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Saving Face in Unwinnable War
Sinking in debt and no closer to victory, heads may roll as the U.S. and NATO wrap up their pointless Afghan adventure
Fire-breathing U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his Special Forces "mafia" were supposed to crush Afghan resistance to western occupation. But McChrystal was fired after rude remarks from his staff about the White House.
A more cerebral and political general, David Petraeus, replaced McChrystal. Petraeus managed to temporarily suppress resistance in Iraq.
Last week, the usually cautious Petraeus vowed from Kabul to "win" the Afghan War, which has cost the U.S. nearly $300 billion to date and 1,000 dead. The problem: No one can define what winning really means. Each time the U.S. reinforces, Afghan resistance grows stronger.
Afghanistan is America's longest-running conflict.
The escalating war now costs U.S. taxpayers $17 billion monthly. President Barack Obama's Afghan "surge" of 30,000 more troops will cost another $30 billion.
The Afghan and Iraq wars - at a cost of $1 trillion - are being waged on borrowed money when the U.S. is drowning in $13.1 trillion in debt.
America has become addicted to debt and war.
By 2011, Canadians will have spent an estimated $18.1 billion on Afghanistan, $1,500 per household.
The U.S. Congress, which alone can declare and fund war, shamefully allowed U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Obama to usurp this power. A majority of Americans now oppose this imperial misadventure. Though politicians fear opposing the war lest they be accused of "betraying our soldiers," dissent is breaking into the open.
Last week, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele let the cat out of the bag, admitting the Afghan war was not winnable. War-loving Republicans erupted in rage, all but accusing Steele of high treason. Many of Steele's most hawkish Republican critics had, like Bush and Dick Cheney, dodged real military service during the Vietnam War.
Republicans (I used to be one) blasted McChrystal's sensible policy of trying to lessen Afghan civilian casualties from U.S. bombing and shelling. There is growing anti-western fury in Afghanistan and Pakistan over mounting civilian deaths.
By clamouring for more aggressive attacks that endanger Afghan civilians and strengthen Taliban, Republicans again sadly demonstrate they have become the party and voice of America's dim and ignorant.
Obama claimed he was expanding the Afghan War to fight al-Qaida. Yet the Pentagon estimates there are no more than a handful of al-Qaida small-fry left in Afghanistan.
Obama owes Americans the truth about Afghanistan.
After nine years of war, the immense military might of the U.S., its dragooned NATO allies, and armies of mercenaries have been unable to defeat resistance to western occupation or create a popular, legitimate government in Kabul. Drug production has reached new heights.
As the United States feted freedom from a foreign oppressor on July 4, its professional soldiers were using every sort of weapon in Afghanistan, from heavy bombers to tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopter gunships, fleets of drones, heavy artillery, cluster bombs and an arsenal of hi-tech gear.
In spite of this might, bands of outnumbered Pashtun tribesmen and farmers, armed only with small arms, determination and limitless courage, have fought the West's war machine to a standstill and now have it on the strategic defensive.
This brutal David versus Goliath conflict brings no honour upon the western powers waging it, including Canada. They are widely seen abroad as waging yet another pitiless colonial war against a small, backward people for resource domination and strategic geography.
Most Afghans yearn for peace after 30 years of war. But efforts by the government of Hamid Karzai, Taliban and Pakistan to forge a peace are being thwarted by Washington, Ottawa and Afghanistan's Communist-dominated Tajik Northern Alliance. India stirs the pot in Afghanistan while rebellion seethes in Indian-held Kashmir.
The heretical Republican Steele was speaking truth when he said this ugly, pointless war is unwinnable. But Washington's imperial impulses continue. Too many political careers in the U.S., Canada and Europe hang on this misbegotten war. So, too, does the fate of the obsolete NATO alliance that may well meet its Waterloo in the hills of Afghanistan.
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43 Comments so far
Show AllNo problem. Do what we always do - declare victory, have a parade, tout our cultural superiority or tougher god, order more weapons systems and plan our next imperial adventure.
We'll have a parade in Victory Square with truckloads of swarthy-skinned POW's.
- No one can define what winning really means. -
Duh.
