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‘The Comeback Kid’ and the Kids Who Won’t
President Barack Obama signed a slew of bills into law during the lame-duck session of Congress and was dubbed the "Comeback Kid" amid a flurry of fawning press reports. In the hail of this surprise bipartisanship, though, the one issue over which Democrats and Republicans always agree, war, was completely ignored. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in U.S. history, and 2010 has seen the highest number of U.S. and NATO soldiers killed.
As of this writing, 497 of the reported 709 coalition fatalities in 2010 were U.S. soldiers. The website iCasualties.org has carefully tracked the names of these dead. There is no comprehensive list of the Afghans killed. But one thing that's clear: Those 497 U.S. soldiers, under the command of the "Comeback Kid," won't be coming back.
On Dec. 3, Commander in Chief Obama made a surprise visit to his troops in Afghanistan, greeting them and speaking at Bagram Air Base. Bagram is the air base built by the Soviet Union during that country's failed invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Now run by U.S. forces, it is also the site of a notorious detention facility. On Dec. 10, 2002, almost eight years to the day before Obama spoke there, a young Afghan man named Dilawar was beaten to death at Bagram. The ordeal of his wrongful arrest, torture and murder was documented in the Oscar-winning documentary by Alex Gibney, "Taxi to the Dark Side." Dilawar was not the only one tortured and killed there by the U.S. military.
Obama told the troops: "We said we were going to break the Taliban's momentum, and that's what you're doing. You're going on the offense, tired of playing defense, targeting their leaders, pushing them out of their strongholds. Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control, and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future."
Facts on the ground contradict his rosy assessment from many different directions. Maps made by the United Nations, showing the risk-level assessments of Afghanistan, were leaked to The Wall Street Journal. The maps described the risk to U.N. operations in every district of Afghanistan, rating them as "very high risk," "high risk," "medium risk" and "low risk." The Journal reported that, between March and October 2010, the U.N. found that southern Afghanistan remained at "very high risk," while 16 districts were upgraded to "high risk." Areas deemed "low risk" shrank considerably.
And then there are the comments of NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Joseph Blotz: "There is no end to the fighting season.... We will see more violence in 2011."
Long before WikiLeaks released the trove of U.S. diplomatic cables, two key documents were leaked to The New York Times. The "Eikenberry cables," as they are known, were two memos from Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging a different approach to the Afghan War, with a focus on providing development aid instead of a troop surge. Eikenberry wrote of the risk that "we will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves, short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos."
A looming problem for the Obama administration, larger than a fraying international coalition, is the increasing opposition to the war among the public here at home. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 60 percent believe the war has not been worth fighting, up from 41 percent in 2007. As Congress reconvenes, with knives sharpened to push for what will surely be controversial budget cuts, the close to $6 billion spent monthly on the war in Afghanistan will increasingly become the subject of debate.
As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz repeatedly points out, the cost of war extends far beyond the immediate expenditures, with decades of decreased productivity among the many traumatized veterans, the care for the thousands of disabled veterans, and the families destroyed by the death or disability of loved ones. He says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost between $3 trillion and $5 trillion.
One of the main reasons Barack Obama is president today is that by openly opposing the U.S. war in Iraq, he won first the Democratic nomination and then the general election. If he took the same approach with the war in Afghanistan, by calling on U.S. troops to come back home, then he might truly become the "Comeback President" in 2012 as well.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
51 Comments so far
Show AllA country's priorities are revealved by the ways in which it spends its money.
I read last week that for what it costs to support one soldier in Afghanistan, we could build 20 schools there.
What if we decided to build instead of destroy?
"We" ain't calling the shots.They are.
Of course, it can't be "us", it's "them". Perfect receipe for continued failure at being human beings.
No, by pointing out that the US government does not act on behalf of "us", ordinary workers, but on behalf of "them", the corporate oligarchy, bundecutchie clarifies who has power and who doesn't.
By always using "we" when referring to the actions of the US corporate oligarchy, people muddle the true picture of who's in control and who isn't.
Ever wonder why there's so little protest in the US? Maybe it's bcause of the tidy and false moralism that says the USA is a democracy and "we" are all in it together.
