Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her most recent book is Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer. In the article below she comments on the controversy and impact of the 90,000 or so classified government documents released last week.
She thinks that the documents, recording operations and other events from the years 2004 through 2009, represent the most detailed source of information on the Afghan war/occupation yet available. The Obama administration does not contest the accuracy or truth of the documents. Contrary to the administration, Bennis does not think the occupations compromise US military operations in Afghanistan. Why? They are historical and edited to take out names.
She also points out that the information is not new for policy makers, the military, or those who have followed the Afghanistan situation in the US or Pakistan and Afghanistan. The documents do indicate, Bennis finds, that military operations have not accomplished much, US forces are relying more on special forces and drone attacks as time passes, the documents provide evidence of civilian casualties not reported in the press, and there are "continuing links between Pakistani' top military intelligence agency, the ISI, and the top leadership of the Taliban."
The Wikileaks Afghan War Diary: More Evidence of a Failed Mission
The leaks just fill in details of what we already knew: that the Afghan War is too costly to continue.
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: IPS; Found at http://www/zcommunications.org
Friday, July 30, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace Page
I wrote an assessment of last week’s meeting in Kabul on Friday, before news had, ahem, leaked of Wikileaks' extraordinary new trove of documents, the Pentagon Papers: Afghanistan. I think the earlier piece is still useful.
But first, a couple of quick thoughts on the Wikileaks documents. There will be much more to come, as we find the time to dig through the reports.
This set of documents is unquestionably an important first history of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Of course, mistakes will be found — but these are reports of military leaders to others in the military. This is where they tell the truth. It's significant that the Obama administration has carefully avoided claiming the reports aren't accurate. Instead, they're claiming that disclosure of the reports somehow endangers U.S. troops while at the same time disparaging the documents as having no new information. There's no way these reports will endanger the troops — Afghans and Pakistanis clearly know far better than we do what U.S./NATO forces are actually doing in their countries.
What the leaks will do is stoke even greater global anger around the world, as evidence comes to those who didn’t know firsthand what the U.S./NATO occupation means for Afghans and Pakistanis. That will certainly mean rising anger toward U.S. policy and Americans as a whole. But more importantly, it will spur enormous antiwar activity in places like Europe, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. And that means greater pressure on those governments now providing troops for the war in Afghanistan — and on the Obama administration to end the war.
There is no evidence yet of a new smoking gun among the documents. But taken as a whole, the documents provide a collective arsenal of evidence of a brutal war that never did have a chance to succeed — and evidence of two administrations of a government determined to mislead its own people and the rest of the world.
The documents indicate significant shifts in the nature of how the war is being fought, with documentation of escalating Special Forces operations and drone attacks. The Pentagon's "nation-building" efforts are failing in places like Marja, last spring’s poster-city of a U.S.-backed government-in-a-box.The handpicked mayor-in-a-box, who spent most of the last 15 years living in Germany, is so unpopular that he has to be ferried into town on military helicopters for occasional meetings and then quickly whisked away.
So perhaps it isn't surprising that the new documents describe activities like those of Task Force 373, a death-squad that goes after identified individuals on a kill-or-capture list. No trial, of course. And if drones are called in to do more of the dirty work so U.S. troops are not at risk, and more Afghan or Pakistani civilians are killed as a result — well, that’s just part of the cost of war.
The documents include evidence of civilian deaths never reported in the press, many of them probably never even mentioned or asked about in the virtually nonexistent congressional oversight of the years documented in these reports. They detail massive levels of corruption, extortion, and constant violence inflicted on Afghan civilians by the U.S.-backed, U.S.-trained and U.S.-funded militias known as the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.
And they demonstrate, again, the continuing links between Pakistan’s top military intelligence agency, the ISI, and the top leadership of the Taliban — despite claims by Secretary of State Clinton and others in the Obama administration that Pakistan is a reliable U.S. ally that just needs to work a little harder on going after terrorists. Ironically, the Obama administration’s answer to the documents repeats the effort to blur the very distinct organizations known as the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban into a generic presence in Pakistan known as “the terrorists” or “the Taliban.”
The Wikileaks documents provide a treasure trove of evidence — of what we already knew. This war has already failed. Every death, of civilian and soldier, is needless. The cost of this occupation and this war — in Afghan blood, in U.S. and NATO military blood, in billions of dollars needed for jobs at home and real reconstruction in Afghanistan and elsewhere — is too high.
We need to stop the funding now, bring the troops and contractors home, support regional diplomacy, and begin the long effort of repaying our huge debt to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Loading comments...
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Massive poverty in Afghanistan after many years of US intervention
The UN's Human Rights office reported on poverty in Afghanistan last April. The following overview of the report is dated April 12, 2010 and can be found at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Paper/massivehrdeficit.aspx.
According to the UN, the country remains plagued by massive poverty. The report identifies a number of factors in producing this ongoing poverty, namely, (1) corruption at all levels of government, (2) the ongoing "conflict" or occupation/war, (3) the mal-distribution of land, (4) the discrimination against some ethnic groups, and (5) the US/NATO priority of military goals as opposed to reconstruction or development goals.