I have posted for years that this is due to the vagueness and insanity of the declaration of war against future terror.
There is no completion of the mission to 'prevent future terrorism'. There is no victory, there can be no exit strategy until the inevitable catastrophe.
- The U.S. Congress, which alone can declare and fund war, shamefully allowed U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Obama to usurp this power. -
Double Duh.
Public Law 107-40.
'that authorization is still in effect' (Pres. O.)
America is trapped and still refuses to confront the law that traps us.
So, the insanity continues.
When I read that statement that you quoted,
I thought of you.. I is amazing how many still
believe that these wars are by executive order.
Even the media............
Interesting what you say about NATO. As popular as war is at home it does not seem to be as much so for our NATO allies. In other Western Democracies there seems to be a political price to pay for military misadventures. Is that what will break NATO's back? Declaring a war but nobody comes?
"Last week, the usually cautious Petraeus vowed from Kabul to "win" the Afghan War, which has cost the U.S. nearly $300 billion to date and 1,000 dead. The problem: No one can define what winning really means."
There is no "win" in Af-ganef-stan, no matter how you define it or no matter how low Obama and the military cast their expectations. Obama trapped himself; he can't get out, so he won't get out. The tragedy will go on and on until some event, like an Afghan version of the Tet Offensive, happens, causing a sea change among the people of this country. Otherwise, your grandchildren will be fighting in Af-ganef-stan.
"America has become addicted to debt and war."
You can put that on the USA's tombstone.
"Obama trapped himself; he can't get out"
You are most certainly mistaken here. Obama didn't "trap himself," this was the plan all along. Do you think he didn't know that? His money donors didn't know that? Go to Open Secrets too see who gave him what. He got far more from defense than did McCain.
It's the voters who are trapped.
duh.
In the UK today, there have been ceremonies to mark the seventieth anniversary of the start of the Battle of Britain.
One of the less well-known aspects of the battle is that the German air assault on Britain was the first military campaign in which civilian casualties far exceeded those of military combatants (544 British aircrew killed during the generally accepted period of the battle, July to October 1940; 27,450 British civilans killed between July and December that year).
It was the direct forerunner to so many later campaigns - from Vietnam to Gaza.
Dec '37. Nanking.
Thank you, Sarakayat. We in the West are inclined to forget things that didn't directly affect us at the time.
If you go further back in history, you'll find that the civvies have always paid the highest price in any war. If the cities weren't sacked and the citizens enslaved, the farmers had all of their crops seized to feed the armies. There are many places in the world where the civvies have dug shelters to hide themselves and their goods to survive the wars launched by idiot kings.
Heck, even if you want to talk about England alone, do you really think that Billy only killed Harry's soldiers in 1066?
If our President and congress obeyed the will of the people we wuold neither be in Afganistan or Iraq anymore. Fact number two is Americans are either too busy trying to make ends meet or too rapped up in being entertained to move against this apparent dictatorial government. Fact number three is things are only going to get worse. Sorry folks we are in it for the long haul.
The first casualty of war is truth - all we need to do is go with that. Define something as victory that gets us out of Afghanistan before the shit hits the fan then blame whoever is handy for the almost certain trouble to follow. This gets harder each day we stay, but I have faith that as soon as the corporations see no more profit we will leave victorious to jump into the next publicly funded privately profitable scheme.
Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela have all been warming up in the bullpen or we could ramp up Pakistan at the demand of our corporate masters. We will use more 'private contractors' (now 70% of DOD, they should be called mercenaries) now near the end of our empire citizens will not volunteer for pointless everlasting war. If the right wing nuts get their way we will crash hard and be forced to give up the empire. Empire pried from the cold dead hands of our government, run by a bunch of socialists the fascists will say. I hope we give it up the best way - like giving up smoking the best way to give up empire is voluntarily. It all depends how close to the crash site the corporate masters see personal profit.
The author should have said the US empire will meet its Yorktown in Afghanistan. That would have been just the right metaphor.
AD
The author should have said the US empire will meet its Yorktown in Afghanistan. That would have been just the right metaphor.
