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TechnoratiAfghanistan as Vietnam: Heeding George Kennan's Wise Advice
I can't remember how many times I have said that the U.S. military adventure in Afghanistan is a fool's errand.
The reaction I frequently encounter includes some variant of, "How can you blithely acquiesce in the chaos that will inevitably ensue if we and our NATO allies withdraw our troops?" While the "inevitable chaos" part is open to doubt, the question itself is a fair one.
By way of full disclosure, my answer is based largely on the fact that I asked the equivalent question 43 years ago regarding a place named Vietnam. Been there; done that.
As a young Army infantry/intelligence officer turned junior CIA analyst in 1963, I was given responsibility for reporting on Soviet policy toward China and Southeast Asia and was just beginning to get a feel for the complexities. My degrees were in Russian studies; I knew something about Communist expansion, but very little about Vietnam.
I should have listened to my brother Joe at Princeton, who tried to help me see that it was mainly a civil war in Vietnam, that the Vietnamese had ample reason to hate both the Russians and Chinese (and now us), and that the "domino effect" was a canard.
Joe was openly impatient to find me such a slow learner - so susceptible to the Red-menace fear mongering of the time.
Enter George Kennan
If my studies of Russia and of U.S. foreign policy had given me an idol, it was George Kennan, former ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and to Yugoslavia, and author of the successful post-war containment policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. He returned to the Princeton campus in 1963.
Early in the Vietnam War, I was delighted to discover one Sunday morning that Kennan had written a feature article on Vietnam for the Washington Post. Good, I said to myself, Kennan has finally ended his silence. Surely he will have something instructive to say.
What Kennan wrote on Vietnam was not at all what I expected. Ouch; an idol turns out to have clay feet, I thought. Had Kennan not heard of the dominoes? I am embarrassed to admit that it took me another year or so to see clearly that Kennan was, as usual, spot on.
It was Dec. 12, 1965, and there it was on the front page of the "Outlook" section - George Kennan calling for a major reality check on our involvement in Vietnam, and arguing for what he called a "simmering down" of our military adventure there as "the most promising of all the possibilities we face." He wrote:
"I would not know what ‘victory' means. ... In this sort of war, one controls what one can take and hold and police with ground forces; one does not control what one bombs. And it seems to me the most unlikely of all contingencies that anyone should come to us on his knees and inquire our terms, whatever the escalation of our effort. ...
"If we can find nothing better to do than embark upon a further open-ended increase in the level of our commitment simply because the alternatives seem humiliating and frustrating, one will have to ask whether we have not become enslaved to the dynamics of a single unmanageable situation - to the point where we have lost much of the power of initiative and control over our own policy, not just locally but on a world scale."
Kennan was harshly critical of those asserting that the U.S. had no choice other than to "live up to its commitments." Commitments to whom? he asked. More pointed still, he asked if the "commitment" was conceived as "something unrelated to [South Vietnam's] own performance, to its ability to command the confidence of its people?"
Kennan's prescription of "simmering down" involved letting negotiations begin, "quite privately and without elbow-jogging on our part, by our friends and others who have an interest in the termination of the conflict...We must be prepared, depending on such advice as we receive from them, to place limited restraints at some point on our military efforts, and to do so quietly and without published time limits or ultimatums."
'Disbalance'
Kennan's bottom line:
"The most disturbing aspect of our involvement in Vietnam is its relationship to our interests and responsibilities in other areas of world affairs. Whatever justification this involvement might have had if Vietnam had been the only important problem, or even the outstanding problem, we faced in the world today, this not being the case, its present dimensions can only be said to represent a grievous disbalance of American policy."
His article was no academic exercise. Washington was abuzz with talk of further escalation in Vietnam. (To offer some current context, Gen. Stanley McChrystal was 11 years old; Vietnam was not in the history books, apparently, until well after he left West Point in 1976.)
A companion "Outlook" front-page piece by the Washington Post's Chalmers Roberts opened with, "One of history's undated moments for great decisions is at hand. President Johnson must decide where to lead the nation in the war in Vietnam."
Roberts reported the prevailing thinking that, given Hanoi's obduracy, "the United States will have no alternative but to pour in more and more manpower, to widen the bombing in the North and to intensify the military struggle in the South." Chalmers continued:
"Thus, as an increasingly bloody year draws to a close, as mounting casualty lists appear... the President faces momentous decisions. What should he do?"