After the many years of US occupation, the report lends credence to the view that the US military presence in Afghanistan has done little to change the conditions of the vast majority of Afghan citizens. The current "surge" in US troops and the continuation of a failed counterinsurgency strategy signify an inability of the US military or government to learn from years of mistakes. In the process, there are enormous costs for both Afghanistan and the US - most of all for the poor in Afghanistan but also in the US.
A massive human rights deficit
The UN Human Rights office report on poverty in Afghanistan describes a situation where an overwhelming majority of people are living in poverty: a situation which has reinforced a strong sense of disillusionment and growing scepticism about the future of the democratization process.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth with two out of every three of its citizens struggling to provide naan-o-chai (bread and tea) for their families. The maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world, it ranks at three for child mortality, only a quarter of the population have access to supplies of drinking water and less than 15 percent of women are literate.
Notwithstanding those grim statistics, the report, Human Rights Dimensions of Poverty in Afghanistan, argues that “poverty is neither accidental, nor inevitable in Afghanistan”. Rather, it is caused by and is a consequence of a “massive human rights deficit”. The report calls for a human rights based approach to overcoming poverty: a perspective and analysis that would ensure causes and not just consequences, inform the design and implementation of programmes for the alleviation and elimination of poverty.
Launching the report in Kabul, Norah Niland, the High Commissioner’s Representative in Afghanistan said, “A human rights angle offers a complementary approach to existing poverty reduction strategies.”
The report identifies abuse of power as a key driver of poverty in Afghanistan. It describes corrupted power structures at all levels of Afghan society and a lack of will on the part of the country’s leaders and international partners to address the long history of abuse. There are few public institutions to protect those who want to achieve reform, freedom of expression is curtailed and so for the few who hold power, there are very few incentives to share power, to be guided by the public interest or to keep promises, the report says.
“Sustainable poverty reduction is dependent on efforts that roll back abusive power structures,” Niland said, “Vested interests… frequently shape the public agenda, whether in relation to the law, policy, or the allocation of resources.”
The on-going conflict in Afghanistan also plays a major role in ensuring that most of the population is prevented from enjoying the most basic human rights. The majority of Afghans have at some point, been directly affected by the conflict through deaths, injuries, disability, and destruction of homes, assets and livelihoods essential for survival. But the conflict has had other less obvious effects. The report says the Afghan Government and its international partners give priority to the military effort with a much smaller proportion of funds being directed to development and poverty reduction efforts.
“Security objectives,” Niland said, “must not sideline the urgent need to ramp up poverty reduction efforts. Resources allocation should not be driven by a military agenda, but by the needs and rights of Afghans especially those who are most impoverished.”
Some groups suffer disproportionately because of discriminatory practices rooted in social and cultural traditions which are not challenged by a better educated populace or the country’s leadership, the report says. Afghans who do not own land, not only find it more difficult to feed themselves and their families, they also find it harder to access credit – one of the few available safety nets. The nomad peoples, the Kuchi are also exposed to systematic discrimination which makes them one of the poorest groups in the country.
The report makes a number of recommendations: enable Afghans to be the architects of their own future through participation in the design and implementation of poverty reduction strategies; address impunity and corruption through fair and transparent processes; and give priority to development objectives rather than short-term military and political agendas.
The report warns that, “A growing number of Afghans are increasingly disillusioned and dispirited as the compact between the people, the Government, and its international partners is widely seen to have not delivered adequately on the most basic fundamentals including security, justice, food, shelter, health, jobs and the prospect of a better future.” The report says that strategies which do not consider the needs and aspirations of the nation’s poor may undermine efforts to achieve peace and stability.
12 April 2010
See also
The report - Human Rights Dimensions of Poverty in Afghanistan
The work of the UN Human Rights Office in the field
According to the UN, the country remains plagued by massive poverty. The report identifies a number of factors in producing this ongoing poverty, namely, (1) corruption at all levels of government, (2) the ongoing "conflict" or occupation/war, (3) the mal-distribution of land, (4) the discrimination against some ethnic groups, and (5) the US/NATO priority of military goals as opposed to reconstruction or development goals.
After the many years of US occupation, the report lends credence to the view that the US military presence in Afghanistan has done little to change the conditions of the vast majority of Afghan citizens. The current "surge" in US troops and the continuation of a failed counterinsurgency strategy signify an inability of the US military or government to learn from years of mistakes. In the process, there are enormous costs for both Afghanistan and the US - most of all for the poor in Afghanistan but also in the US.
A massive human rights deficit
The UN Human Rights office report on poverty in Afghanistan describes a situation where an overwhelming majority of people are living in poverty: a situation which has reinforced a strong sense of disillusionment and growing scepticism about the future of the democratization process.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth with two out of every three of its citizens struggling to provide naan-o-chai (bread and tea) for their families. The maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world, it ranks at three for child mortality, only a quarter of the population have access to supplies of drinking water and less than 15 percent of women are literate.
Notwithstanding those grim statistics, the report, Human Rights Dimensions of Poverty in Afghanistan, argues that “poverty is neither accidental, nor inevitable in Afghanistan”. Rather, it is caused by and is a consequence of a “massive human rights deficit”. The report calls for a human rights based approach to overcoming poverty: a perspective and analysis that would ensure causes and not just consequences, inform the design and implementation of programmes for the alleviation and elimination of poverty.