The fascists who have taken over the US can't be fought until people pick sides and there's no way for people to pick sides until they understand that there ARE sides.
CHAOKOH: I have been pointing out the same thing, this ubiquitous use of the word
"we" when the nation is thoroughly divided on a number of issues. The false implication is that of consensus where none exists. And as you related, those making decisions are hardly bothered (in the manner Cheney uttered, "SO?") by the troubling possibility that the public (or majority of citizens) does not go along with, or endorse their plans.
As for your concluding paragraph, instead of picking sides... what would be far more effective (if it could be done), would involve acquiring enough media platforms to better educate the public as to what is being done in its name, at costs both tangible and intangible (i.e. the moral ramifications that karmic blowback will assuredly address).
It would indeed be instructive, Siouxrose, if we could gain access to some widely attended media platforms. But television, and professional sports [among other things] has done its work well. Many americans use that 'We' or 'us' towards armed conflict in the same way that they use the 'we' and 'us' in regards to their preferred sports team. 'We won'. [Did the speaker throw the ball, or just watch it happen on his TV?] The America of the 60s is moribund, and given the response of the public to such events as the recent Veterans for Peace [et.al.] action at the White House, or the release of Wikileaks documents, I fear it will remain so.
IRON BLOOD: I am well aware of the links between Hollywood war films, football spectacles, and "the real thing." I've frequently written about the soft forms of propaganda that massage a nation's ego in perpetual lust for war. And I've patiently spelled out the connecting links for those who don't seem to see them. Perhaps your post will reach those readers who haven't heard the message before.
Siouxrose,
I am glad that you can see how the innocent sounding "we" can utterly confuse the issue of who is responsible for the crimes committed by the rich and powerful and who is not. I am glad that others who read and write here at CD are picking up on this liguistic flim-flam.
At the same time, I don't want to jump on "considerthis" with both feet for pointing out that pitting "us" against "them" is unnatural. It is. Everything in the universe is connected. He's right.
But as creatures with cosmic limitations, we have to call out bullshit when we see it. I try to stay connected, but it's not always possible.
As Lily Tomlin said, "No matter how cynical you get, it's hard to keep up".
"Ever wonder why there's so little protest in the US?"
Have you considered the difference between now and the Vietnam war era? It's the all-volunteer military.
If every draft-age American were vulnerable to being called up, there would be plenty of people in the streets protesting and loudly calling for an end to these useless wars. But if you or a loved one isn't about to be forced to go to war, it's easy to sit back and think none of this affects you.
If the country were truly in danger, there would be a draft in a heartbeat. But since the country is waging a war of choice, it is not in the best interests of the policy-makers to institute a draft and risk stirring up otherwise complacent citizens.
Yes. Excellent point.
Your comment reminds me of a comment that Michael Moore made on a news show I was watching a while back. He stated that for every war that the congress votes on, it should be mandatory that everyones taxes go up 10% to pay for it. That way there would be a much more serious debate over the decision to declare war in our nation.
Excellent points on this thread. We do have to name "them" as just one more way to define who "we" are. I like to call them "Republicrats".
I use the word 'we' and do so for what I consider to be an important reason. This is our nation, what is done is done in our name, and is allowed to be done by our failure to be good citizens.
To say that the atrocities being committed are done by 'them', that the inequities found in our economy are the fault of others seems an excuse to me. If we do not take responsibility for this nation we will continue to see the end of our democracy.
I wish it were that simple, bundecutchie.
There is no doubt that you and I are not calling the shots and would NEVER have authorized these crimes of murder on behalf of imperialism.
However, for the tide to turn, a willingness from a significant part of our fellow US citizens is needed.
Sadly, after 9/11, the US response, fear-based violent vengeful bullying, was bolstered by the acquiescence of a majority of Americans. No doubt everyone here faced angry opposition from family and friends that we are "on the side of the terrorists." These same people saw to it that the evil administration of Bush/Cheney was reelected. Yes re Ohio but still, such a significant number voted to reelect that the slim margin helped confuse over voting fraud. Later others hoped BO was faking some machismo, with his mixed messages, so that the PTB would let him into the White House and also people would view him as "strong on defense" and hoped that after he was in he could use the bully pulpit to stop the crimes, still people voted "for" a man saying he would increase forces in Afghanistan while threatening Pakistan. After his actions in office, where was the outrage?
