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Escalating Afghan War Mocks Hopes of Peace, Good Will
"Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up." "Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing?"
"As a species, we're doomed by hope, then?"
The first quote is from Ronald Wright's neat, focused book, A Short History of Progress, which describes how civilizations progress until they use up or screw up the natural resources on which they depend, then crash. Wright also looks at some achievements of advanced civilizations, including the Roman circus, the human sacrifices of the Aztecs, the Inquisition, the Nazi death-camps. We might add the 100 million who died in 20th century wars, the Soviet gulags, Hiroshima, My Lai, and Abu Ghraib.
This week people in high places have tinkered with words until they have convinced themselves that they can fix what's wrong in Afghanistan by just repeating history, but doing it better.
Never mind that the price of repeating history in Afghanistan has been calculated at $1.1 million per soldier per year -- about twice what we paid for the occupation of Iraq. Never mind that the cost of this war will be paid by Afghan people and Americans needing jobs, homes, health care, and education..
Never mind that for this price we will still only rent stability, security and peace -- not own them. And we'll be renting it from our own generals, weapons manufacturers and oil corporations.
In the eight years following our first invasion of Afghanistan, we spent some $300 billion and achieved what? Half of the Afghans live, starving, on about 45 cents a day; half of their children die before reaching five years of age. Their government, dubiously elected, is riddled with corruption and drug-dealing.
Even if we killed every Taliban and Al Qaeda supporter, Afghanistan would still have the same infrastructure of patronage and poverty that not only cannot feed the people and provide them with minimal government and services, it can't produce security and stability, let alone democracy and prosperity.
Whether crude or sophisticated, war eats people, consumes resources, and has never, in some 10,000 years of "civilization and progress" brought lasting peace and prosperity. So why, in the words of Psalm 2, the second quote above, is our nation raging toward more war, and why are we imagining such vain things?
How can our civilized nations -- and We-the-People -- be so mentally, mechanically, and morally bankrupt that we imagine that the only way we can save Afghanistan -- or democracy, or U.S. hegemony, or energy supplies, or capitalism - - is to blow the Bad Guys (and everyone nearby) to bits and force the survivors into submission with killing, destruction, and our own brands of hi-tech terrorism?
And so we come to the third quote: Jimmy's anguished question (in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake) about being doomed by hope. Wright explains: "Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism."
And hope, funded by unbridled capitalism, promoted by comfortable elites, and underwritten by pervasive poverty, fuels bigger, better, more improbable, ineffective and hopeless wars.
Our hopes may betray us on other fronts. We could pay an even higher price for repeating past wars if a small nation or band of zealots so outraged or bereft by war manages to acquire one of the nuclear weapons scattered all over this planet and detonate it. Does anyone imagine that Israel, Iran, India, or Pakistan would refrain from responding in kind to a nuclear attack, setting off a chain of retaliation that would blow the few survivors back to the Stone Age?
But the highest price of all may be charged to us if we continue to reprise history with depletion of our planet's natural resources and disruption of the finely-tuned systems that regulate temperature, rainfall, weather and seasons. Tim Flannery has called humans "Future-eaters" and "Weather-makers." In our effort to supply food, energy and consumer goods to nearly seven billion human beings, we have already eaten into the capital resources of the planet and modified its climate.
We humans probably have technologies adequate to manage these systems and live within their constraints -- if we start right away with large commitments both to renewable energy and population control. Indeed, humans may be the only hope of reversing the present warming trend in time to prevent long-term damage. Nature will eventually cool the planet down and reduce our numbers, but she will not be especially humane in doing so.
Peace on Earth? Forget it. The rich, the powerful, the military and the weapons and oil industries don't want it: they would lose the perpetual rents we pay them. Our president, who promised us hope, has opted to repeat history. Must we hope that he succeeds where others failed?
Good Will toward Mankind? Forget that, too. We are still caught up in vain things, trying to buy or rent loyalty, justice, democracy, peace.
