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Obama’s Afghan 'Strategy' – Another American Tragedy
Shortly after President Obama’s Afghanistan War escalation speech, I was contacted by the Voice of America’s Russian Language Service. They wanted to interview me. These are the questions they asked: What do you think about Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan? Were you surprised by it? Do you think it would be possible to carry out all Obama's objectives by 2011? Would Afghanistan, you think, cease to being a failed state?
Weighted down by a sense of the tragic implications of the speech, I answered as follows: How could we be surprised? During the 2008 election campaign candidate Obama repeatedly and unknowingly said that the Afghanistan war is a "good war." Back then that was the politically expedient thing to do, and many of his supporters who were rightfully outraged by the damage wrought by Bush and Cheney simply ignored what he was saying. Now he's stuck with that commitment, whether he believes in it or not. Politically, given the power of the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, as well as widespread cultural assumptions of U.S. dominance, he has not been in a good position to reverse course, as Vice President Biden reportedly urged. It should, however, be noted that President Obama ruled out General McCrystal's 80,000+ troop increase option from the beginning. Obama has sought a middle way between powerfully contending forces - including the U.S. peace movement. It won’t work
Obama's so-called "strategy" means years of tragedy and lost opportunities for generations of Afghans, U.S. Americans, and people of many other countries. It is Bush-lite with enormous negative consequences to follow. Think about the jobs that won’t be created here in the U.S., the money lost to investment in health care, our children’s educations, and building the 21st century infrastructure needed for the U.S. to complete economically with rising and less belligerent powers. President Obama’s strategy, as Russians should know from prior experience, can’t possibly succeed.
While the President denied comparisons to Vietnam, his approach mirrors that of Vietnam era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Presidents Johnson and Nixon: "coercive diplomacy." The mistaken "logic" underlining the contradictions of massively increasing the number of U.S. warriors sent to Afghanistan with the vague commitment to begin some withdrawals in late 2011 is to increase his bargaining leverage with the Taliban. Obama wants to augment U.S. power and influence in Afghanistan before the U.S. approves Karzai negotiations with the Taliban or publicly begins them on its own. In fact, back channel U.S. discussions with the Taliban are widely reported in Europe, and the United States’ British and German allies have encouraged Karzai to enter into a process initiated by the Saudis.
Unfortunately, like LBJ and Nixon, Obama's approach won't work. With its extraordinary corruption, its reliance on repressive and misogynist warlords, and the deaths and suffering of civilians caused by U.S.-NATO attacks, Afghan hearts and minds will not rally to the Karzai government or to U.S. occupation forces. Similar to the failures of "Vietnamization" in the early 1970s, the idea that the U.S. will be able to triple the size of the Afghan military, isolate it from corrupting warlord and Karzai government influences, and provide it with élan and modern warfighting capabilities in just two years is a deadly pipe dream. So too is his plan to vastly increase the size of and professionalize the Afghan police.
Note too that President Obama's pledge to begin reductions of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in late 2011 was very vague. At best, we will likely see a minimal reduction of forces in the months leading up to the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. There remains, however, the possibility of further increases in U.S. forces as the war continues to go south.
The most obvious flaw in Obama's so-called strategy is the impossibility of the U.S. transforming Afghanistan's corrupt and failing government into a modern functioning state. Here too the similarities with Vietnam, where the U.S. imposed and supported a series of corrupt dictators, is striking. The question that President Obama failed to answer was what happens when Karzai, the warlords on whom his power depends, and his corrupt allies refuse to cooperate with the U.S. plan. If a U.S. victory in Afghanistan is so "vital to U.S. interests", would the U.S. simply withdraw its troops and leave in defeat when Karzai and company continue to make matters worse? This leads us to a situation analogous to that described in the Pentagon Papers in which 85% of the reason for continuing the war, and even escalating it, will be “perception,” to defend the image of the U.S. as a military superpower that must not be challenged.
Like the U.S. in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, this is a strategy that will bleed the foundations of prosperity within the U.S. and is global reputations and influence.
Societies are not changed in two years or even in a single generation. The way forward is for the U.S. to press for all party negotiations within Afghanistan to create a new Afghan social contract. This would need to be reinforced by an international conference and actions on the part of all major states involved in the war to help build and support that social contract. This, of course, also means dealing with the source of Indian-Pakistani tensions, and the geostrategic ambitions of the major powers who have insisted on playing, and losing, the “Great Game.”
28 Comments so far
Show AllIs this the page where I write in on Tiger Woods' marital difficulties? I mean Sarah Palin is going to bring us peace with honor in 2013, right?
The Emperor's speech last night sounded like Bush Jr. But unlike Bush Jr. he delivered the 'strategy' with a straight face, no goofy smirk.