AD
Even at the height of the War on Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr's popularity, about 2002 or 3, no one could define for US what a "Victory" in Iraq or Afghanistan consisted of. But they were sure that we were going to achieve it.
Triumphalist Macho swagger of our previous misAdministration kept repeating the meme, that we'd be there till we win, such that it is the >only< politically acceptable option. There's no other end to this that won't be tagged as a loss or worse, a surrender.
By '07, '08, it was obvious to the Bushies that there was no winning this mess they'd made, that they'd boxed themselves out of any kind of negotiated settlement and they did everything in their power to keep the ball in the air until it passed over to the next in line. We were almost out of time in December of '08, our UN fig le..."Mandate" ran out and Al Maliki and the Iraqi Parliament only renewed it with a timetable for withdrawal, something the Bushies had steadfastly refused to consider until then.
How to unwrap the layer upon layer of framing and propaganda?
How to wise up the Coventional wisdom?
What does it take to get Americans to accept that we did wrong, and did it badly, we lunged and missed and now have to find a way to let go of the tar-baby?
Most people don't yet believe that this was Oil War 2 (or 200+, if you want to be more accurate). And as for Afghanistan, that was a shoehorn. The Bushies wanted to invade Iraq immediately but they were forced by their own Trrrrrrrrrsm rhetoric to go into Afghanistan. They pivoted as soon as they could and left Afghanistan festering while they bungled the Big Grab.
Americans vaguely link their energy use to "imported oil" and they vaguely support US "protecting our National Interests", but most don't link invading Iraq to the fact that it's the second largest proven reserve on earth. The linkage they MOST OFTEN make is to 9?11: "they bombed US, so we had to invade them".
So to hear that we attempted to grab Iraq's Oil, lost 4000 of our troops, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, went $1trillion in debt and ended up watching the Chinese get the contracts to develope Iraq'a resources (exactly the event that the PNAC types were trying to prevent), that's a tough sell. It makes our Military Machine into an Organized Criminal Enterprise (an incompetent one at that) and it's Personel into hired thugs and no one wants to go there.
People still hold a belief in the Citizen Army AKA Our Men and Women in Uniform, AKA Our Boys Over There. Even if they disagree with the mission, as more people every day do, they don't want to see the troops endangered or punished for the bad orders they were given, particularly when the ordergivers are untouchable.
The MIC, which has branches in almost every Congressional district, uses that basic support for the troops in order to keep the moneyspiggot open. This has intensified over the past thirty years with the aggregation of the Media into the hands of a small number of owners, some of whom are MIC stalwarts in their other divisions and others owned by chearleaders for the MIC.
When you KNOW that voting to cut off funding for the war is, in most districts, political suicide, that if your party prevails in that effort, they are political roadkill for the next several generations and that that will usher back in the same people that started these wars, How do you procede?
Afghanistan has been called "grave of occupiers". Beware..
Actually, it's 'graveyard of empires'.
No beware involved. People who understand this stuff understood that the ridiculous 'victory' against the Taliban in 2001, with a force cobbled together including old communists from the North, drug smugglers, war lords, and the worse human trash imaginable--murderers and rapists, etc.--would not last.
Occupying Afghanistan is not possible because they've been fighting occupiers for thousands of years, including Alexander the Great...and winning. The writing has been on the wall since the very beginning of this stupid adventure of the Bush chimp.
Today's New York Times magazine features a cover story entitled "Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?" and pretty much answers that question in the affirmative. We are already in the business of propping up the local dictator and slamming alleged Al Queda huts with cruise missiles. Yet another undeclared war.
"Republicans again sadly demonstrate they have become the party and voice of America's dim and ignorant."
Great quote!!
Although we get the point of Afghanistan being named the 'grave of occupiers', it is not really. It is the scene of death.
The hole in the ground in the case of the death of an Empire or Occupier is always at home, where the corpse lies.
The USA (and its Western allies) is the biggest such hole in the ground in human history right now.
Never in human history has intellect been so pathetically debased in such great quantities. The Western media, even partially alive as it is, is the phenomenal stink associated with such a large corpse.