Hope may doom us if we believe we can't fail, that we can do war, society and technology better than anyone has ever done them. Hope may doom us if we vest that hope in some short-term, local, military or technological fixes. Hope without humility, honesty, and compassion for the poor will certainly doom us, as a nation, a civilization and a species.
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12 Comments so far
Show AllUncle 'Bomb's Christmas-bombing US!
"How can our civilized nations -- and We-the-People -- be so mentally, mechanically, and morally bankrupt that we imagine that the only way we can save Afghanistan -- or democracy, or U.S. hegemony, or energy supplies, or capitalism - - is to blow the Bad Guys "
Watching too many Chuck Norris movies...
is your hope half-full or half-less?
So when do we start up the 'Bomb, Bomb, Iran' chorus?
Right after "Bomb, Bomb, 'istan' !!!!!
(Note refrain works for both Afghanistan or Pakistan - a regular ol' twofer!!)
But I could be wrong !
St. Augustine defined true hope as having "two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."
Big Brother and the Industrial Military Security/Surveillance Complex can only thrive because we the people are asleep.
"For decades, the military built a sense of solidarity out of a singular purpose, the Cold War struggle between free markets and state-planned economies—the shining city on a hill versus the evil empire…meshed neatly with ideologies [that connected] nationalism and fundamentalism…Communism…the dark alternative should we fail to unite. Fundamentalism thrived…a neat, black-and-white [theology and] a foreign policy. The end of the Cold War deprived militant evangelicals of that clarity [and] the emergence of “radical Islam” [became] the object of a new Cold War."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1267&Itemid=219
Augustine also came up with the conceit of "Just War" - which is just that.
Hope is not necessary - conviction is.
You can discuss peace to ways, when you are laying on your back with a gun to your forehead, then talk well and talk fast. You can discuss peace well armed and with the intent to use those arms.
Do you think for a moment that we act without restraint in Afghanistan? Do you think for a moment we as a country do not have the ware with all to end this in less than a day? We don’t, we act with restraint, we act with dignity to the best of our ability and we do not burn a country to the ground.
What would happen if we did burn Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq to the ground? A sharply written letter from the UN? You can see how much that means. Iran reveals a processing plant, and the UN wags its finger and makes ‘resolutions’. Iran responds with, ‘You know, we would like to play but really, we are going to build ten more’.
Open your eyes, read reports from other sources. If you get all your ‘news’ and all your OpEd from a sight that already agrees with you do you think you are getting all the news.
War is terrible, I know this better than most. I am a Soldier with 22 years in the military, two tours in Afghanistan, two in Iraq, two to the Balkans and a few others thrown in to boot. It is not the most terrible thing.
Do you think that Pres Obama ran on empty promises? No, he ran on those promises without knowledge of the full picture.
Perhaps if you were to do more than gather your news remotely and from afar you would see a bigger picture. Perhaps if you were to volunteer with some of the Non Governmental Agencies or at the least donate to them you could the change you want to see in the world. Did not Gandi himself say, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’?
Here is a group I have worked with http://www.halotrust.org/afghanistan.html they turn ‘Mine fields in to farm fields’
These folks do good things from one end of the spectrum to the other, doctors, education, food. http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/afghanistan
Do a web search, there are ways you can effect change besides sitting, typing and griping.
Maybe I will even pull security for you some day,
Peace will come when there is realization that only under a reign of law, based on righteousness and supported by the religious conviction of the brotherhood of man, can there be any hope of a complete and satisfying life. Parchment will fail, the sword will fail, it is only the spiritual nature of man that can be triumphant.
One of the greatest dangers to peace lies in the economic pressure to which people find themselves subjected. One of the most practical things to be done in the world is to seek arrangements under which such pressure may be removed, so that opportunity may be renewed and hope may be revived.
CALVIN COOLIDGE, inaugural address, Mar. 4, 1925
Thank you, abnsmith!