Noting that there was "confusion over the aims of this war," Roberts asked:
"What should he [President Johnson] tell his fellow Americans? How can he prevent the loss of the consensus he so far has had on the war? How can he restrain the increasingly vocal war hawks? ... Is the United States simply to slide into the next phase of the war?"
Roberts added that, "Looking back, it is evident that both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson upped the ante bit by bit without really telling the American public where it [the war] was heading.
"That process continues today as Mr. Johnson merely says ... that the United States ‘will supply whatever men are needed to help the people of South Vietnam resist aggression.'"
Parallels, Anyone?
Does anyone see any parallels to Washington's parlor games - and its more serious discussions - today regarding upcoming decisions on Afghanistan?
Johnson was not about to be the first U.S. President to lose a war - but, succumbing to the Greek tragic flaw of hubris, he became exactly that. The result: Not only were two to three million Vietnamese and 58,000 American troops killed, but also his Great Society bit the dust.
Fortunately for seniors like me, Johnson was able to sign Medicare into law (on July 30, 1965) before the bottom fell out. Most of the other promising reforms his administration had in mind became unsung casualties of that ill-conceived war.
And, as costly as Vietnam turned out to be, the Treasury was not nearly as broke then as it is now.
Shortly after his Washington Post Outlook article, Kennan accepted an invitation from Sen. William Fulbright to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was February 1966. There were some 200,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam; two years later there would be 536,000.
Kennan minced few words:
"There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives. ...
"Our country should not be asked, and should not ask of itself, to shoulder the main burden of determining the political realities in any other country, and particularly not in one remote from our shores, from our culture and from the experience of our people.
"This is not only not our business, but I don't think we can do it successfully. ... "Vietnam is not a region of major military, industrial importance. It is difficult to believe that any decisive developments of the world situation would be determined ... by what happens on that territory. ...
"Even a situation in which South Vietnam was controlled exclusively by the Viet Cong ... would not, in my opinion, present dangers great enough to justify our military intervention."
Kennan concluded his Senate testimony with a familiar quotation from John Quincy Adams. "[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," said our sixth president. "She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Kennan added: "Now, gentlemen, I don't know exactly what John Quincy Adams had in mind when he spoke those words. But I think that, without knowing it, he spoke very directly and very pertinently to us here today."
And to us here today.
Death Via Invincible Ignorance
More than 55,000 of the eventual 58,220 American deaths in Vietnam came after Kennan testified. It is yet to be known how many Americans will die in Afghanistan if President Obama follows the advice of his generals - much as President Johnson did - and escalates.
Can we not learn from history? Kennan (and John Quincy Adams) were, of course, right on target. As for today, it is a pity that the United States lacks a statesman of Kennan's caliber who would dare set aside concern about status within the power circles and make as pointed a critique about Afghanistan as Kennan did about Vietnam. [George Kennan died on March 17, 2005.]
And it is a pity that West Point didn't teach much about the lessons of the Vietnam War when McChrystal was studying there in the 1970s. [For a flavor of the current elite "group think" on Afghanistan, see Consortiumnews.com's "Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War."]
Is this not the lesson to apply to deliberations on Afghanistan? When it becomes clear that current policies are not working or, worse, are self-defeating, experienced folks with those insights need to find ways to say that - loudly.
It is incumbent on them to make a stab at coming up with better alternative policies, but - as in George Kennan's case - this is not a prior requirement.
Great powers can mitigate the effects of great mistakes, especially if they have the good sense and humility to reach out for help. But the key decision to halt a futile course can - and must - be made as soon as its futility is clear, even if the details of a more promising alternative policy remain to be worked out.
I think Kennan was right in his December 1965 article in proposing a multilateral path toward a solution in Vietnam. Something similar might be possible for Afghanistan today.
As Sonali Kolhatkar suggested Monday in Foreign Policy in Focus, if the U.S. would withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban's raison d'être there would be greatly weakened. She added:
"If the United States were to take the lead in regional talks between Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia, and China to address the Pakistani government's fears of a hostile regime in Afghanistan, it would go a very long way toward undermining the Taliban."
Helicopters Down; Hawks Up
By way of footnote: After an American Chinook helicopter was shot down over Iraq on Nov. 2, 2003, killing 16 U.S. troops, I was reminded of a similar guerrilla attack on U.S. forces in Pleiku, Vietnam, on Feb. 7, 1965.
