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Afghanistan: A Real Pullout or a Shell Game?
Far-called our navies melt away
On dune and headland sinks the fire
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
--Rudyard Kipling “Recessional”
NEW YORK - War is waged to achieve political objectives, not to kill enemies. In this sense, the United States has lost the ten-year Afghan conflict, its longest war. Afghanistan remains the “graveyard of empires.”
The US has failed to install an obedient regime in Kabul that controls Afghanistan. It has made foes of the Pashtun majority, and, in pursuing this war, gravely undermined Pakistan. Claims that US forces were in Afghanistan to hunt the late Osama bin Laden were widely disbelieved.
Last Wednesday, President Barack Obama bowed to public opinion, approaching elections, military reality and financial woes by announcing he would withdraw a third of the 100,000 US troops from Afghanistan by the end of next summer. Pentagon brass growled open opposition.
US allies France and Germany announced similar troops reductions. All foreign troops are supposed to quit Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Washington currently spends at least $10 billion monthly on the Afghan war, not counting “black” payments, CIA and NSA operations. The US has poured $18.8 billion in development aid into Afghanistan since 2001 with nothing to show for the effort. Pakistan has been given $20 billion to support the Afghan War.
The US deficit is heading over $1.4 trillion. The national debt, when unfunded pensions and benefits are added, is likely $100 trillion, according to the chief of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond trader.
Forty-four million Americans now receive food stamps; the national infrastructure of roads, airports, bridges and schools is crumbling from neglect. Unemployment, officially at 9.5%, is probably closer to 20%.
The cry is being heard: “Rebuild America, not Afghanistan.”
In spite of intense pro-war propaganda, over half of Americans now oppose the Afghan War. Even US-installed Afghan president Hamid Karzai calls it, “ineffective, apart from causing civilian casualties.”
So will the US really pull out of Afghanistan? That remains to be seen. There are contradictory signs.
Mid-level talks between the US and Taliban are under way. The US will probably keep some of its remaining 66,000 soldiers in Afghanistan after 2014, rebranding them training troops. The huge US bases at Kandahar and Bagram will be retained.
Billions more will be spent on the Afghan government army and police. They have so far proved ineffective because most are composed of Tajik and Uzbek mercenaries who are hated and distrusted by the Pashtun.
A similar process is underway in Iraq where “withdrawal” means keeping renamed US combat brigades in Iraq, thousands of mercenaries, and US combat forces in neighboring Kuwait and the Gulf. New US embassies in Baghdad and Kabul– huge, fortified complexes with their own mercenary combat forces– will be the world’s biggest. Kabul will have a staff of 1,000 US personnel. Bin Laden called them “crusader fortresses.”
In addition, the US will still arm and finance allied Tajik and Uzbek militias in Afghanistan. Financing Pakistan’s US-backed regime and Uzbekistan must also continue at around $3 billion yearly.
The US appears to be going and staying at the same time. By contrast, Taliban’s position is clear and simple: it will continue fighting until all foreign troops are withdrawn. US special forces, drones and hit squads have been unable to assassinate enough Taliban commanders to make the mujahidin stop fighting.
Americans never study history, not even their own. They don’t recall founding father, the great Benjamin Franklin, who said, “there is no good war, and no bad peace.” Or that the Pashtun Taliban and its allies are fierce, dedicated, undefeated warriors. I’ve been in combat with them and remain in awe of their courage and love of combat. The Pashtun mujahidin will keep fighting as always, as long as their ammunition lasts.
America, for all its B-1 heavy bombers, strike fighters, missiles, helicopter gunships and drones, armor, super electronics, spies in the sky and all the other high tech weapons of modern war has failed to defeat some 30,000 tribal fighters with nothing more than small arms and legendary valor.
The US has lost the all important military initiative in Afghanistan. It may linger there, but it cannot win.
24 Comments so far
Show AllExcellent analysis Mr. Margolis.
The Global War On Terror is a fraud of epic proportions.
"re-named combat troops"
what with rotation, could we also talk of re-maimed combat troops?
With the US Military getting pissy over troop reductions, it's worth remembering what happened to the last President who tried to end an unpopular war in Asia. November, 1963 ring any bells for ya?
Good thought, Mr. Galenwright. The process has not been pretty, but troops are coming home from Iraq and now Afghanistan, The process has been patently driven by politics. The 33,000 will be home just before the elections, and time enough to give some Republican contender a fit.