Launching the report in Kabul, Norah Niland, the High Commissioner’s Representative in Afghanistan said, “A human rights angle offers a complementary approach to existing poverty reduction strategies.”
The report identifies abuse of power as a key driver of poverty in Afghanistan. It describes corrupted power structures at all levels of Afghan society and a lack of will on the part of the country’s leaders and international partners to address the long history of abuse. There are few public institutions to protect those who want to achieve reform, freedom of expression is curtailed and so for the few who hold power, there are very few incentives to share power, to be guided by the public interest or to keep promises, the report says.
“Sustainable poverty reduction is dependent on efforts that roll back abusive power structures,” Niland said, “Vested interests… frequently shape the public agenda, whether in relation to the law, policy, or the allocation of resources.”
The on-going conflict in Afghanistan also plays a major role in ensuring that most of the population is prevented from enjoying the most basic human rights. The majority of Afghans have at some point, been directly affected by the conflict through deaths, injuries, disability, and destruction of homes, assets and livelihoods essential for survival. But the conflict has had other less obvious effects. The report says the Afghan Government and its international partners give priority to the military effort with a much smaller proportion of funds being directed to development and poverty reduction efforts.
“Security objectives,” Niland said, “must not sideline the urgent need to ramp up poverty reduction efforts. Resources allocation should not be driven by a military agenda, but by the needs and rights of Afghans especially those who are most impoverished.”
Some groups suffer disproportionately because of discriminatory practices rooted in social and cultural traditions which are not challenged by a better educated populace or the country’s leadership, the report says. Afghans who do not own land, not only find it more difficult to feed themselves and their families, they also find it harder to access credit – one of the few available safety nets. The nomad peoples, the Kuchi are also exposed to systematic discrimination which makes them one of the poorest groups in the country.
The report makes a number of recommendations: enable Afghans to be the architects of their own future through participation in the design and implementation of poverty reduction strategies; address impunity and corruption through fair and transparent processes; and give priority to development objectives rather than short-term military and political agendas.
The report warns that, “A growing number of Afghans are increasingly disillusioned and dispirited as the compact between the people, the Government, and its international partners is widely seen to have not delivered adequately on the most basic fundamentals including security, justice, food, shelter, health, jobs and the prospect of a better future.” The report says that strategies which do not consider the needs and aspirations of the nation’s poor may undermine efforts to achieve peace and stability.
12 April 2010
See also
The report - Human Rights Dimensions of Poverty in Afghanistan
The work of the UN Human Rights Office in the field
US military produces high levels of environmental pollution in Afghanistan
According to the early cascade of reports on the 92,000 or so Wikileak documents, the US-led occupation/war in Afghanistan has continuously caused Afghan casualties, blown up their homes and villages, and failed to create effective Afghan security forces. There is at least one dimension of the occupation/war that is by and large overlooked. As far as the documents and reports go, there is little attention on how US bases, of all sizes, pollute the areas in which they are located. The following article by Matthew Nasuti helps to fill this gap in his documentation of the manner in which waste from the bases is dealt with. The problem is huge and illegal.
American Military Burn Pits Pollute Afghan Countryside (Part 2 of 3)
American military incinerators may not be safe for Afghanistan
Sunday 2 May 2010, by Matthew Nasuti, http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article9030
Send this page to your friends این صفحه را به دوستانتان بفرستید;;
Pentagon officials seem to support the following epitaph for Afghanistan:
“We had to pollute the Afghan countryside in order to save it from the Taliban."
In reality, the American military did not have to pollute. It chose to be sloppy and reckless and to ignore environmental standards.
On October 28, 2009, George W. Bush, in one of his last acts as President, signed into law H.R. 2647, which included provisions of “The Military Personnel War Zone Toxic Exposure Prevention Act.” The Act was sponsored by Congressman Tim Bishop of New York. It banned the use of burn pits in Afghanistan by the military. What is disturbing about H.R. 2647 is that an act of Congress was necessary to force the Pentagon to act responsibly and cease its use of toxic (open air) burning pits. It raises the question about how committed the Pentagon is to environmental protection and to the people of Afghanistan.
The impetus for this legislation was a courageous report written by Lieutenant Colonel Darrin L. Curtis, PhD BSC. Lt. Col. Curtis was a Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight Commander at Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2006. He wrote a report on the environmental and health impacts of the Balad burn pits. His report, dated December 20, 2006, concluded that the burn pit was “the worst environmental site” he had seen in seventeen years of environmental work in the United States. He characterized the smoke released by the military as: “an acute health hazard” to everyone who has been deployed or will be deployed to Balad. He disclosed that the U.S. Army completed a study in April 2006, that supported his findings. It was generated by the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine. Lt. Col. Curtis’ report was reviewed and endorsed by his equally courageous superior, Lieutenant Colonel James R. Elliott, MC, SPS, Chief Aeromedical Services. After that, the report went up the chain of command to more senior military officers much less courageous. They and the Pentagon ignored the report’s findings.