This is the result of self-worship (monotheism = one God = me, I, mine) which always results in self-destruction. No matter the human failings of the enemies of the 'coalition of the willing', they are human and alive, brave and often heroic. Those within the coalition of the willing are inhuman, living dead, cowardly who can never be heroic no matter how hard they try.
"which has cost the U.S. nearly $300 billion to date"
The USan resources expended in Afghanistan are in part produced by the impetus of war and in part diverted (stolen) from elsewhere.
The resources produced by the impetus of war would otherwise not have been produced because their producers (warmongers) see only violent pursuits as worthy, and non-violent pursuits as unworthy. They produce only for the violent context, and otherwise lounge around on their sofas.
At the top of Darth Viper's agenda was to empower this category of USans as they produce "a strategic type of wealth".
The resources diverted (stolen) from elsewhere represent a sacrifice by those who partner (in lesser and greater ways) with the warmongers but are not directly involved in warmaking. They are timid (home of the brave) and will receive nothing in return for their generous sacrifice.
So now the Afghans are us and we are the British. How did that happen?
The native population of any country will always strive to rid itself of foreigners trying to take over their land and resources.
It may be true that U.S. cannot defeat the Taliban and it is certainly true that Afghanistan is a long way from becoming a modern nation in any sense. But abandoning the Afghan people to Tailban brutality only assures their perpetual misery --not peace, not prosperity, not anything but misery.
Those who think any sort of agreement can be made with the Taliban, some power-sharing arrangement, are delusional. That includes Hamid Karsai. If he makes a deal with the Taliban, his head will surely be the first to roll.
It will be good for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan. We'll save money and our soldiers lives, but we won't be doing the Afghans a favor.
This "grave of occupiers" business is simplistic nonsense. The U.S. is not an occupier and the majority of Afghans know it. They fear the Taliban far more than they fear the U.S.
This is twaddle. It is NOT OUR BUSINESS to "protect" Afghanistan from the Taliban. THAT IS NOT WHY WE ARE THERE. What on Earth are you smoking?
And even if that were why we are there, WE WOULD FAIL ALSO.
Please do the math for me:
How many trillions of dollars, and how many murdered thousands of people, add up to "peace, prosperity, anything but misery"?
What utter vapid nonsense.
Twaddle, vapid nonsense, what on earth am I smoking.
Actually, my feelings about Afghanistan are based on the good times I spent there as a young man, before the Russians, before the Mujaheddin, before the Taliban. My memories are of a calm and peaceful country, a beautiful country with warm and friendly people, a country where I, as a single American, could travel anywhere alone and always be met with courtesy and hospitality.
Consequently, I have strong feelings and much sympathy for Afghanistan and its people. I have felt great sadness over the past 34 years to hear and read and see the news clips of the horrors that the Afghan people have endured.
If it is vapid nonsense and twaddle for me to wish their miseries to end, then so be it. My feelings and experiences are real and my own. I am not uninformed or misinformed and I’m not smoking anything.
If you care about them so much like you say you do, then why not enlist or sign up as an aid worker? You're not helping them by hiding away in your living room and cheerleading the war. Since you haven't been there in years, you're apparently out of touch with their current situation. Seems to me that you only liked Afghanistan as a luxurious vacation spot and nothing more.
Thanks for repeating the official mythology that somehow we're the beloved liberators and that the Afghans need us there. Utter bullshit.
We came there uninvited and it's not our job nor their desire that we babysit and occupy their nation. Yes, we're occupiers. Why else would we have military bases there?
I guess you haven't been paying attention, but the U.S./NATO forces kill innocent civilians and torture them at Bagram Air Base. On top of that they installed a corrupt and unpopular puppet government that supports the warlords and their drug trade.
You sound like you're gung-ho about this failed and pointless war. Why don't you enlist? Why aren't you over there? You seem so confident that the war is a noble cause. Certainly you can take all that empty bravado and put it to use in the military.
And another pro-war troll heard from.
Every poll taken of the Afghan people want the occupiers gone, AND prefer the Taliban to the despotic rule of the US. Don't you read anything?
"But abandoning the Afghan people to Tailban brutality only assures their perpetual misery --not peace, not prosperity, not anything but misery."