The decision to tap into the national oil reserves to stop rising oil prices from sucking the life out of a fragile economic recovery is a strategic decision driven by politics. Nevertheless, it ain''t politics as usual. Step on too many toes and security should be increased.
Mr. Obama is changing the trajectory of the country, away from the immediate war quagmires. Time to give the Devil his due. The people who understand the role of war in undernmining the strength of the country have tangible actions to build on in shaping a new trajectory
I'd be willing to bet that Any decrease in American troops will be highly publicized
And an equal number of private mercenaries (contractors) will be inserted into Afganistan with No Publicity.
So we'll get 'troop reductions' for the president to brag about but no true reduction in actual numbers.
Hey Up is down now.
"I'd be willing to bet that Any decrease in American troops will be highly publicized "
Yes, and I'll wager that the President will personally greet that corporal as he/she disembarks the plane.
"A Real Pullout or a Shell Game?"
A: Shell Game.
in a nutshell.
yep Shell Oil, Exxon, etc ....shell, shill, sell (out), sell our souls,
Shell game...only two shells on the table one Dem and the other Repub but there is no pea ...the house can't loose but some of the people still like to play the game in the hope that one time there will be a pea and they will win back several trillion $, decent education, jobs and universal health care. But its still a shell game and the con men can't loose.
'war is waged to attain political objectives..." It is also big business for arms dealers, private security contractors, engineers and building contactors of every sort, not to mention drug dealers. Of course, the MIC declares victory with every new weapon system and exploded bomb. Conflict is good for the bottom line. GE, Lockeed Martin, Boeing, et al, could care less about death, debt, or failing infrastructure. We like Karzai. He'll kneel for the right price.
Margolis sez: "America, for all its B-1 heavy bombers, strike fighters, missiles, helicopter gunships and drones, armor, super electronics, spies in the sky and all the other high tech weapons of modern war has failed to defeat some 30,000 tribal fighters with nothing more than small arms and legendary valor."
***
In other words, Mission Accomplished!
The definition of "winning" these 21st-century faux "wars" is keeping them going at all costs(plus).
With all due respect to the author, political objectives have become a secondary consideration in waging war. It is waged for economic gain and control. The politicians are simply there to grease the movement of the coin, and are as interchangeable as any other cog.
When the US military is located in 175 countries (as Fox Sports reminds us on every broadcast), whether one or another conflict "ends" is beside the point. Besides, all those foreign deployments are a great recruiting tool for the "all-volunteer" military--who wants to sign up to stay in North Carolina or Texas? Even the Sierra Club in its most recent magazine has an article on the "greening" of the US Navy. And if we do "bring the troops" home, where are the civilian jobs for them? Many Democrats fought zealously to keep funding the F-22, and many labor folks went along, because it "provided jobs" even though it was militarily useless. (Even that statement is ironic.)
Here's a homework assignment to show how far we have fallen: read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's wonderful poem "The Arsenal at Springfield." Mark Twain's short story "The War Prayer" also could have been written yesterday.
We may not win, but we must resist.
>>War is waged to achieve political objectives, not to kill enemies. In this sense, the United States has lost the ten-year Afghan conflict, its longest war. Afghanistan remains the “graveyard of empires.”
I disagree. War is waged to achieve Corporate objectives. It is an extension of Corporatism by other means just as Politics is.
If one can accept this then the war in Afghanistan has been very successful indeed as it has allowed the Corporations more revenues and power. It has allowed Governments the world over to limit personal liberties and freedoms under the guise of "defending against terrorism".
It has shifted trillions of dollars in wealth towards the MIC so that SOCIAL programs the world over can be dismantled and assets owned by the people "In Common" can be transferred to the control of the Corporations.
One essential fact everyone needs to know is that the "Pentagon" is in the hand of upper-echelon military brass. The other essential fact is that only those officers with combat experience can expect to gain promotion to the higher ranks. Ergo: it is essential that we wage perpetual war in order to keep promoting the officers in our perpetual standing army.
The result of this situation is what we have now: Congress and the White House abdicating their constitutional role and instead calling in the generals to give their "expert" advice on continuing our wars. And (surprise!) the generals always insist that we have not yet got enough war and need more.
The solution is to abandon the standing army and go back to what we had for the first 200 years of our history: a very small skeleton force and, when war was inevitable, a draft. War is far too important to be left to generals--as someone wise once said.