This was not the first such warning the Pentagon ignored. In the Fall of 2004, a U.S. Army Engineering publication, called “Engineer - The Professional Bulletin” reported that by 2002, Kandahar Airfield was facing “a growing human health and environmental threat” from the uncontrolled burning of hazardous waste. The U.S. Army vaguely claimed the problems had been solved by 2004. This was not true.
In 2008, the Pentagon published a private research study that seemed to confirm that American military commanders view environmental rules as being a nuisance which they are free to ignore, with no consequences. That study was the subject of a damning October 3, 2008, article by Kelly Kennedy, writing for the Military Times. It was entitled “Army Making Toxic Mess in War Zones.”
The article was prompted by the release in September 2008, of a Rand Corporation study commissioned by the Pentagon. The work was conducted by a Rand subsidiary called the Rand Arroyo Center. The report detailed a horrific series of environmental spills, releases and disposals in Iraq and Afghanistan. In response to an early draft of the report, the U.S. Army generated a June 11, 2008, memo from Deputy Assistant Secretary Addison Davis IV. He reportedly stated that: “It does no good to win the war only to forfeit the peace.”
Bruce Travis of the U.S. Army Engineering School stated that there were no environmental rules complied with in Iraq from 2003-2008 (this would presumably apply to Afghanistan also). He went on to tell the Times that an estimated 11 million pounds of hazardous waste exist (i.e., were disposed of) in Iraq.
Rand investigators interviewed American military commanders up to the battalion level about why they were not dealing with and stopping the pollution they were causing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of their responses were:
“It is not our job.”
“We are in the desert. What does it matter?
“We are here to fight a war not pick up trash.”
“We are just passing through and do not have time.”
If these responses are truly representative of the American military, Afghanistan has no chance of protecting its lands from American pollution.
In December, 2009, R. Craig Postlewaite, acting director of the Pentagon’s Force Health Protection and Readiness Programs, told Matthew D. LaPlante of the Salt Lake Tribune that the burn pits were a minor environmental problem. LaPlante dismissed the health risks, claiming that the objections were all cosmetic (i.e., soldiers objected to the sight of the smoke and the smell, not the content). This continues to be the position of the Pentagon.
At the present time, the Pentagon does not appear to be interested in addressing any of the past contamination it has caused. Instead, it is looking forward and claiming that its new incinerators will safely treat all future waste. While dozens of incinerators have apparently been installed in major bases across Afghanistan, this is not a comprehensive solution. In fact, as explained below, it may not even be a partial solution.
The exact number of American military bases in Afghanistan is apparently a closely guarded secret. CBS News, on February 10, 2010, published a report by Nick Turse entitled: “the 700 military bases of Afghanistan.” CBS claims that about 400 of the bases belong to Coalition forces, most of which are American. These facilities can generally be characterized as:
Air bases
Air fields
Camps
Forward Operating Bases (FOBs)
Fire bases
Coordination Centers
Patrol bases
Combat outposts (COPs)
Each of these 350-odd facilities may have one or more burn pits, landfills, or disposal pits. As incinerators are not being installed at each facility, the risk is that burn pits are continuing to operate. This article addresses the risks and dangers of using incinerators.
Thermal destruction units (TDUs) generally fall into two categories. Incinerators and pyrolytic thermal units. The former seeks to destroy waste by burning it and the latter by heating it. An incinerator applies flame and oxygen to burn hazardous waste. A pyrolytic unit places hazardous waste into a screw-fed cylinder or chamber. The chamber is heated, but the flames never touch the material. Pyrolytic units tend to burn cleaner because there is no oxidation of the waste. Unfortunately the Pentagon has opted to utilize incinerators in Afghanistan.
Incinerators can potentially work in Afghanistan. The problem is that they come in all different sizes, types and configurations. Some of these might work and the rest would not.
In order for an incinerator to safely and successfully function:
1. The incinerator should operate at a high enough temperature for a specific period of time. This is referred to as its DRE (Destruction Removal Efficiency). For hazardous materials, the DRE should be 99.9999%. It is referred to as “six-nines.” To achieve this DRE, depending on the feedstock, the incinerator may have to operate as high as 1400 degrees Centigrade. Remember, even at this DRE, an incinerator is never perfect. It will always emit some hazardous materials into the air and it will always be emit some potentially dangerous submicron particles (i.e., ultra fine dust);
2. The incinerator should be configured with primary and secondary combustion chambers;
3. The incinerator should have a multi-layered APCS (Air Pollution Control Systems). That would include having at least one water scrubber for metals and acids, and an ESP (Electro-Static Precipitator) to capture particulates;
4. Bag-house ash and the bottom ash should be collected hourly and carefully managed;
5. There should be hourly monitoring of flue gas emissions, including sampling for submicron particulate emissions;
6. There should also be fugitive air monitoring of ash management tasks.
7. Finally, agreement needs to be reached with the Afghan government as to the final disposal of the highly concentrated and toxic ash. Ideally, it should all be shipped back to the United States for final disposal.
A few chemistry facts regarding incinerators are necessary.
First: They are designed to burn organic chemicals and materials. They do not work on metals and can even make metals more toxic by oxidizing them.
Second: Plastics should never be burned. They release toxic compounds too numerous to test for. For example when burned, PVC plastic piping will release chlorine gas which can be a lethal poison.