ROFL! Dude, thanks for the laugh, I needed that today.
dux, as someone who was following the events in Afghanistan, off and on, of course, let me just say I understand why you think it's completely pointless to deal with the Taliban.
I have tried to point out a few times that the Taliban are different from the Mujahideen, and entirely a creation of the Pakistani military/intelligence establishment. ("Talib" means student, and these were originally "students" of religious schools called Madrassas inside Pakistan. Pakistan needed a "friendly" government on their western front to provide them the "strategic depth" so they could concentrate on their eastern border and Kashmir).
I was watching and reading the news as the Taliban drove victoriously into Kabul, dragged the previous Afghan President Najibullah and his brother from the UN building where they had taken sanctuary for almost 4 years, tortured and hanged them in public - their bodies left hanging for all to see. That was in 1996.
I used to read the occasional report by someone from the RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) about the atrocities and public executions faced by the Afghan women. The outside world could do little. Even the founder of RAWA, a brave woman called Meena Kishwar Kamal, was murdered for her un-Islamic activities of standing up for the Afghan women's rights - such as going to school. She was murdered in a border town in Pakistan - in the middle of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Then I was watching the news on New Year's eve of 1999-2000 when the whole world was caught up in the "millennium" frenzy. That was because a week before, an Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked when it was flying from Kathmandu, Nepal to India - and taken first to Pakistan, and then to Kandahar. One passenger was killed - as a warning. He was a newly-wed man, returning from Nepal after honeymoon. His wife was still on the aircraft. The hijackers were Pakistan-based militants, and were demanding the release of other militants in Indian jail. India caved in, the exchange took place at the Kandahar airport, and the militants quietly returned to Pakistan to set up yet another group. So the Taliban government of that time was an extremely convenient set up for Pakistan, and they had to reluctantly cut off their "official" ties only after 9/11.
I say all this because there really is no easy solution to this from the Afghan people's point of view. They seem to be doomed - for now. They are caught between the devil and the deep sea, and for some reason, outsiders have always been meddling in their affairs. It's the USA and other countries today, it was the Soviets before, and Pakistan in between. The only solution is for them to forge some kind of national unity that transcends tribal loyalty. They need a genuine leader that all people can identify with.
But the US subjects the Afghan people to Taliban brutality by staying, not by leaving.
The US does not remove the Taliban but force the Afghan people to accept the Taliban as a means to rid themselves of the American-Warlord coalition.
Perhaps the US can mitigate Taliban violence by leaving in one manner rather than another, or by some set of conditions, or by paying sufficient reparations that the country could repair and not be in dire, immediate poverty.
However, it should be obvious on reflection that the US government does not much care whether Afghans are subjected to violence. It provoked the Soviet Union to invade in the late 1970's and then armed Al Qaeda and various Afghan factions to fight them. That done, it let the country flounder in internal conflicts until 2001, when W invented excuses to invade his supposed former allies over a supposed extradition issue.
Since the US has been killing, torturing, and toying with new methods of killing and torturing there in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan for almost a decade since, it makes little sense to imagine that the US wishes to reduce violence there.
I have a dream, that America becomes a second, maybe even third rate power in the world, that we become demachoed, demoralized, defanged and pacified, that we join France and other normalized societies in reprioritizing quality of life, love of art and decent wine, that we finally relax and outgrow our playground bully need to be top dog and perennial winner. We need to become, in T.E. Lawrence's words, a silly little people. Hell, we're halfway there already. I imagine busloads of Japanese tourists paying us to pose for photos in front of our quaint condos dressed in our native costumes and munching our Arby's reconstituted beef sandwiches. After a generation or two nobody will hate us any more. We'll have nothing to fear (as long as we don't piss off the Chinese or the Israelis) and instead of filling our brains with nonsense like who got the best deal in the big spy swap we can sit down and shut up and read some books and finish our education. I believe the Tea Party trend might be the shortest route to the bankruptcy and ineptitude required to pull this off, though it shouldn't be necessary to actually vote for them. I'm shooting for apathy myself. When you think about it, activism is the problem. I'm channeling John Lennon here. Imagine Americans doing nothing.
voxclamantis, I'll not argue with your "dream", except to point out that France too has some ways to go before it can become a "normalized society", though, admittedly, it's way ahead of the US.