Terror has this country in its maw and sometimes it seems it will be impossible to weaken its grip on so many people. Our people are terrified into wishing for fascist control over all of us. Others have given up.
None of us could stop the steamroller that was our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and now Pakistan territory. "Patriotic" Americans are still gung ho for our "victory."
The PTB would not have been as free to run its rampage without the cooperation of its large propagandized ignorant cheerleading section: a majority of average Americans.
Why are we failing to get anyone to listen to our reasoning? Why couldn't enough of us convince the majority over such grave errors? Is it ever too late? What can we be doing differently? All I can think of is that we have to start demonstrating consistently our unity in numbers to get the ball to roll in another direction, or at least die having TRIED. There needs to be a message getting out to counter the one served up by the neolibcon whatever they are think tanks. I don't think debating and fighting these people is ever going to solve anything, that they really need TLC and need to be given a way to change their mind while saving face or they will cling fearfully and stubbornly to their mindset needing to be "right." They even subvert religion to justify crimes. These are people who laugh and applaud when dissenters are tased or tortured or executed ... but deep down I sense they are suffering in the dark.
Is the question what can we do or are we doing enough?
Reason for optimism: the number of conscientious Americans who see the light because they want to. We can't let ourselves be intimidated by the bullies. It is well known that we are a divided country however it's the very dividing that is being purposely used to confuse. There is no CLEAR message out there to counter the Glenn Becks.
I wonder if, to the rest of the world, we Americans appear as though we condone what is going on, by our silence and absence of protest. What we conscientious Americans need to do is unite, not be fragmented. The powers know that there is no potency in fragmentation. We need to unite. We have the internet but there are so many factions. If we all got together...
Amen to that, Dan.
We do not need Wilileaks to reveal ANYTHING we don't already know and have known all along. Evidence: actions
"One of the main reasons Barack Obama is president today is that by openly opposing the U.S. war in Iraq, he won first the Democratic nomination and then the general election."
Senator Obama also voted 5 times to appropriate funds for the Iraq war.
Too many American voters believe what their politicians say, instead of what they do.
....Post-Constitutional America
People who voted for Obama were "identity voters."
""identity voter" - a person who chooses to support a political candidate primarily for the social and cultural aspects of the person (e.g., gender, race, geography, class, etc.), and only secondarily if at all for the policies of the politician."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/the-identity-voter_b_43142.html
This was posted March 11, 2007
How are policies going to become primary for voters choice?
Another way to think of it is 'divide and conquer'.
Here's a personal example from me:
Gays used to be one of the most left wing, most militantly socialist parts of the American ideological spectrum, what the heck happened? Marriage and the military (soon they will be coerced into becoming anti-abortion, just watch)...they got offered shiny jewels to come over to the status quo, and they are bolting for it in droves.
Suddenly their wimpy pacifist friends from college are 'holding them back' and 'unrealistic'.
Divide and conquer.
Identity politics = Divide and Conquer
"Divide and Conquer" The Republican Party is master of that game.
I largely abandoned the gay community because the moment they got any money at all many turned into raging conservative "Auntie Tommies." I think this is the real issue. Money simply corrupts.
RAT: Back in junior high school I was privileged to have an astute social studies teacher. He had just gotten back from Vietnam, and was none too cheery about U.S. foreign policy.
He told us on day #1 that he assigned one day a year to: "I am a communist day." It was our job, as students, to contest (or debate) every point he made about his allegedly superior system.
At one point we argued, "Well, we get to vote!" He answered, "so do we!" We countered, "You only have one candidate," to which he responded, "You only have two."
Look at what we have recently been offered in the way of candidates? Most on this site recognize the degree to which establishment actors get pre-vetted before any viable candicacy will be underwritten by those interests (10,000 lobbyists in DC) intending to benefit richly from the still-legal form of quid pro quo.
Apart from the ruse of "Identity Politics," a heckuva lot of people voted for Obama because they BELIEVED it would change the nation's course away from the sickening, often illegal, vile polices of the Bush Junta. It was an "anything BUT..." vote. If that's identity politics to you, then you're buying into the MSM storylines.