"The national debt, when unfunded pensions and benefits are added, is likely $100 trillion, according to the chief of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond trader."
So even Margolis, unwittingly I presume, is supporting the pro austerity hucksters on Wall Street, and in Congress.
As to the rest of his article. It seems to me, that he misses the point of why we are actually there, thus he ponders such things as how the US still hasn't defeated the Taliban.
We are there for oil, and other geopolitical purposes that the little people aren't privy to. You know the stuff that is discussed by the attendees of Council on Foreign Relations meetings.
Question 9/11.
I know, I'm just so September 10th.
DUH...Margolis is another genius who forgot to mention the real reasons for the occupation which is the corporate exploitation of Central Asian resources via Afghanistan. Not a word and the resource issues ?
Afghanistan has both oil and natural gas and vast mineral resources and a huge heroin trade that has grown rapidly through the occupation.
Afghanistan is also the proposed pipeline route for transporting hydrocarbon resources from other Central Asian countries. The early UNOCAL pipeline plan from the 90's was to deliver natural gas to India and Pakistan and various Asian nations as liquid natural gas via ships.
Big Oil is already in various Central Asian countries near to Afghanistan.
The TAPI pipeline plan currently has investors lined up waiting for Afghanistan to become "secure." Good luck.
All of Asia knows about these plans, but this information is censored in the western media. And nearly all the writers are conforming, even the "progressives".
http://naturalgasforasia.com/tapi-pipeline-natural-gas-wsj.htm
TAPI Takes a Step Forward:
"Last month, this competition took a giant step forward when Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with the presidents of Turkmenistan and Pakistan, as well as with India’s oil and gas minister, in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat. The meeting netted an agreement to begin construction of a new natural gas route "known as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline in two years’ time."
And how strange, Obama has not mentioned this to the Americans who are paying for the war crimes:
"The pipeline also has the support of Washington, which is eager to see economic investment in Afghanistan as well as deeper regional economic integration, particularly between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan. The Obama administration believes the route could serve as a “stabilizing corridor,” with the additional benefit of meeting Asia’s energy needs while circumventing Iran."
Meanwhile American taxpayers are saddled with $Trillions in corporate imperial war crimes debt. And then there is the death and suffering.
We have a criminal White House, a criminal Congress, a criminal Pentagon, and criminal corporations that Washington works for.
Why are so many people ignorant of the Proposed
Pipeline? Why is the press so silent on the issue?
It has become obvious that we cannot build and protect the PipeLine, and that is why we need One Hundred
Thousand soldiers. Research might show that we are
trying to build the PipeLine now. The Taliban simply want
a piece of the action on the PipeLine.
The only one winning here as in all other wars is the international oligarchy.
Galenwainwright's post is stand-out interesting. Very probably, it explains Barack Obama. Our first black president is afraid to go out on a limb for peace. Please think about that sentence for a minute.
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It's Murder, Inc.
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
***
The answer to the title question:
neither...try "business (of war) as usual.
The policies being pursued by obama and his government, not only militarily
but at home, will ultimately drop all of us into bankruptcy. How insane can a government become? Can they be so blind not to recognize the coming death of our society and our very existence? This death will be at the hands of those in a position to save us and yet they do nothing, except in the pursuit of their own moneyed interests. Of course these conditions have always existed,crooked politicians and corrupt government, but never to this extreme. At every level of government corruption is rife.
It's idiotic and asinine to believe that our present enemies,alqaeda and the Taliban could cause us grievous damage. Just as in Viet Nam we are fighting an invisible enemy which is determined to fight us until we give up and get out of their country.The military in Afghanistan is following tactics as in Viet Nam, control a certain part of the country and allow the enemy to control the rest. The generals have not learned one thing from Viet Nam. Close to one million troops served in Nam and we lost.
Now, in Afghanistan with over one hundred thousand troops and who knows how many mercenaries, we are not even close to any type of "victory". And yet after seven years billions of dollars is being borrowed to support this "war". Insane or not?
The US does not have any plans to withdraw our troops completely after 2014 or years after that. Who would protect the proposed pipe line? With permanent bases there they would enhance our presence in that area.
Insanity..............but the beat goes on.
There is another lesson to be learned from Viet Nam. We didn't leave permenant bases behind; we were kicked unceremoniously out. Pipeline, copper mine, poppy fields, rare earths, regional stability be damed... We certainly haven't won; and there is a good chance we will lose. Afghanistan just might be overrun by Afghanis.