The scary thing is that if you did not know better, you would have believed all the lies, as they were delivered so well.
socialist: the very stock in trade of the confidence man or woman is his/her ability to look you in the face and make you believe that the bill of goods he/she is about to "sell" you without ever delivering those goods is telling believable lies. Indeed it's a "scary thing" that the occupant of the Oval Office has that vital characteristic of the con man. So is Obama worse than Bush? Much worse, because he's selling the same goods and selling them much more effectively.
Jerry, you apparently suffer from memory loss---Team Bush was very effective in selling fear and endless war back in 2002-3. While I think your criticisms of Obama are valid, I take exception to characterizing his administration as "worse" than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft and Gonzales...There has never been and God willing never will be such a sorry amalgamation of murderers and criminals in power all at once.
It seems this is a matter of style, not substance. What difference does it make if the drone attacks, bombings, occupations, assasinations, coups, etc. are ordered by?
Obama is worse only in the sense of the sophistication in delivering the pack of lies. Bush et al. was terrible at it. Obama is the best PR manager we have had in many years. Obama has co-opted much of the so-called left. That is why he is so dangerous.
The military/intelligence/imperial budgets are HIGHER now under a D Congess and Obama than under the Bush Jr. regime.
Let us not be blinded by phony two-party politics. See the comments of A MacDonald above, he states it very articulately.
His ability to "sell the goods" propelled him into the White House in the first place. I have consistently characterized his "goods" as "hot air".
socialist, right you are.
Whatever the Global ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist Empire is paying this guy --- it is not enough.
He's very good, very smooth, fantastic, and very effective on the rubes (from Kansas and Massachusetts/California, who Bush could never rope-in). Way better than Bush in fooling all the people all the time.
BUT ---
Obama’s confusing speech last night for the Global Empire
The key to understanding the impossibility of Obama’s dilemma is that he is trying to defend a Global Empire with American blood and treasure.
Obviously Obama will not articulate this reality, and thus his plan entails seminal incongruities, which are seen by a few, but sensed by the wider audience of Americans.
Obama has tried to gloss over these incongruities by using the historical techniques of Empires’ salesmen --- he has engendered fear by characterizing the enemy as a “spreading cancer”, or ‘falling dominos’ like communism --- but the real spreading cancer is the Global Empire that hired him to guilefully defend it with American blood and treasure.
Historically, the salesmanship of Empire has always been based on promising the domestic population that they will share the ‘spoils of war’, or the ‘safety of winning’, in return for fighting, and paying, for imperialist adventures.
But Obama, although a consummate salesman, will encounter increasing resistance from the American populus because of the unique incongruities of fighting and paying for a Global Empire with domestic dollars and dead, and without any benefits actually accruing to the American public.
Obama’s dilemma in selling and defending the escalation of war first in Afghanistan, and then in Central Asia and the greater Middle East, is the same as his dilemma regarding his escalating defense of the very same Global Empire on Wall Street ---- that all the benefits are privatized and all the costs are socialized.
Unfortunately for Obama (and his paymasters), but fortunately for we average middle/working-class Americans (and all citizens of the world), the confluence of symptoms pointing to Global Empire as the single, hidden, and metastasizing cause of the real cancer is now becoming increasingly apparent.
When the traditional ‘nationalist empires’ of the 20th century (British, French, German, Soviet) misled their homeland’s people, by promising benefits and security in exchange for fighting and paying for empire, the pride, prizes, and protection of reaching ‘Empire Status’ at least initially were apparent. This was also true for the late 20th century American Empire, even though it was more politely referred to by the consummate propagandist Luce, as just the “American Century” --- since it was the last empire of that century.
But when the American Empire was forcefully morphed into the Global ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist Empire --- which now controls our country by hiding behind the façade of its two-party ‘Vichy’ sham of democratic government (aided by the equally ‘Vichy’ corporatist media) --- the traditional empire promises of war booty, economic benefits, and homeland security were broken.
As this ‘shape shifting’ of Empire progressed, increasing segments of the American middle/working-class started to notice that shares of those traditional ‘war spoils’ from what they suspected was ‘their American Empire’ were not being shared with the domestic population --- not ‘trickling down’ as another famous propagandist/ spokesman/salesman for empire cynically suggested.
The reason, of course, that the traditional promises and benefit streams of empire were not ‘trickling down’, was that the bonuses of empire status were being increasingly captured by only the top tier elite of American society (which always happens within all empires), but also that the spoils of empire were being uniquely employed to lure other nation-states’ ruling-elites into this new and growing form of Global Empire.