President Johnson seized on the Pleiku incident to start bombing North Vietnam and to send 3,500 Marines to South Vietnam with orders to engage in combat (beyond the earlier advisory role for U.S. troops), marking the beginning of the Americanization of the war.
When the Chinook went down in Iraq 38 years later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it a point to emphasize that the Iraq War was still "winnable." (It is hard to know whether he really believed that - his reputation for candor being somewhat tarnished.)
Suffice it to note that Rumsfeld's comment reminded me of Pleiku and spurred me to write an article exactly six years ago right after the helicopter crash in Iraq. I titled it "Helicopter Down." And, in an attempt to warn against a Vietnam/Pleiku-style overreaction, I wrote, five times, that the Iraq war was "unwinnable"-no matter how many more U.S. troops might be sent into the fray.
It seems an appropriate day, then, to remind ourselves that when choppers go down, hawks go up in influence. Two more helicopters went down just last week. So, for what it may be worth, let me state the same judgment today regarding Afghanistan
The war in Afghanistan is UNWINNABLE.
Quick.
Somebody please tell President Obama.
This article first appeared at Consortium News.
27 Comments so far
Show AllBoyd---
You write:
"The U.S. government is a necessary element in global capitalism, but it plays a subordinate and enabling role vis-a-vis the major corporations. The interests of the two players are ultimately one, but each plays a distinct role in the extension of the reach of the global empire of capital."
I have no disagreement with this. I think we agree that "nation-states" are now subordinate to global corporations. What does this say about "democracy"? Generally, corporations eschew democracy.
Also, what does this say about the United Nations? Have we lost our idealism yet?
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To Boyd R. Collins---
I always find your analyses interesting and have read about the TAPI pipeline elsewhere, esp. atimes.com.
What bothers me about the pipeline theory are the implications of actually succeeding in building one. It strikes me that they are extremely vulnerable to sabotage and thus in a place like Afghanistan would need constant guarding by electronic sensors and patrolling. Who's gonna do that? And who's gonna pay them to do that?
This suggests an almost permanent U.S. presence in Afghanistan, because we seem to have totally failed so far---after 8 years---to raise up a reliable indigenous protection force whether called police or military.
There were similar issues in Viet Nam but with less direct geo-political implications.
Also, it occurs to me that the reason this receives so little attention on the MSM is that it starts to reveal that the war on Afghanistan is LESS about U.S. geopolitical interests and MORE about the interests of certain global corporations, for example, Unocal, or GE, etc. using American taxpayer money to subsidize their global ambitions. It used to be called "war-profiteering," not that Dubya would know anything about that given his family history.
***
To whom has commented that Robamabot is merely a figurehead and can't fire the generals without being assassinated like JFK, in fact he can fire the generals and should. Truman fired a formidible general (MacArthur) who was being considered for a Presidential run but was clearly "insubordinate" or so says history. It involved a massive rift in the Republican Party (Taft versus Eisenhower) back in the early 50s.
We now have an insubordinate military once again but these are different times. For my own part I have often wondered what the world would look like today if we had gone ahead and nuked China for crossing the Yellow River during the Korean War as MacArthur was hinting ought to be done. It wasn't like Truman was opposed to nuking people. He just couldn't talk to Stalin, who probably would not have objected, if asked.
Not enough palaver back then, after the tragic death of FDR. There are accidents in history and Truman was one of them. Ironically, he had read Thucydides while his initial, Harry S Truman famously has no period.
When I contemplate my strategic consideration of bombing a few hundred million Chinese while pretending to be Harry Truman or General MacArthur, I am aware of the evil in my mind. Stalin killed millions in gulags. How else am I to fight that bastard than by becoming like him from a different position? Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) remains the order of the day. If not, Demonstrate otherwise. And call upon George Mitchell to demonstrate any progress in re Israel and their "settlements" in Palestine territory.
There are differences between then and now. They have to do with energy, entropy, and synergy.
Eisenhower ended the Korean War, undeclared, and yet it continues. The Soviet Union could have built a Siberian pipeline through Korea to Japan decades ago. The Chinese islands off Japan were crying for this.
We are living in a sea of lies. We truly need to educate ourselves. We need to transcend the crap.