There is nothing more satifying. I was chaperone of a group that took aid to Iraqi refugees in Damascus. I would not trade for anything - except more help and support for them.
Thanks for other options to get off our duffs and be part of the solution.
This the FIRST commentary I've see that does NOT whine and encourages pro-activeness !!!!
But I could be wrong !
Where is the "Dignity" in Abu Graib, In Bagram, In Gitmo? How is it dignified to waterboard people 130 times or to pile them into Naked Pyramids and take pictures of them?
What is "dignified" in remotely piloting drones from Las Vegas and bombing women and Children in Pakistan?
You suggest you were in Afghanistan to bring them peace? . The US Military brings WAR not peace. You show restraint?
The US Military dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on Cambodia in the Vietnam war then they dropped on Japan and Germany combined through the entirety of World War two. How was a Cambodia a threat to peace? How was that restraint?
When did the Vietnamese threaten your peace? During operation rolling thunder more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam then on all of Nazi Germany during the second World War. Vietnam did not have tank factories making tanks to send to War in Russia. They had no Ball bearing plants. They were not bombing hawaii. They were not refining oil to send fleets of submaries to sink ships in the pacific so just what the heck was the USA bombing and how was that restraint?
Across wide swathes of Vietnam your Military dropped agent orange which poisoned the soil and land of Vietnam. The Dioxins will take thousands of years to wash away and babies are born with birth defects, missing limbs and fingers and toes. In Laos a country which was never a threat to the peace of Americans thousands have had limbs and legs blown off by cluster bombs dropped by the US Military. To this day swathes of lands can not be farmed without the risk of death or injury.
In Iraq , Fallujah a toxic stew of Chemicals and DU Munitions used by the USA against that city with an exponential increase in death rates and birth defects. The US Military bombed and destroyed the Iraqi water treatment plants then enforced sanctions on that country which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands due to dysentry and contaminated drinking water.
Peoples of Irag and Afghanistan will have to deal with the radiation from the DU Munitions used against them for generations.
You do not leave behind wastelands? If one travels Russia signs of the German Invasion of that land have to be pointed out to you. They are not dealing with deformed babies today because of the Nazi Invasion as the peoples of Vietnam and Iraq will have to do for the next hundreds of years.
The USA Violated the LAW in its disregard of the Geneva Conventions and in its Illegal invasions of those nations yet you harp about the importance of the law?
By what LEGAL right does an American have to go to Iraq and Afghanistan and KILL people?
Which Iraqi and Afghani came to the USA and held a gun to your head?
If you truly wanted a change towards peace, you would not have joined the Military or participated in their Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
GW North you just destroyed abnsmiths diatribe. Yeah, you have to love his sophomoric definition of restraint. Since we are not using our atomic weapons to kill thousands of innocent civilians that include women and children we are the good guys!
tactically he's correct.
the only way anyone could "win" in Afghanistan would be to kill'm all.
smoke'm out.
round'm up.
hang'm high.
go team go.
What liberals don't seem to understand is that the goal of the war against Afghanistan and Pakistan is not to create "stability" - it is to create sufficient numbers of enemies so that we can perpetuate war and the profits that ensue.
In the words of George Orwell: "The war is not supposed to be winnable, it is supposed to be continuous...all for the hierarchy of society...The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent..it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War… is now a purely internal affair."
The purpose of the war in Afghanistan is to maintain a permanent state of war. This state is necessary for the national security state to flourish, as well as to ensure the subjection of the majority. Obama, the smiling liberal, is well-chosen as executor of this totalitarian strategy because he can pull off the crime while keeping his progressive credentials intact. The liberals wish to live in the illusion of our "restraint", "lawfulness", and "decency" in comparison to our manufactured "enemies".
A secondary goal of the war is the control of Central Asian energy resources in a game the U.S. cannot afford to cede to the Russians and Chinese. But principally, war in Afghanistan helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. This war is being fought to help ensure the proper mental climate for the enslavement of the middle class in debt bondage to Wall Street.