The War in Afghanistan is Not about Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is about perpetual war, not Afghanistan.

It's about preventing democracy in the United States, not bringing it to Southwest Asia.

And it is the tombstone of the Obama Presidency.

To justify the fight, they've rounded up the usual suspects: Terror. Oil. Minerals. Poppies. Democracy.

But
George Orwell's 1984---now updated with important new books---
illuminates the bigger picture: "continuous warfare" is the key to
social control.

It keeps the public frightened and dependent.

And
it keeps "the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real
wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be
distributed."

Better to destroy them in a ritual slaughter like Afghanistan, and wherever is next.

For
a truly prosperous society, educated and secure, cannot be ruled by the
few. Poverty, ignorance and fear are the three pillars of authoritarian
control. Without war, they all disappear.

Thus Afghanistan. Before it: the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, central America. After: whoever else is handy.

Recent books by Howard Zinn and David Swanson have updated Orwell's analysis.

Zinn's The Bomb,
testifies to the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the utter
senselessness of these "announced nuclear tests." Once an Allied
bombardier, Zinn revisited a French town he helped destroy. He found the
act, of which he was once proud, had no military meaning whatsoever.

Though
he passed away earlier this year, Howard's PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES continues to shape our understanding of this nation's true
core. In narrating the hidden, bloody past of our compromised
democracy, he warns at end that even for the US, "There is no flag large
enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."

Swanson's new War is a Lie adds to the litany. A tireless campaigner for peace and justice,
Swanson was instrumental in tearing away the ridiculous Bush lie that
the war in Iraq was about Weapons of Mass Destruction. WAR IS A LIE adds
carefully documented, passionately argued reasons why the era of
endless slaughter in SouthWest Asia is a tool of social control for the
military-industrial elite.

Over the years, Norman Solomon's superb books and film War Made Easy have also provided a firm, steady opposition to this fatal addiction.

Nowhere
has our military madness become more transparent than in the Obama
Administration. The "shellacking" the Democrats took this fall stems
directly from Obama's painfully visible failure to bring hope or change
to a nation at war since 1941.

For a few infuriating weeks,
Obama danced around the decision to escalate in Afghanistan. Rarely has a
single human being had a greater chance to change history.

Obama
could have stood up to the generals. He could have de-escalated. He
could have begun the process of drawing down the military budget, the
only way to save our economy.

More than 50% of taxpayer money
goes to weaponry. We have troops in more than 100 countries. We spend
more on our military than all the rest of the world combined. Throughout
history---Athens, Rome, Persia---empires have spent themselves to
military oblivion. We have now been in Afghanistan longer than the
USSR.

With a simple speech, Obama could have begun the Great
Reversal. It was a crystal clear moment. The public support was there.
It was what he was elected to do.

But like Lyndon Johnson's
catastrophic March 1965 decision to escalate the war in Vietnam, Obama
went exactly the wrong way. He became the first man in history to accept
the Nobel Peace Prize with a pro-war speech. With Bush's Secretary of
War by his side, he ceded to the military our nation's most critical
decision. He doomed our domestic economy and global ecology by burying
us still deeper in the lethal quagmire of perpetual war.

All else is sad detail. When Obama caved on Afghanistan, so did his presidency.

As
Orwell, Zinn, Swanson and Solomon make clear, perpetual war is the
carefully engineered route to poverty, ignorance and dictatorship.
Afghanistan is merely the latest installment in this seamless, unseemly
tragedy. Its ever-changing justifications are meaningless smokescreens,
forever poised to cloud the inevitable transition to the next conflict.
The names, places and rhetoric may change, but the impact will not.

Until we find a way to break through to a genuine state of peace---and we must, and soon---we have no future.