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TechnoratiDon’t Expand Occupation of Afghanistan — End It
"I know that Obama's election has brought great hopes to peace-loving people in the United States. But for Afghans, Obama's military buildup will only bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians ..." - Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya
The only humane and proper response to the mess in Afghanistan is the rapid withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from that country.
The makers of the brilliant documentary "Rethink Afghanistan" have after interviewing savvy diplomats, honest intelligence operatives and frustrated military men and women - as well as human rights activists, feminists and sincere reformers in Afghanistan - advise President Obama:
"Expanding the war in Afghanistan will make Americans less safe, not more so. Less than 100 members of al-Qaida remain in Afghanistan. The Karzai government we once supported is controlled by warlords and is riddled with corruption. Pakistan's stability will be gravely imperiled by an expansion of the war. Hundreds if not thousands of troops will be killed, along with countless civilians.
"Anti-American sentiment throughout the Muslim world will be inflamed by civilian bloodshed, facilitating recruitment by terrorist organizations. The war will cost billions of dollars when we can least afford it, and will stymie your domestic agenda. The cost of sustaining a military force in Afghanistan is $1 million per soldier per year - that's close to $100 billion annually with the troop increase. With the economy in shambles, the deficits generated by these enormous costs will compromise your domestic legislative agenda both fiscally and politically.
"The United States has no vital interest in Afghanistan. If you choose to further escalate troop levels in Afghanistan, you will be making the biggest mistake of your presidency."
These points are have been confirmed again and again by savvy observers who have been on the ground in Afghanistan, including Americans such as Matthew Hoh, a decorated military officer and diplomat who until this summer served as the senior U.S. civilian official in that country's strife-torn Zabul province.
Says Hoh: "The presence of our ground combat troops is not doing anything to defeat al-Qaida."
So what are our troops doing there?
"We're involved in a civil war in Afghanistan," explains Hoh, who recently resigned from the U.S. foreign service because of his objections to the occupation. "We're only taking one side in that civil war. And our presence there is only encouraging the civil war to go on."
Hoh and others like him, in the U.S. and Afghanistan, are the voices of reason. Unfortunately, it appears that Obama has chosen not to listen to the voices of reason.
All indications are that Obama will announce on Tuesday plans to surge as many as 34,000 more troops to dramatically extend the U.S. entanglement in Afghanistan, and in the dirty work of defending what is unquestionably one of the most corrupt governments on the planet.
So what will U.S. troops being doing in Afghanistan? The president would have us believe they are on some sort of humanitarian mission.
This is not the case. They have been placed in the awful position of defending the corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai, who secured the presidency of Afghanistan through foreign interventions, intimidation and election fraud.
Karzai is a despicable despot. The notion that one drop of American or Afghan blood would be shed in his defense is not just unsettling. It is grotesque.
Obama should listen to the honest democrats and feminists in Afghanistan, who for years have been arguing for an end to a U.S. occupation that protects Karzai's warlords and drug runners while doing nothing to improve the circumstance of the great mass of Afghan people.
In her compelling new book, "A Life Among the Warlords," Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya concludes her call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops with a direct message to the president:
"I hope that the lessons in this book will reach President Obama and his policymakers in Washington, and warn them that the people of Afghanistan reject their brutal occupation and their support of the warlords and drug lords.
"In Afghanistan, democratic-minded people have been struggling for human and women's rights for decades. Our history proves that these values cannot be imposed by foreign troops. As I never tire of telling my audiences, no nation can donate liberation to another nation. These values must be fought for and won by the people themselves."
This occupation is wrong. It needs to end. And it can end responsibly.
Matthew Hoh offers a reasoned, experience-based proposal for an exit strategy:
"You're either characterized as all in or all out, and that's wrong. I don't think anyone is calling for us to completely wash our hands of Afghanistan and just walk away. When I call for withdrawal I call for stopping combat operations because it just doesn't make any sense; all it does is just prolong the conflict. I call for some kind of political reconciliation to end the fighting there. So a withdrawal would have to be somewhat gradual while negotiations were going on."
The proper response to the president's announcement is to recognize that the president is wrong. Then act. Join groups such as the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Peace Action, and Progressive Democrats of America in arguing: "We need an exit strategy from Afghanistan."
14 Comments so far
Show AllBut, what about all of those great jobs for folks building war machinery, every state has some form of manufacturing and the representatives from those states know good and well not to touch anything that will equal business and job loss. If Peace were more profitable than War there might be more concentration on manufacturing facilites retooling to provide jobs that would provide much needed contributions right here at home.
Allow me to be the devil's advocate on US policies for the so-called Middle East which is consistent with Mr. Obama's statements published by the Chicago Tribune in the spring of 2008.
According to these statements and the current situation the occupation of Afghanistan is actually the "dumb war" and the occupation of Iraq is the "less-dumb war" with chances to "finish the job" according to Mr. Obama's screwy world view. Now that Turkey has made peace with the Kurds he should support the secession of a Kurdistan and plant numerous large US bases there which can be more easily maintained through Turkey than any base in Afghanistan.
Of course I oppose both occupations but I am highlighting the undeniable fact that Obama's "non-dumb war" in Afghanistan has now become the "dumber" of the two wars with the next President possibly having to "finish Obama's jobs" whatever that may mean then other than a lot more dollars down a black hole.