Third: Combustion efficiency is difficult to measure where the feed rates and feedstock are not uniform.
Fourth: Reactive and explosive materials should be segregated out of the feedstock.
In summary, it is unlikely that the Pentagon’s incinerators are being operated in conformance with the requirements set forth above. If they are not of the proper quality and if they are not being managed as safely as this author recommends, the incineration remedy is not much better than the burn pits.
One of the other problems with the incineration “remedy” being employed by the Pentagon is that it treats a symptom rather than a cause. The cause of the problem is that the American military has a logistics system which is excessively and unnecessarily complex, and which therefore produces an exorbitant and unnecessary amount of hazardous waste. Consider this comparison:
1942: A German Panzer division needed from 30-70 tons of supplies per day.
1968: A North Vietnamese Army division needed less than 10 tons of supplies per day.
2010: An American division needs in excess of 3,000 tons of supplies per day.
There is an addiction to technology and gadgets within the Pentagon which can be harmful to military preparedness and effectiveness. All this fancy technology requires an endless supply system to keep it functioning.
Even with these devices, the American military seems unable to detect a land mine or IED composed of mainly wooden parts and using a simple nitrate explosive. Its night vision equipment does not work in rain or fog or twilight. Infrared sensors cannot distinguish a civilian from a Taliban soldier. All the money that is spent on technology might be more usefully spent on something as simple as teaching every American soldier to speak Dari or Pashto.
During the American Civil War, the Union Government almost lost the war because its generals were overly dependent on their cumbersome logistics system. Confederate armies moved swiftly and lightly, while Union forces moved slowly with large supply trains. An exasperated President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to General N.P. Banks, dated November 22, 1862, in which he lamented the failure of Banks to commence military operations until he had received a long list of supplies.
Lincoln wrote: “this expanding and piling up of impedimenta has been so far our ruin and will be our final ruin if it is not abandoned.” The failure of General George McClellan to advance until he had 100% of his supplies eventually led to his firing as the Union’s military commander.
Confederate General Richard Stoddert Ewell reportedly said that “the road to glory cannot be followed with much baggage.”
In conclusion, the solutions to the American military’s waste problem are complex. They must include a major effort in waste minimization, segregation of hazardous from non-hazardous waste; strict management and return to the United States of all radioactive waste; and possibly the use of incinerators, but only if they can be operated safely, with a DRE of 99.9999% for all the wastes they burn; and as long as they do not burn plastics. All latrines and washing facilities must be carefully managed. Finally all toxic ash and other potentially hazardous wastes must be shipped back to the United States for disposal.
The final part of this series will address potential remedies to the wastes that have already been released into the Afghan countryside.
The author is a former U.S. Air Force Captain. He advised on environmental cleanups at Logistics Command regarding the Air Force’s most contaminated bases and depots. He then worked for Bechtel Environmental and was involved in Superfund cleanups across the United States and radiological cleanups at U.S. Department of Energy sites. He later served as a consultant to a group of environmental remediation companies, smelters and waste recyclers.
American Military Burn Pits Pollute Afghan Countryside (Part 2 of 3)
American military incinerators may not be safe for Afghanistan
Sunday 2 May 2010, by Matthew Nasuti, http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article9030
Send this page to your friends این صفحه را به دوستانتان بفرستید;;
Pentagon officials seem to support the following epitaph for Afghanistan:
“We had to pollute the Afghan countryside in order to save it from the Taliban."
In reality, the American military did not have to pollute. It chose to be sloppy and reckless and to ignore environmental standards.
On October 28, 2009, George W. Bush, in one of his last acts as President, signed into law H.R. 2647, which included provisions of “The Military Personnel War Zone Toxic Exposure Prevention Act.” The Act was sponsored by Congressman Tim Bishop of New York. It banned the use of burn pits in Afghanistan by the military. What is disturbing about H.R. 2647 is that an act of Congress was necessary to force the Pentagon to act responsibly and cease its use of toxic (open air) burning pits. It raises the question about how committed the Pentagon is to environmental protection and to the people of Afghanistan.
The impetus for this legislation was a courageous report written by Lieutenant Colonel Darrin L. Curtis, PhD BSC. Lt. Col. Curtis was a Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight Commander at Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2006. He wrote a report on the environmental and health impacts of the Balad burn pits. His report, dated December 20, 2006, concluded that the burn pit was “the worst environmental site” he had seen in seventeen years of environmental work in the United States. He characterized the smoke released by the military as: “an acute health hazard” to everyone who has been deployed or will be deployed to Balad. He disclosed that the U.S. Army completed a study in April 2006, that supported his findings. It was generated by the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine. Lt. Col. Curtis’ report was reviewed and endorsed by his equally courageous superior, Lieutenant Colonel James R. Elliott, MC, SPS, Chief Aeromedical Services. After that, the report went up the chain of command to more senior military officers much less courageous. They and the Pentagon ignored the report’s findings.
This was not the first such warning the Pentagon ignored. In the Fall of 2004, a U.S. Army Engineering publication, called “Engineer - The Professional Bulletin” reported that by 2002, Kandahar Airfield was facing “a growing human health and environmental threat” from the uncontrolled burning of hazardous waste. The U.S. Army vaguely claimed the problems had been solved by 2004. This was not true.