France has a history of hypocrisy - starting from the days of the French Revolution - as evidenced by its treatment of Haiti and the various colonies. It did not change its stripes even after World War II, that is even after its own ass had to be rescued by others - as evidenced by its reluctance to let go of its colonies, starting with Indochina, and later by its despicable behavior during the "Suez Crisis".
France is quite happy to be a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council with veto powers (a complete anachronism to have these five countries virtually acting as global cops, based on their position in 1945, two of which had to be rescued by outsiders!). It's also an official nuclear weapons state, while preventing other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. A "normal country" that had experienced the horrors of war and the humiliation of occupation and that had earlier made the high-sounding call for "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality" should be in the forefront of abolition of all nuclear weapons and all colonies. Nope! France still holds colonies - as far away as near Australia (New Caledonia). Any country that holds distant overseas territories based on past colonial conquests cannot be considered a "normal country".
Speaking of nuclear weapons, there was a clever move by the nuclear weapons countries to ban ALL future testing of nuclear weapons, and they were pushing through the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) that "bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes". So, the existing nuclear powers would get to keep their weapons and nobody else would be able to test again (it's a different matter that India, followed by Pakistan, tested in 1998). CTBT was adopted by the UN in September 1996. But guess what? France continued "testing" (basically blowing up nuclear devices) in the Pacific, near inhabited islands of French Polynesia, until January 1996. A normal country would not be exploding nuclear devices in the name of "testing" and upgrading, all the way up to just months before a comprehensive ban was to come into effect, half-way around the world.
I think France generally wants to have it both ways: the benefits (spoils) of being a colonial and and imperial power, and the image of being a "progressive" nation. Not a "normal country" in my book.
Not ALL of the Security Council support the CTBT. The USA is the big hold-out, with Congress refusing to ratify the treaty.
WTF, I understand. I was referring to France's cleverness in trying to beat the deadline, by squeezing in some last minute explosions - far away from home.
CTBT itself is discriminatory, as is the NPT - viewed from the point of view of those calling for universal disarmament. And so is the UN-P5 set-up with veto powers. These only preserve the status-quo.
Let's see now, the Soviet Union went bankrupt and imploded, some say, largely due to their stint in Afghanistan.
Hitler failed, some also say, by making war on two fronts.
The USA has its Afghanistan millstone and has war on at least two fronts. Join the dots.
When the Soviet Union shrunk into Russia it became a quasi capitalist country for most of the population and extreme capitalism for a very rich few.
The question is what will the USA shrink into?
Slavery. Those good ole white boys in the South never gave up on the idea and are salivating over bringing it back.
All empires fade and die. Take a trip to the Egyptian or Syrian desert and look at the ancient monuments. Americans don't know geography nor history, but they should.
Read Shelley's 1818 poem, Ozymandias
When the American empire crumbles, it will leave nothing behind.
[When the American empire crumbles, it will leave nothing behind.]
Well there will be lots of toxic waste left...
Look upon my works and tremble ye mighty. Nothing else remains.
"A more cerebral and political general, David Petraeus, replaced McChrystal. Petraeus managed to temporarily suppress resistance in Iraq."
Did he really or did the corporate press just made that up to fool the sheeple a little longer?
Another expedition into the obvious by ex-Republican Margolis.
As though "unwinnable" has any merit as a criterion in the context of an unprovoked war of aggression, occupation, and ongoing war-crimes against the civilians of Afghanistan and Pakistan--in short the latest sordid and immoral chapter in the ongoing colonial "Great Game." This is our Heart of Darkness--and in particular, as a Canadian, it is shameful for me to see our historical function as UN peacekeepers perverted, with Canadian troops now taking active part in a fraudulent mission to "bring security" to Afghanistan, when they are nothing more than a mercenary occupation auxiliary for the Americans and their apparent lust for perpetual war.
DR--Montreal
Remember when the leaders-- Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower,---actually experienced war before jumping into one with both feet?
None of these guys are my heroes, but at least they didn't ask somebody else to do what they were not willing to do themselves.