To understand Mr. Obama's policy one must know that he views most of the Middle East and especially Iran not merely as a breeding ground for terrorists but as an extremely dangerous part of the world and that he has been called upon by God knows whom to make the Middle East "safe for democracy" by hook or by crook or by both. Remember that one of his statements to the Chicago Tribune in the spring of 2008 was that "the US may have to conduct a sanitary (yes, he used that word!) attack on Iran".
No matter how dovishly Mr. Obama will present his Afghan escalation today he has always been and still is a hawk with regards to the Middle East, a fact that voters in 2008 ignored at their own peril. "Ich habe es nicht gewusst" (I did not know this) is no excuse for having supported and then voted for Mr. Obama in 2008.
My my!
What a mess!
'So a withdrawal would have to be somewhat gradual while negotiations were going on.'
Negotiations?
It is not negotiable.
America there is just fool what sit in shit.
The longer Americans stay the bigger smellier fools they be.
Americans never had any place in Afghanistan.
Amazing that needs to be said.
Americans must get out now and will have to pay.
And pay and pay and pay.
Meanwhile there is certainly something wrong with the USA.
Americans must address it.
They must terminate it.
Millions out here see that despite being the biggest economy in the world it is dead.
For the value of money is trust.
What have Americans done to themselves?
Its almost funny.
Just wait: Obama will make his speech tomorrow (12/01) and will blow away the punditry with his eloquent sales pitch. They'll be swooning over his mastery of the situation in Afghanistan and deeply regretful of any skepticism they may have harbored. All it takes for these dunces is sufficient smooth talking before a teleprompter, and they're instant converts to the insane, homocidal cause. Plenty of murmurings and demurrals will precede a total collapse into the powerful leadership arms of Barack the Bold, who will forge ahead against all warnings into the gaping maw of a country no one in history has ever managed to bend to its will, as far back as Alexander, c. 320 B.C.
Barack the Bold will conquer the world! And the corporate punditry will squeal with delight after his masterful oratory at West Point. They care not a fig for a portion of reality. Politics is pure theater to these clowns, and Obama will not disappoint.
right now karzai, former executive for unocal oil and cia operative, is probably in an opium den with the loya jirga, the ruling council for his feudal state. they're probably passing around a big bong full of freshly processed poppy plants. no doubt they are celebrating the extra tens of billions of dollars the usa is about to throw their way. they could not care one whit about the thousands of american boys and girls about to die to keep them in power. and for what? hasn't al queda left afghanistan? if so, then the fight is now between those who supported the russians(the northern alliance) and those whom we supported against the russians(the mujhadeen). not enough there to justify the blood of our youth and the treasure of our nation.
Methinks I am beginning to see the light.
Actually sending all those, otherwise, unemployable youth off to war DOES make our streets safer.
These unemployables with no hope for the future would be the first group to begin the riots and chaos needed to bring down the ruling oligarchy.
Aaah, just think how 200,000 combat-trained PTSD veterans could reek havoc if they were allowed back in the states!!!
But I could be wrong !
Curmudgeon, your provocative, conjured image troubles me... too many of those PTSD vets may be unavailable to focus on street protests, having already wreaked their freshly-returned havoc in bars and bedrooms...
It's safe to criticize Obama for extending the war . . . now that Obama has extended the war.
That way, the war continues to make profits for your owners and the rest of the boss class . . . and you newspaper editorial writers can posture as peace-lovers while setting up Obama for 2012 as a war-lover/war-loser.
Sneaker, I'm too late... I missed my posturing chance by not voting for Nader or McKinney
Our needs at home are so huge that excuses for fighting trillion dollar MIC wars have become insults to the public's intelligence.
Fear is the prevalent human emotion. And Obama's greatest fear is defeat at the polls in 2012. I would not go so far as to say that Obama actually believes we can't win the Afghan war, whatever cockamamie definition of victory he might lamely come up with. After eleven months as president whatever wisp of doubt about Afghanistan that might have existed in his mind has been overwhelmed and exterminated by the macho, imperial bullshit poured into his ear 24/7 by the permanent representatives of the MIC in the national government and the cynical calculations of Rahm Emanuel and his slithering political ilk. Hitler once characterized himself as a sleepwalker, a man who took enormous chances on the world stage and got away with it due to the spinelessness of those he was victimizing or about to victimize. Obama lives in that same kind of strutting, narcissistic political ether and is totally unaware that (1)the Afghan insurgency is not afraid of him and (2) he is about to flame-out of his all sizzle and no steak political career.
Get ready for a call to "share the sacrifice" of the war, either by a tax or a draft. Here's how we should respond:
Congress members, if you really wanted to revolt, you'd vote against funding these two illegal and immoral wars, not imposing a tax to pay for them. Shared sacrifice? Don't talk to the Democratic base about sharing the sacrifice for wars we tried to stop and you keep funding. Don't tell working people, who are losing their jobs and homes, to sacrifice more than Wall Street sacrifices. Don't tell Americans to share the sacrifice but give up the profits to banks and corporations. Americans sacrifice everyday because of outrageous health insurance and drug prices, home foreclosures, dropping home values, reduced pensions, and unemployment--thanks to you Democrats and Republicans in Congress who sacrifice NOTHING. Your call to working people to "sacrifice" is an insult. We don't want these wars, and in 2010 and 2012 we will not vote for warmongers.
I'm afraid Americans will not leave Afghanistan until, like the Soviet Union, it's no longer a viable option to stay there, meaning when we're bankrupt and can no longer afford it.
Not too bankrupt to provide ever greater corporate welfare to the miltary industrial media complex.