Now that the American people are directly feeling the ‘tip of the lance’ of this Global Empire directly in their own faces ---- in the form of; the highest GINI Coefficent of Income Inequality in the world, the continuing ‘crash’ that this Global Empire is causing in its Wall Street lair, the health care oppression at hands of insurance corporations, foreclosures, domestic tyranny and spying, poor education for their kids, plus the increasing number of lives sacrificed to imperialist wars abroad ---- Americans will increasingly (and painfully) recognize that this Global Empire, which Obama will not even name, let alone confront, is the source of all our symptoms and ‘sorrows’ of Empire.
Yes, despite how great a salesman he is, Obama will increasingly find Americans understanding that all their pains and sorrows have one singular, signal, and seminal deep and previously undiagnosed tumor of a cause --- that they are being asked to pay in lives and treasure the socialized costs for rapacious benefits that are accruing only to this new private Global Empire.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Beautifully stated, Mr. MacDonald.
Armed conflict tends to have a life of its own, as in Shakespeare's "...let loose the dogs of war..."
This is especially true of our present day nebulous, ill-defined, pointless, and absurd kinds of 'war.'
Gates called the region the "epicenter of extremist jihadism," reminding lawmakers that local and foreign Muslims had joined before — in defeating the former Soviet Union.
The lawmakers should remember it well...since they paid for and created the extremist jihadism and Al Qaeda in the first place.
Don't you Americans feel kinda burned?..first you pay the jihadis to fight the Solviets, then you pay them to attack New York City..now you have to pay again to pretend to try and wipe them out.
And all the money winds up eventually as some Wall Street arms brokers bonus as him and the Military Industrialists milk this "endless war"
Gates? You talkin bout Robert "uncle Bobby" Gates, the Bush Jr. Secretary of Military Aggession and long-time crony of Bush Sr.?
Oh, I forgot he is still the Secretary of Military Aggression under the Obama regime.
Obama's strategy? Sounded like George Bush to me.
Not without reason - check out the Glenn Greenwald piece where he puts the quotes side by side.
Its amazing isn't it? There is really a change coming next year.
The Obamas are merely black Bushs.
The speech was great, brilliant. It was all things to all people and it can and will be interpreted in a variety of ways. I believe in the end, however, the speech is about exit. Obama realizes that war in Afghanistan has absolutely no value, but he must satisfy a number of political constraints to get us out. So, the strategy is brilliant: you create an illusion of kicking Taliban butt, while really paying them off just to calm them down for a short while. Then you declare that the job is done and leave. Perfect. Of course, you insure a big success in 2012. Obama is a hero and gets re-elected. Everybody wins. My predictions is that wed'll be completely out of Afghanistan by the end of 2011. Now all Obama needs to do is make the Taliban happy for a while just like we're doing right now by paying the Taliban for allowing us to drive vehicles down Rt. 1. Beautiful. Bravo Obama.
Wow.
I suppose if you could get that out of it, it must mean just about all things to someone.
Is this one of those irony things again?
It's representative government stupid!
http://ni4d.us/
Can I assume this is one of those "irony" things?
Its one of those "fact things" you can read about on the posted site.
"..of course, also means dealing with the source of Indian-Pakistani tensions," - by that Dr. G did you mean poking your nose where it does not belong? I suppose US's urge to meddle in some body else’s affairs is just too powerful. I did a word search on the document and the word Palestine does not occur even once.
(1) Dr. Gerson replicates the usual corporate media usage of "tragedy" when he calls the US invasion/occupation of Afghanistan an "American tragedy." Tragedy is a artistic genre that, in its classical usage, connotes a good but flawed effort, doomed to self-destruct. But the American imperial project is without redeeming circumstance; the aggression against Afghanistan is a war crime, pure and simple. (2) Again exemplifying the degeneracy of US political discourse, Dr. Gerson expends not one word as to the real causes/aims of the US aggression against Afghanistan; although he correctly points out that, once the imperial project has been launched, it attains a momentum of its own by virtue of the imperialists' need to keep up the "perception" of their military dominance. But without addressing the original causes of the crime, all talk of political remedy is vain posturing. Serious citizens might begin by examining such topics as the military-industrial complex, the resource implications of the region, the geostrategic concerns of the occupiers, and so on. (3) Dr. Gerson's final paragraph reveals that he espouses--without argument, of course--the imperialist presumption that the USA ought to be involved in determining the future of Afghanistan. I suggest that Gerson try minding his own (USA) business and leave the rest of the world alone. If he has trouble conceiving of such a possibility, perhaps a refresher read of Ray Bradbury's Prime Directive might be of assistance.
frounds, in his/her well-written post above, thinks/hopes that Obama's Afghan troop buildup is a cleverly couched exit strategy therefrom; necessarily couched, frounds adduces, because Obama has to "...satisfy a number of political constraints to get us out."
Sounds intriguing on the surface, but.....
Who is "us?"
And what could these "political constraints" be, that Obama must satisfy? If not the interests of the US Military-Industrial Complex and its congressional and MSM lackeys?
