should read this too, while they're at it:
Three Cups of Tea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Cups_of_Tea
- there are a dozen other failed states they can scuttle off to -
The author admits that the future terrorism problem spreads over more than one nation. Yet he insists that the US military effort against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is separate from the current (or future) efforts against them in Iraq and separate again from any other effort in any other nation*, including the US Homeland.
At this rate, Progressives will eventually have to complain about 194 separate wars.
I suggest that will dilute any possible Progressive effort.
I repeat for the zillionth time, every country deals with future terrorism but ONLY America declared war against it. And that's DAFT.
*Odierno, 'al-Qaeda in Iraq': the US attack into Syria; Somalia; Sudan; threats against Iran; and my personal favorite the Sultan of Brunei, a perfect future target)
The problem is simple. We are trying to maintain economic injustice using political injustice. The solution is simple too. Stop exporting and fomenting political injustice around the world. As world economies equilibrate economic injustice will dissipate and world conflict will end. Unfortunately we must force economic equilibrium here first and that is looking like it will need a revolution...
It's remarkable to continue to read the "about to" and future tenses in critical articles.
The US hit this particular ditch of corpses in 2001. 0bama is just pouring more mean and jeeps and $$ and DU ammo and dragon tooth bombs into the trench.
Indeed, while so many articles have been written about 0bama hanging back in his decision, he has indeed sent thousands more troops, 16,000 at one stroke.
I welcome Hari's work, as I suppose most of us do. But I submit that she would not appear unreasonable by a more literal tack.
Obama's decision will not be made by considering casualties, (on either side), nor financial costs. He will not consider morality or legality.
He will, however, consider the political costs to his position of power and influence; and in the end, that is all he will consider.
A good way to end terrorism, is to stop practising it.
I think we all know who said that.
"Collateral damage" - is terrorism. The means to an end argument doesn't cut it.
Start building schools and hospitals. Put soldiers in defensive position while doing it, rather than offensive.
Also, sign the Cluster Bomb Treaty (and stop dropping them).
I think you, Obama, of all people, are intelligent enough to see this.
No hearts and minds = end of mission.
And, by the way - what was the mission again?
Peace is noble, and we all prize it.
“Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his policies have been tried.”
---John Kenneth Galbraith
“Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his policies have been tried.”
---John Kenneth Galbraith
=======
O love that quote!
also:
"capitalism is just the modern way playing a very old game: finding moral justification for Greed".
John Kenneth Galbraith
i bet if Milton Friedman had to publicly debate Galbraith - Milton would have "cancelled" at the last minute......
he'd have known he would be undressed ....gently , but as mercilessly as his own "Disaster capitalism" dogmas are merciless.
Everyone, including the author:
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Stop trying to counter these three fallacies. What else is new? All of them together never amounted to more than 20% of why we went in there in the first place, probably less, so effectively neutralizing them still leaves you with at least the other 80%, which all of us lefties are helping the other side keep secret by not organizing active public discussion on it.
It's the pipeline(s). We're not leaving until we know we can build them and keep enemies from blowing them up. And that means we're not leaving at all, ever, because that day will never come. Unless we can convince Americans that the financial interests of the only private, global-warming producing companies that have been setting profit records every year for the last decade while keeping the rest of the citizenry on the brink of insolvency as heat and gasoline indentured servants, is something we don't feel inclined to sacrifice our own family members' lives to advance, the war will go on.
We used to know about this. We talked about it before 9-11. We talked about it right after 9-11, when it was dangerous to talk about it. But now, we've all forgotten, and we keep letting the war machine wag us by agreeing to stay focused on the topics they know we can't use to get them out of the war. The best we can hope for in the "Taliban is nationalist, Al Qaeda has moved to Pakistan" debate is a debating points draw that operationally favors the fear that drives the national security state. Wars are over resources. This one's no different. We have to confront the resource (hydrocarbons), its profiteers, that our taxpayer-financed army has been appropriated (again!) into being the free, externally billed private security force to private business interests rather than American political, social, or security interests, and the unreasonableness of asking us to die for them.
We have to get off this Qaeda-Taliban tack. It's the war machine that diverted us to it -- we're no threat to them there. Go back to where we were on 9-11-2001. It's about securing the shortest overland route to get Central Asian hydrocarbons to Western markets, and little else.
Mr Hari makes the basic error of confusing the stated reasons with the real reasons. He then sets up three straw men to knock down with equally dubious reasoning. Al qaeda was no more responsible for 9/11 than I was, and the quicker the "19 Muslim fanatics" mythology disappears from journalsm the better. Any comments attibuted to Osama bin Laden post December 2001 need to take into account the overwhelming probability that he died in that month.
More significant than empty bluster attributed to dead men is an examination of the real reasons America and its acolytes are in Afghanistan. As "ducksawce" correctly, in my view, pointed out, the key lies in American intentions set out in various documents wanting full spectrum dominance the better to control the world's energy sources and to "contain" (i.e. threaten and destroy) China and Russia.
A side benefit, as Peter Dale Scott and others have pointed out, is control of 93% of the world's opium production and the huge profits that brings to the corrupt elites that rule America, as well as financing CIA black operations.
None of this is new. Alfred McCoy pointed it out with respect to the Vietnam War and control of south-east Asia's drug trade, and Columbia is in the American basket for the same reason.
We will be better informed when people like Mr Hari stop repeating hoary old myths and look at the world as it really is.
American foreign policy always begins with a delusion as the first premise.
Also, this piece says the "atrocities....(of 911) were planned by 19 Saudis."
That is not correct.
It's great that the author is talking about this stuff, but if he's going to deal with fallacies, start with the biggest ones:
1)"The 9/11 atrocities were planned in Hamburg and Florida by 19 Saudis who only needed to know how to use box-cutters and to crash a plane."
The box-cutter story is phony (google Ted Olsen and his lies). Did 19 Saudis also shut down a trillion-dollar defense industry?
2)The 7/7 suicide-murders were planned in Yorkshire by young British men who learned how to make bombs off the internet.
The 7/7 attacks occurred at the exact time and in the exact places of a "terror exercise" that was taking place that day. Hmmm. Pretty big coincidence. Kind of like how on 9/11 there were drills happening that simulated plane hijackings. Hmmm.
Afghanistan is an illegal war that was based on lies. End of story.