Originally I thought that electing a "minority" President would be a great image and role model for the nation's young Black citizens. What a travesty that he sold them down river first. A careful scrutinizing of policy decisions reinforces that statement. Others have posted these again and again in these threads.
I think we're on the same side here. I think most people have a lot more in common then they think. I also think that very few 'rulers' are good. They invariably hurt someone. So I don't like rulers and I'm not to fond of the people that owe jobs to rulers. In my mind, everyone when pushed to a personal best is pretty independent, hence my reprehension and revulsion at hearing people blather about 'we' this and 'my identity' that. It just sounds like kids wanting something for nothing. Oddly enough, I don't feel that way about people on welfare or single payer health care which I not only advocate for but will not accept anything less than. Figure that out.
Dear Post-Constitution,
Let's PRAY that such voters who believed what he said vs. what he did have now LEARNED the hard way. It's never too late to learn something.
Even back in the last election, it was posted on ABC after presidential debates the polling results, and Dennis Kucinich and Gravel were running far ahead of the pack, which is why the polls were hastily taken down and the duopoly candidates acted to marginalize them with media cooperation. That should cause protest, but under this denial-of-truth system it didn't.
America needs to lose this war and lose it HARD.
America was the loser the moment it began it.
"by calling on U.S. troops to come back home, then he might truly become the "Comeback President" in 2012 as well"
Truer words never spoken.
The picture attached shows the waste for the morbidly inclined. Its a shame they are not treated with dignty by those that aren't fit to lick their boots.
Ain't that the God-d-a-m-n truth.
"The highest priority and primary burden of Democracy Now.org, is to enlighten the public that Obama was hand picked and campaign funded by Wall Street. So, comes now a most perfect example of darkness":
This is a deep draw. The Truth spoken clearly. Mr. Obama's relationship with the American public is adulterous, the public is the mistress who lives in the darkness.
The Afghan War is not then longest war in American history. It's not even close. The longest war in American history was the Vietnam War which lasted 29 years from 1946 to 1975.
Has there been a year since 1946 when America was NOT at war?
I have no doubt that the Afghan War will have the same ending as the Vietnam War - humiliating defeat.
All of America's modern wars have one thing in common - they should never have been fought
Alan: Mystics believe the following:
1. That the way anything begins, like a seed, holds the blueprint for its growth and inevitable unfolding.
2. That all the ill-begotten wealth will have to be given back.
Eisenhower was keenly positioned to note the growing, insidious power of the Military industrial complex. With war its product, and a very profitable one at that (if one possesses no heart, soul, or conscience), in order to "justify" the countless trillions spent on its various and sundry missions, it is necessary to keep "inventory" moving. Naturally that requires an influential PR mechanism to convince those on the receiving end of its cost to continue their largesse. Hence, enemies du jour (as Orwell so presciently warned) become the rule... an observance of the right wing smear machine going after Muslims (with "illegal" Hispanic aliens the default position) is a case in point.
I would like to see, in the manner George Lakoff devises, a way of framing the concepts of war and enemy so that only the most morally-retarded citizens even think along those lines.
Climate change (which the Pentagon itself, not long ago, pointed to as the upcoming threat to work economies and related security systems) will be the item no army can march against, and the thing (Gaia's Revenge) that will humble the warrior-caste. I hope this lesson is fully assimilated before Earth, itself, is stripped of any capacity to sustain sentient life.
Everyone should see on youtube "The Century of the Self" about how we can be influenced and don't even know it. About Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, often referred to as The Father of Spin and the Creator of Public Relations. The effects of his philosophy and work in the mid-20th Century still persist. It is truly fascinating stuff ever relevant today than ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TyLnwNQfTQ
Our Nobel Peace Prize winning Fraud........
One day, the people shall place Obama on top of Mount Rushmore...............
..........................AND THEN PUSH HIM OFF!
I heard today that Afghanistan has the largest supply of rare earths in the world. Right now China is the largest exporter of rare earths, which are needed in today's high tech manufacturing.