In short, if not the interests and manipulative dynamics of the corrupt, entrenched, murderously hypocritical US ruling class?
Since Obama has to date been a dutiful implementer of US ruling class interests in every major action he's taken as president so far, it's delusional to expect that this class (aka The Oligarchy) is going to allow this puppet, or any US president otherwise, to start acting independent of its global control strategies and profit designs. Either in 2011, or at any other point in the same-governing future.
If Obama, the person, was truly, anything remotely resembling what he pretended to be during his 2008 campaign, he would have, right from his January 20, 2009 start, begun acting to further educate, expand, democratically empower, and focus his political base to enable his presidency to challenge, in name of The People, exactly those "political constraints" which poster frounds refers to.
Given that Obama has used his powers, systematically to date, to instead do almost unfailingly the opposite of what he, as a candidate, led his supporters to believe he would do as a president, the more likely scenario regarding Afghanistan is this:
<>The US-led Afghan war now will ineluctably deepen and grow in violence in consequence of Obama's troop infusion, and the US and its idiot western allies will as a result likely be physically attacked yet again on their 'homeland' soils by radical Islamists who have no need of Afghanistan or N.Pakistan geographical spaces as prerequisite to their operational base.
<>These attacks will be used to justify not a winding-down, but instead an increase of US military forces in these remote lands, plus increasingly 'security-justified' impositions of police-state 'necessities' at home.
There's no doubt that President Obama is able to give rousing public speeches that sound profoundly smarter and more nobly well-intended than his clumsy, overtly-fascist predecessor's.
But there's also no doubt that Obama's foreign policy premises and actions remain indistinguishable from and just as self-defeating as his predecessor's.
If any US government policy is change for the better, enough Americans must first come to see that they have been deluded by one Bush after Obama after another, and then ask themselves: Why and How?
a long ago statement by the man considered by the Russians as the one who first "united the afghan tribes"....
Czar Babur, said: 'Afghanistan has not been and never will be conquered, and will never surrender to anyone.'
Babur was a descendent of Genghis Khan who founded the Mughal dynasty which conquered much of central Asia in the 1500s.
Sorry but I am so happy the people on this site don't run this country. Afhganistan is changing--it's changing for women. I have been trying to raise awareness of the plight of the Afghan women for over a decade now. Women have shelters and are starting businesses and girls are going to school (more than they were) and a troop escalation will help give them the security to create the democracy they need (check out Women for Afghan Women). What the hell were you people doing to help the women of Afghanistan?? What were you doing to stop the brutality?? I love how this guycentric intellectual lefty site is actually siding with a regime that brutalizes women and girls. Marrying 13 year old girls off to 40 year old men. Before you knock the efforts of the U.S. and dismiss it as another show of U.S. dominance, imagine the thirteen year old girl who loses her virginity to a 40 year old man by force or the Afghan women who are prisoners in their homes because they had no men to escort them on the street or the women who were abused by their husband or raped with no recourse of justice because domestic violence and rape weren't even offenses under the Taliban, in fact they were sanctioned. Now they have the Law of ELimination of Violence Against Women--it's a start. You gotta be kidding me with the comments on this site. I DON'T CARE IF WE WENT TO AFGHANISTAN TO FIND JESUS, I say give these people--GIVE THESE WOMEN--the security they need to create a fairer society. Political correctness be damned!
And by the way providing that security for the Afghan people is a good job for the thousands of troops putting their lives on the line.
It would seem that the courageous Afghan woman Malalai Joya would have the most direct information on this subject, and she says that for all Afghans, including women, Obama's surge only means more misery: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/01-3
Malalai Joya is ONE WOMAN. How about Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and her articles:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-11/in-security-crisis-afghan-women-leaders-demand-support/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-01/what-the-surge-means-for-women/?cid=bsa:moreauthor1
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-21/thugs-plague-women-entrepreneurs/?cid=bsa:moreauthor2
How about Leeda Yacoubi, deputy director of Afghan Women’s Network or the woman entrepreneur with her own soccer ball manufacturing company in Afghanistan or the woman principal of a Kabul girls' high school whose 5,000 students attend class in three shifts a day, who is proud that more than a third of her seniors went on to university last year.
How about Afghan parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai who says "Pull out, get out, give up is not the way to solve Afghanistan’s problems.” She and several other women leaders say that while they are not convinced Afghanistan needs more American soldiers, there is no question the future of their country depends on those forces already there.
or
Pashtoon Azfar, head of the Afghan Midwives Association, which now runs accredited midwifery programs in more than 32 provinces who says "Development and security go in parallel. If you don’t have security, how can development be done?”
The goddamned feminazis should STFU. I want progress, not your goddamned fascist hive.