In 2008, the Pentagon published a private research study that seemed to confirm that American military commanders view environmental rules as being a nuisance which they are free to ignore, with no consequences. That study was the subject of a damning October 3, 2008, article by Kelly Kennedy, writing for the Military Times. It was entitled “Army Making Toxic Mess in War Zones.”
The article was prompted by the release in September 2008, of a Rand Corporation study commissioned by the Pentagon. The work was conducted by a Rand subsidiary called the Rand Arroyo Center. The report detailed a horrific series of environmental spills, releases and disposals in Iraq and Afghanistan. In response to an early draft of the report, the U.S. Army generated a June 11, 2008, memo from Deputy Assistant Secretary Addison Davis IV. He reportedly stated that: “It does no good to win the war only to forfeit the peace.”
Bruce Travis of the U.S. Army Engineering School stated that there were no environmental rules complied with in Iraq from 2003-2008 (this would presumably apply to Afghanistan also). He went on to tell the Times that an estimated 11 million pounds of hazardous waste exist (i.e., were disposed of) in Iraq.
Rand investigators interviewed American military commanders up to the battalion level about why they were not dealing with and stopping the pollution they were causing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of their responses were:
“It is not our job.”
“We are in the desert. What does it matter?
“We are here to fight a war not pick up trash.”
“We are just passing through and do not have time.”
If these responses are truly representative of the American military, Afghanistan has no chance of protecting its lands from American pollution.
In December, 2009, R. Craig Postlewaite, acting director of the Pentagon’s Force Health Protection and Readiness Programs, told Matthew D. LaPlante of the Salt Lake Tribune that the burn pits were a minor environmental problem. LaPlante dismissed the health risks, claiming that the objections were all cosmetic (i.e., soldiers objected to the sight of the smoke and the smell, not the content). This continues to be the position of the Pentagon.
At the present time, the Pentagon does not appear to be interested in addressing any of the past contamination it has caused. Instead, it is looking forward and claiming that its new incinerators will safely treat all future waste. While dozens of incinerators have apparently been installed in major bases across Afghanistan, this is not a comprehensive solution. In fact, as explained below, it may not even be a partial solution.
The exact number of American military bases in Afghanistan is apparently a closely guarded secret. CBS News, on February 10, 2010, published a report by Nick Turse entitled: “the 700 military bases of Afghanistan.” CBS claims that about 400 of the bases belong to Coalition forces, most of which are American. These facilities can generally be characterized as:
Air bases
Air fields
Camps
Forward Operating Bases (FOBs)
Fire bases
Coordination Centers
Patrol bases
Combat outposts (COPs)
Each of these 350-odd facilities may have one or more burn pits, landfills, or disposal pits. As incinerators are not being installed at each facility, the risk is that burn pits are continuing to operate. This article addresses the risks and dangers of using incinerators.
Thermal destruction units (TDUs) generally fall into two categories. Incinerators and pyrolytic thermal units. The former seeks to destroy waste by burning it and the latter by heating it. An incinerator applies flame and oxygen to burn hazardous waste. A pyrolytic unit places hazardous waste into a screw-fed cylinder or chamber. The chamber is heated, but the flames never touch the material. Pyrolytic units tend to burn cleaner because there is no oxidation of the waste. Unfortunately the Pentagon has opted to utilize incinerators in Afghanistan.
Incinerators can potentially work in Afghanistan. The problem is that they come in all different sizes, types and configurations. Some of these might work and the rest would not.
In order for an incinerator to safely and successfully function:
1. The incinerator should operate at a high enough temperature for a specific period of time. This is referred to as its DRE (Destruction Removal Efficiency). For hazardous materials, the DRE should be 99.9999%. It is referred to as “six-nines.” To achieve this DRE, depending on the feedstock, the incinerator may have to operate as high as 1400 degrees Centigrade. Remember, even at this DRE, an incinerator is never perfect. It will always emit some hazardous materials into the air and it will always be emit some potentially dangerous submicron particles (i.e., ultra fine dust);
2. The incinerator should be configured with primary and secondary combustion chambers;
3. The incinerator should have a multi-layered APCS (Air Pollution Control Systems). That would include having at least one water scrubber for metals and acids, and an ESP (Electro-Static Precipitator) to capture particulates;
4. Bag-house ash and the bottom ash should be collected hourly and carefully managed;
5. There should be hourly monitoring of flue gas emissions, including sampling for submicron particulate emissions;
6. There should also be fugitive air monitoring of ash management tasks.
7. Finally, agreement needs to be reached with the Afghan government as to the final disposal of the highly concentrated and toxic ash. Ideally, it should all be shipped back to the United States for final disposal.
A few chemistry facts regarding incinerators are necessary.
First: They are designed to burn organic chemicals and materials. They do not work on metals and can even make metals more toxic by oxidizing them.
Second: Plastics should never be burned. They release toxic compounds too numerous to test for. For example when burned, PVC plastic piping will release chlorine gas which can be a lethal poison.
Third: Combustion efficiency is difficult to measure where the feed rates and feedstock are not uniform.
Fourth: Reactive and explosive materials should be segregated out of the feedstock.