How come I am finding it so hard to obtain a self-immolation vest when it is so easy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan? Hell, I'm finding it hard to buy .22 ammo for my rabbit rifle, one reload after every shot. When I go into the countryside the deer are laughing at me. One young buck in particular!
There is a lot of stuff we're not being told, by a lot of really guilty people. How do they wake up in the morning? How do they justify their actions? Is there something wrong with my genes, that I can't compete with these parasites?
Empericism is bad enough. They are replacing it with something worse! Recidivism. And the Unitary Executive.
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Thanks so much, OleManRiver, for your detailed and interesting response. The first point I would respond to is the idea that U.S. government interests are different from the corporate interests of Unocal and GE. In fact, I think there is a direct relationship between the interests of transnational corporations and the U.S. government. The U.S. government is a necessary element in global capitalism, but it plays a subordinate and enabling role vis-a-vis the major corporations. The interests of the two players are ultimately one, but each plays a distinct role in the extension of the reach of the global empire of capital.
The goal is not to "win", or spread "democracy", but TO MAKE MONEY. They have to stay in AfPak because there are only a few more brown tribal constituencies left to exploit. (Next stop---Columbia)
War is a business.
If any recognizable interests were ever really at stake, you would see an Executive decree making war industries revenue-neutral, and Congress/wo/men dropping off their OWN children at the recruiters' office.
CORP IS BORG.
send mcchrystal home before he does any more damage. he's already leaked a classified report, shown up to see our us president in combat fatigues (think he would have done that with bush around?). better yet, send him to hague or nuremberg , where he could explain why he kept the red cross out of camp nama, or how he ethnically cleansed major sectors of sunni baghdad during the surge. or he could always drop by the tillman house, where given a pang of consciense, he could tell them why he covered up the truth about their boy's death for two years. obama needs to play truman to his mcarthur, the sooner the better!
I notice that the article and many comments complain because Progressives are making no progress in stopping or even slowing down this madness.
I also notice that the article and all comments ignore the DAFT war against future terrorism that got the US military stuck in Afghanistan and keeps it stuck there (and in Iraq).
-------
President Obama's words:
2002 - Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda...
2009 - We are indeed at war with al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
Progressives can continue to ignore the real war, and they will continue to fail to influence American policy.
-----
This is interesting:
"Annotate This: Obama's Speech on National Security" from FPIF
www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6152
Boyd R. Collins -
Of the TAPI pipeline envisioned to cross the Af/Pak area where US and NATO troops are currently stationed you write, "Of course, many on the left assume this is a mere coincidence."
Name me a few of these naive liberals, please. I've read countless articles in progressive media news and opinion sources contending that the primary motivation for the overthrow of the Taliban was geopolitical energy resource control rather than revenge for 9/11, a clash of civilizations, finding Osama bin Laden, enriching Pentagon defense contractors, and so forth.
Do many on the right also assume the pipeline location is mere coincidence? How about independent swing voting centrists? Why is this naivite supposedly a myopic curse shared only or primarily by those on the left?
Your reference to Steven Blank is well taken. Remember also T Boone Pickens' recent public pronouncement that Americans are entitled to a fair share of Iraqi oil reserves in exchange for our beneficient overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There's plenty of talk out there about economics as the driving force behind US militarism abroad, talk all along the ideological spectrum.
The only people who aren't talking about the energy resource connection to US militarism are our bipartisan political leaders and the mainstream media. Certainly none of the locals in Afghanistan or Iraq, or their surrounding neighbors, think it's mere coincidence.
Bill from Saginaw
Thanks for your reply, Bill. When I said the "left", I was referring to exactly those you describe: mainstream media critics of a supposedly left orientation and "liberal" members of Congress. In other words, I meant the phrase ironically.
The bigger point is that I rarely see this motivation mentioned in Common Dreams articles such as the one that I'm posting to here. Ray McGovern, whom I have tremendous respect for, describes the war as "unwinnable", but never mentions the major motivation for the war. Likewise, Ralph Nader on the same day, pointing to a personal act of resistance while leaving the wider context of the war unaddressed. In fact, I can't remember many articles here that directly point out this motivation. Your reading is obviously much wider than mine, so I'd appreciate knowing what your sources are. What I tend to see more of are articles such as Nader's that argue that the war is unwinnable or those such as McGovern's that treat the war as a matter of national pride run amok. I think both angles fail to treat the underlying economic cause of the war.