Why are we fighting in Afghanistan? All the nonsense that is given as the reason to be there is easily disputable. We know that Al Quaeda is no longer there. We know that 9-11 wasn't planned there but in Germany and New Jersey according to the dominant explanation. We know that continued fighting will not lead to a stable country there. We know that our occupation creates more terrorists.
The folk who run things are as smart and informed as we critics. They know all the same things we know, despite their constantly presenting the nonsense as the reason.
So, again I ask, why are we fighting?
There's only one logical answer. It's to control the wealth that is in Afghanistan and keep it from our economic rival, China. When we realize this we also realize that we don't need to pacify the country or stabilze it to accomplish this. In fact a country in chaos makes it easier for us to control its resources. The real powers that be have no motiavtion to actually "win" Afghanistan.
It's the same story that was true with Iraq except the resource is different.
Libby -
I don't buy this argument that the war in Afghanistan escalates and continues because it's all or even primarily about control of rare earth metals or a pipeline route there, any more than I believe the Vietnam War was about access to undeveloped petroleum deposits in Vietnamese offshore coastal waters (an argument that was seriously advanced by some folks back in the late 60's and early 70's).
It is absolutely true that there are corporate and private individual war profiteers salivating to make a buck by exploiting Iraq's oil fields as well as Afghanistan's untapped mineral wealth and strategic geopolitical position. Profiting from war, whether by the invaders directly bringing home plunder or by businesses tapping into military supply contract funding in support of the troops, is as old as the hills. In Afghanistan, there's also money to be grabbed under the table in the consumer goods black market that always shadows US military occupation forces overseas, so-called reconstruction projects, and the illicit poppy culture.
But let's not confuse cause and effect, or motivation with economic windfall as a by product.
In the Af/Pak theatre of war, first George W. Bush invaded, and now Barack Obama escalates deeper, chiefly for ideological reasons they also each perceived to be the right thing to do politically. History is well on its way to proving both to be fools, each harboring grandiose dreams about what America the Beautiful's superpower military might could and would deliver. Parasitic war profiteering entities rode in on the partisan (or bipartisan) decisionmakers' coat tails, and the military/industrial/national security establishment would be delighted to see the gravy train keep on churning on indefinitely.
But this is a symptom of the sickness and a big impediment to its cure, not the major cause. They do not reverse course and withdraw from the money pit quagmire because to do so would be a stark admission of how wrong their respective and blood stained decisions always were.
Bill from Saginaw
BILL: I think you're being naive here. I would say the ideology is created to cover up the crime scene or lend it a veil of legitimacy.
The MIC has created its own raison d'etre in the form of fabricated wars, one after another.
War makes LOTS of people wealthy.
War is the macho language that grants a president his cred in this twisted nation.
Afghanistan/Pakistan are positions on the geo-political chessboard that American empire wants to control, especially due to their proximity to China/Russia.
It IS about the oil.
It IS about the gas.
It IS about the heroin.
And it's mostly about the MIC needing these "theaters" to justify the fact that it cannibalizes half the U.S. budget, while having embedded itself into the industrial fabric of every state of the union. Now people will scream if yet more jobs disappear.
I really don't think Bush or Obama had or have any interest in doing the right thing. They follow orders and exist as figure-heads. In addition, if the military top brass could actually THINK, as opposed to follow orders and posture themselves in macho ways, they could not help but notice the lessons drawn from guerilla warfare. The Vietnamese debacle, added to Russia's experience in Afghanistan (graveyard of empires) should have meant SOMETHING other than repeating the same moves, with bigger and bigger weapons, ad nauseum.
And I thought Bacevich got lost inside his own paradigm.
Did you think Obama also thought he was doing the right thing by appointing Summers, Greithner, and the team of nefarious Wall Street insiders?
C'mon Bill. You've got the cart before the horse here...
Joseph Stiglitz also says that the unfunded cost of treating Iraq war vets for war injuries is $900B. The cost for treating Afghanistan's war veterans will be around $1M per head. This is a priority we will probably ignore if history is any indicator.
Afghanistan is the center of oil transport from central Asia and possess a huge quantity of rare earth metals.
Do you think the USA we leave until every drop of oil has been transported and every gram of rare earth metals has been removed?
Could someone provide the source of the photo of the caskets with flags? Thanks.