In summary, it is unlikely that the Pentagon’s incinerators are being operated in conformance with the requirements set forth above. If they are not of the proper quality and if they are not being managed as safely as this author recommends, the incineration remedy is not much better than the burn pits.
One of the other problems with the incineration “remedy” being employed by the Pentagon is that it treats a symptom rather than a cause. The cause of the problem is that the American military has a logistics system which is excessively and unnecessarily complex, and which therefore produces an exorbitant and unnecessary amount of hazardous waste. Consider this comparison:
1942: A German Panzer division needed from 30-70 tons of supplies per day.
1968: A North Vietnamese Army division needed less than 10 tons of supplies per day.
2010: An American division needs in excess of 3,000 tons of supplies per day.
There is an addiction to technology and gadgets within the Pentagon which can be harmful to military preparedness and effectiveness. All this fancy technology requires an endless supply system to keep it functioning.
Even with these devices, the American military seems unable to detect a land mine or IED composed of mainly wooden parts and using a simple nitrate explosive. Its night vision equipment does not work in rain or fog or twilight. Infrared sensors cannot distinguish a civilian from a Taliban soldier. All the money that is spent on technology might be more usefully spent on something as simple as teaching every American soldier to speak Dari or Pashto.
During the American Civil War, the Union Government almost lost the war because its generals were overly dependent on their cumbersome logistics system. Confederate armies moved swiftly and lightly, while Union forces moved slowly with large supply trains. An exasperated President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to General N.P. Banks, dated November 22, 1862, in which he lamented the failure of Banks to commence military operations until he had received a long list of supplies.
Lincoln wrote: “this expanding and piling up of impedimenta has been so far our ruin and will be our final ruin if it is not abandoned.” The failure of General George McClellan to advance until he had 100% of his supplies eventually led to his firing as the Union’s military commander.
Confederate General Richard Stoddert Ewell reportedly said that “the road to glory cannot be followed with much baggage.”
In conclusion, the solutions to the American military’s waste problem are complex. They must include a major effort in waste minimization, segregation of hazardous from non-hazardous waste; strict management and return to the United States of all radioactive waste; and possibly the use of incinerators, but only if they can be operated safely, with a DRE of 99.9999% for all the wastes they burn; and as long as they do not burn plastics. All latrines and washing facilities must be carefully managed. Finally all toxic ash and other potentially hazardous wastes must be shipped back to the United States for disposal.
The final part of this series will address potential remedies to the wastes that have already been released into the Afghan countryside.
The author is a former U.S. Air Force Captain. He advised on environmental cleanups at Logistics Command regarding the Air Force’s most contaminated bases and depots. He then worked for Bechtel Environmental and was involved in Superfund cleanups across the United States and radiological cleanups at U.S. Department of Energy sites. He later served as a consultant to a group of environmental remediation companies, smelters and waste recyclers.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Wikileaks documents are a big deal
In the following article, Joshua Holland responds to Andrew Exum's recent op-ed in the New York Times. Exum sees little new information in the 92,000 or so "military field reports lead by the whistle-blower site Wikileaks." He is dismissive of their impact on US Afghanistan policy or on pubic opinion. Holland writes that the information in the documents may not be new to people who study or have followed closely the occupation and war in Afghanistan.
But it is new (news) for most Americans and the documents help to confirm that the war has been ineffectually waged, civilian and military casualties have continued to be high, and the ISI in Pakistan have been undercutting US war efforts in Afghanistan, etc. Additionally, the documents may have the effect of increasing the number in US Congress who are willing to speak up against additional funding for the Afghanistan occupation/war, and perhaps even vote against the funding.
As the Wikileak documents get media attention, they plant seeds of opposition and reinforce opposition among a war-weary and economically strapped US citizenry.
Why Wikileak's Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)
Posted by Joshua Holland on @ 9:19 am
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/27/why-wikileaks-doc-dump-is-such-a-big-deal-even-if-theres-nothing-new-within/
There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know.
That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this:
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus.”
And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit. In 1997, the government conducted a huge survey on American adults’ civic participation. Almost a third of the public couldn’t say what “job or political office” Al Gore held — after he had spent five years serving as vice-president. Around a third didn’t know which party held the majority in Congress at the time. Perhaps most shockingly, at least to political buffs like myself, was that 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know “which party is more conservative at the national level.” That’s domestic politics — a subject that Americans tend to have a better grasp on than foreign affairs. Two years after the attacks of 9/11, 70 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy theory which held that Saddam Hussein had had a connection to the attacks.
I haven’t gone through those 92,000 field reports myself. And I have no problem buying that there’s nothing in the pile that would surprise anyone who not only reads the entirety of their hometown paper’s foreign coverage but also reads those stories all the way through to the 17th paragraph, where the real news — the ugly news of American war-making — tends to be buried. What is that — one percent of the population? I’d guess that’s overstating it.
So, this document dump pushes what a few war-nerds may have grasped from a thousand stories on page B-6 onto the front page, revealing not a series of “unfortunate incidents” but a pattern of disregard for civilian casualties that disproves a central tenet of our COIN strategy — that war can be fought in a kinder, gentler, more progressive way thus helping win the hearts and minds of the local population.