Ray McGovern's analogies are apt, but the situation in Afghanistan differs in one essential aspect: the clear economic motivation of Central Asian energy resources. I hear lots of outrage about the war in Afghanistan, but rarely a rational explanation as to why the United States is slaughtering civilians and enriching corrupt warlords at such a steep cost to U.S. citizens. Obviously, we are not spending a trillion dollars to protect the U.S. from attack by the 100 Al Qaeda members which the military think inhabit Afghanistan. What is the real military goal being sought in Afghanistan?
In fact, the great game which the U.S. is playing, with the lives of Afghani and Pakistani citizens as the chips, appears to be "the prevention of a Russian energy monopoly" in Central Asia or Chinese domination of the energy-rich region, according to an article published last year in the magazine of the US Army War College by Dr. Stephen Blank, the college’s professor of National Security Studies. Studying the strategic papers of those who guide the national security state can yield rich understanding to those who want to counter their tactics.
For some reason we rarely hear about a promised pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, the TAPI pipeline, when pundits discuss the Af-Pak conflict on CNN. The energy industry is currently seeing a major expansion of its facilities in the Middle East.
"Not surprisingly," Blank writes, "the leitmotif of US energy policy has been focused on fostering the development of multiple pipelines and links to foreign consumers and producers of energy" that bypass the control of our regional rivals. Strangely enough, he singles out the most important of these pipelines as the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAPI) pipeline, which would pump oil and natural gas from Central Asia across the exact territory now occupied by US troops. Of course, many on the left assume this is a mere coincidence.
Suddenly, the 3.6 billion a month that we taxpayers are contributing to the "Great Game" begins to make sense. What are a few tens of thousands of Afghanis and Pakistanis and American soldiers compared to the control of Central Asian energy resources?
One other quick point - a strong, united Afghanistan could cause difficulties in our plan for dominating the region. Much better to have a failed state ruled by warlords, especially those in the pay of the CIA. Of course, the more civilians we kill, the more recruits flock to the Taliban, keeping the situation in an endless swirl in which we can work our will without resistance.
Soon President Obama will decide whether to send as many as 60,000 additional U.S. soldiers to the war in Afghanistan.
Let's urge Obama to earn his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Tell him to withdraw troops from Afghanistan -- not send more.
http://bit.ly/noafghansurge
To Bill from Saginaw---
A very wise post. I see that you know who Pete Seeger is!
But let's take this all to the next logical conclusion. The Commander in Chief actually holds this power:
FIRE ALL THE GENERALS, ALL AT ONCE! Just fire the fuckers. Then step back and watch how the military reorganizes itself. Not that NBC would know how to cover the story, if there even were one...
We're neck-deep in the Big Muddy and the old fart can't lead us to the shore.
And I don't mean Pete Seeger. I have been hearing alarmist bells going off for several weeks now about a military putsch in the United States, and many of these alarums are coming from my contemporaries, who witnessed the Kennedy and King ASSASSINATIONS and who have spent our lives traumatized by horror. Sick unto Death.
Put Dennis Kucinich in as Head of The Peace Department. The world would love it. Redirect all disinvestment. Retire Robert Gates, with honors. Academic honors at that. Back to Texas.
It is time for transcendent action. Who was the last "dictator" whose first action upon taking power was to RELEASE ALL PRISONERS? Per capita we have more prisoners by far than any other major nation. OPEN THE DOORS. Let them choose whether to stay or leave.
We need to dismantle and reconstruct our MIC so that it produces windmills and solar power and geothermal instead of killing people and poisoning Mother Earth.
I guess I've expressed enough disgust here. Bye bye.
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I can empathize with your post, Olemanriver, but I disagree that BO holds all the power as that is just a con for the sheeple. Obomba is nothing more than a figurehead for the International financiers, who control the MIC. In fact, if he threatened to fire all the generals he would end up like Kennedy when after the bay of pigs fiasco,he threatened to break the CIA into pieces. He did not live long after that.
You do disgust, and, inspiration well: "It is time for transcendent action" -- in the name of "Old Farts" and the Paul Robesons that have ever been...let it be so.
Lack of public pressure to end the war will ensure that it continues.
That lack is everywhere, and this, along with the fact that many people are too brittle to embrace change, is the main reason why change is confined to rhetoric. They prefer the false stability of non-change largely because the changes in the world have been dizzying for a long time now. Inertia rules. It's a battle many people fight every day.
And it's unfortunately not the American way to ask for the right stuff from government.
Too bad for US people, too bad for the world, but time will take care of this madness, I hope. All things must pass.
George W. Bush declared the US invasion of Aghanistan "won" shortly after the Taliban regime fell, and shifted his focus and the national momentum squarely on to regime change next in Baghdad. There, too, Little George declared "mission accomplished" prematurely, while prancing around in Top Gun drag for a photo-op session on the deck of a US aircraft carrier. At that grandiose, testosterone drenched neocon moment in the sun, some real manly men of the Neanderthal right even chortled openly about marching on to Tehran.
How soon amnesia strikes. The ghost of George Kennan, the current post by Roy McGovern, and other voices calling upon Barack Obama to look at history rather than listening only to the short term advice of his bipartisan war cabinet inner circle regarding the critical decision that must be made on Afghanistan are all correct: Vietnam was more "winnable", in traditional military terms, than Afghanistan will ever be.
Had drone technology existed, would deploying swarms of Predators overhead have ever defeated the Viet Cong NLF? Dream on. And if the joy stick triggers for those Hellfire missles had been pulled by guys sitting in front of computer screens inside the continental United States on military bases or at CIA headquarters in Langley, how long do you think it would have taken for a little terrorist blowback to hit stateside? We probably soon would have been profiling Asians rather than Arabs in America's airports had the counterinsurgency strategies of McChrystal and Joe Biden and drone assassination devices existed, and been used, back in the Vietnam era.
It's time to know when to hold, when to fold, and when to walk away, as the country and western song says. And Barack even has some ideological wiggle room here, if he can muster up the political courage to use it.
Obama said is not against all wars. Only dumb wars. Maintaining a US military presence in the Hindu kush graveyard of empires, in the name of stabilizing the region, is simply dumb, dumb, dumb.
Historical analogies are always imprecise of course, but McGovern's comparison of Barack Obama's presidency today to that of LBJ in the mid-60's is about as close as you can get. One major difference to note however (other than the absence, or rather the marginalization, of candid statesmen figures like George Kennan) is the naked partisanship of the Pentagon brass.
What do you suppose Lyndon Johnson would have done if, in February of 1965 when that helicopter went down near Pleiku, his field commmander in south Vietnam had gone on public record demanding 40,000 more US troops immediately, or else "losing Vietnam" would be entirely his Commander-in-Chief's fault?
How would the press and media of that era have reacted if Barry Goldwater or some other GOP spokesman had ominously proclaimed from political exile (like Dick Cheney) that if LBJ didn't stay the course, the next innocent American blood spilled would be entirely on Johnson's hands?
Had such partisan dynamics taken place in 1965, the Johnson White House might well still have made the same stupid, tragic decision to wade blindly on into the big muddy.
But the general would have been sacked and replaced.
And the politicians engaging in such cheap partisan theatrical stunts while thousands of lives hung in the balance would have been villified as shameless scoundrels and demagogues.
Some things never change, but some things do.
Bill from Saginaw
Unwinnable? In a country where 6 year old kids are out cracking heads, cracking bats, and running down the goalkeeper?
Where parents are assaulting game officials? There must be a winner, in everything. Was it Ricky Bobby's dad who said, "Second place is the first loser?" The general population, sadly, can't handle the thought of a "not the winner" outcome, and a draw is a loss for both sides.
Idiotically sarcastic and over the top comment deleted by author.
I must once more object to the notion that wars of this type are based on personality disorders; obstinacy, foolishness, historical amnesia. Consider VietNam, a success story, if not for you or the vietnamese, certainly for the bankers (whose financing earned them billions of dollars), the MIC (those bombs and bullets aren't free), and the empire's guardians who murdered over 2 million people, poisoned their land with toxic chemicals that continue to kill and deform children to this day,and left a legacy of unexploded (yet to explode) ordinance (land mines, cluster bombs, etc), thus showing them and anyone else watching what America does to wogs that don't knuckle under to us. The lesson is that those are the people who make policy as long as we vote in establishment candidates. "The People" don't make policy. We stand around hoping we can vote for a different candidate offered by the Party (2 wings, D's and R's, same party) and its complicit media no matter how often they screw us. Earth to Slow Guy, you found Obama in the same brothel as all the others and now you're suprised he's a whore?
The question of will in ignorance is interesting and deserves more attention. But wilful and garden variety ignorance are certainly not mutually exclusive. And, since invasion requires some cooperation amongst the invaders, we're dealing with a question of many wills and many ignorances.
For 0bama I offer no defence.
For those people who have decided to irrationally attack McGovern, they may wish to pay attention to the fact that McGovern is telling Obama that Afghanistan, like Vietnam was and like Iraq is now, is UNWINNABLE. It does not get much more direct than that. McGovern is asking the question: Will Obama listen to his bellicose generals or will he listen to history? Since the departure of Eisenhower, it would seem that the former is much more likely than the latter.
"Will Obama listen to his bellicose generals or will he listen to history?
- - it would seem that the former is much more likely than the latter."
Hasn't this decision already been made? There will be no withdrawal. Obama said so. One would think that Obama would come to his senses and wake up to this insanity but it is not so. There will be no miracle. The power of prayer has failed again. Madness rules.
"McGovern is telling Obama that Afghanistan, like Vietnam was and like Iraq is now, is UNWINNABLE."
You've got it. And the only thing that this war will generate as it has to this point is more body bags for us and graves for the Afgani. Not to mention the physical and mental damage tghat will be lifelong.
This was a no win from day one and only fools that had never seen war would have committed us to it.
Obama will listen to no one and split the difference which will provide an even higher causaulty rate.
McGovern writes: As Sonali Kolhatkar suggested Monday in Foreign Policy in Focus, if the U.S. would withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban's raison d'être there would be greatly weakened. She added:
"If the United States were to take the lead in regional talks between Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia, and China to address the Pakistani government's fears of a hostile regime in Afghanistan, it would go a very long way toward undermining the Taliban."
My comment: If Ms. Kolhatkar is referring to these Afghans as "the Taliban," then Mr. McG should not be quoting Ms. Kolhatkar. The correct designation for these Afghans is Pashtun (often called Pathans in India and Pakistan). And it's never a good idea to mess with a Pashtun, let alone whole tribes of them.
"As for today, it is a pity that the United States lacks a statesman of Kennan's caliber who would dare set aside concern about status within the power circles and make as pointed a critique about Afghanistan as Kennan did about Vietnam. [George Kennan died on March 17, 2005."
ReallY?
Does the name Dennis Kucinich ring a bell?
Sorry, but Mr. Kucinich isn't a "statesman". I've given Kucinich funding in the past and continue to receive emails from his office in order to maintain some sort of contact with the progressive argument, but I can't see him as a high caliber statesman. On a human level I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Dennis, but his profession is that of a politician. Remember how he caved in on the peace issue at the 2004 convention? He gained national interviews within the "power circles" while a peaceful humanitarian peace message is now no where to be found. There was also the on again off again campaign for impeachment: need to drum up some money from national sources for re-election and the call to impeach goes out, want to maintain contact with the power circle of his party...like Obama during the massacre of Gaza...his voice goes mute. And his voice was representing a fraction of Cleveland Ohio's population: hardly an international scenario, unless you count the basketball player LeBron James an international phenomenon; though I doubt Dennis goes clubbing with LeBron and friends.
Once the DLC was formed by the Democrats, in response (perhaps parallel) to Republican fascism, there hasn't been a placing or culturing of "statesmanship" by the US, just placement of Ambassadors and State Department personal as lobbying conduits for the corporate elite internationally. So the need to find or culture a humane human voice for the international scene remains.
One definition of a statesman is a dedicated, caring politician who fails to get his ideas implemented while in office but who later turns out to have been right all along.
Fine...but I don't see how that's very helpful in the moment. Like Daniel Elsberg encouraging someone to leap into courage and release a present day Pentagon Papers, part of McGovern's writing to me is to carry on a certain historical narrative, as well as, motivate a US voice with a humane conscious that can be respected on the international scene. If Obama could return to his part one Rev. Wright days, and before his abhorant and humanly degrading calls for "killing" (a different kind of killing then the Tyson chicken factory does, though that could be improved greatly), then he's a possibility...or maybe Ann Wright, though her message is a little shrill and association with Code Pink a little over the head for main stream international...any other suggestions besides Dennis Kucinich or I'll Bombya Too that could fill the role of another then One "definition" of being stately?