Here’s a report from the Times’ news section that completely contradicts Exum’s ‘ho-hum’ narrative:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
Exum isn’t alone arguing that ‘there’s no there there,’ but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Recent history certainly suggests it won’t:
The [Pentagon] papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corpsattacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, allegedly hurting President Richard Nixon’s war effort.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
But it is new (news) for most Americans and the documents help to confirm that the war has been ineffectually waged, civilian and military casualties have continued to be high, and the ISI in Pakistan have been undercutting US war efforts in Afghanistan, etc. Additionally, the documents may have the effect of increasing the number in US Congress who are willing to speak up against additional funding for the Afghanistan occupation/war, and perhaps even vote against the funding.
As the Wikileak documents get media attention, they plant seeds of opposition and reinforce opposition among a war-weary and economically strapped US citizenry.
Why Wikileak's Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)
Posted by Joshua Holland on @ 9:19 am
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/27/why-wikileaks-doc-dump-is-such-a-big-deal-even-if-theres-nothing-new-within/
There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know.
That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this:
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus.”
And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit. In 1997, the government conducted a huge survey on American adults’ civic participation. Almost a third of the public couldn’t say what “job or political office” Al Gore held — after he had spent five years serving as vice-president. Around a third didn’t know which party held the majority in Congress at the time. Perhaps most shockingly, at least to political buffs like myself, was that 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know “which party is more conservative at the national level.” That’s domestic politics — a subject that Americans tend to have a better grasp on than foreign affairs. Two years after the attacks of 9/11, 70 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy theory which held that Saddam Hussein had had a connection to the attacks.
I haven’t gone through those 92,000 field reports myself. And I have no problem buying that there’s nothing in the pile that would surprise anyone who not only reads the entirety of their hometown paper’s foreign coverage but also reads those stories all the way through to the 17th paragraph, where the real news — the ugly news of American war-making — tends to be buried. What is that — one percent of the population? I’d guess that’s overstating it.
So, this document dump pushes what a few war-nerds may have grasped from a thousand stories on page B-6 onto the front page, revealing not a series of “unfortunate incidents” but a pattern of disregard for civilian casualties that disproves a central tenet of our COIN strategy — that war can be fought in a kinder, gentler, more progressive way thus helping win the hearts and minds of the local population.
Here’s a report from the Times’ news section that completely contradicts Exum’s ‘ho-hum’ narrative:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
Exum isn’t alone arguing that ‘there’s no there there,’ but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Recent history certainly suggests it won’t:
The [Pentagon] papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corpsattacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, allegedly hurting President Richard Nixon’s war effort.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
US relies more on military as its hegemony declines
Published on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus
Imperial Overkill and the Death of US Empire
by Francis Shor
The main point of Shor’s article is that US foreign policy is a militarized foreign policy. This reflects a faltering US economy, the rising power of the Pentagon within the US, and a last ditch effort to avoid the decline of US hegemony around the world. You can go back to C. Wright Mills' book, The Power Elite (published 1956) to get an idea of the some of the roots of the military elites and US policy. Seymour Melman, now deceased, provided a monumental account in his books of how "the permanent war economy" was leading to a decline in "American capitalism. His books include: Out Depleted Society (1965), The Permanent War Economy (1974), Profits Without Production (1983), among others.
While the centrality of the Pentagon and military spending has long been prominent in US affairs, Shor argues that, unlike the past, it is not the cold war that spurs US militarism at home and abroad but the decline of and growing challenges to US imperialism.
Here are excerpts from the article.
“... beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy.”
[Imperial overkill] reflects: “The compulsion to rely even more heavily on the military to compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains - and to contend with shrinking resources (especially hydrocarbons), rising adversaries (especially China) and growing resistance (especially non-state Islamic militants and Latin American national-popular governments) - led to a record number of direct U. S. interventions. In turn, two of the most massive interventions, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, underscored the inability of Washington to realize all of its imperial goals.”
[....]
The Obama administration has expanded [2] the role of Special Operations forces from 60 to 75 countries, and given these forces the go-ahead to "get more aggressive much more quickly." In the process, the Obama administration has ramped up the extrajudicial assassinations first approved by the previous administration and added on a nearly 6 percent increase in the Special Operations budget.”
Shor adds:
...with special operations planting the seeds for eventually larger military engagements, the Pentagon has to plan for permanent war. This doctrine of "Long War" has bipartisan support in Washington, and is key to the forms of disaster capitalism that enrich the military-industrial complex and private contractors like Halliburton, Blackwater, and DynCorp, among many others.
Garrisoning the Globe [Shor’s section heading.]
The US efforts to maintain its military superiority is indicated by the fact that “the Pentagon still manages to receive the equivalent of what all of the other nations around the globe spend on their militaries,” continues to be “the overwhelming leader in military exports to the tune of 70 percent of the weapons market,” flouts “ international treaties, such as those on cluster bomb,” thus eroding “international legal standards,” and has over 700 military based positioned around the world.
[....]
“ This imperium is under attack not only by adversaries, but also by those who no longer accept U. S. economic and ideological models, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007.” Shor gives the following examples. “Continuing resistance in Okinawa has roiled Japanese politics. In Latin America, leftist leaders from Rafael Correa in Ecuador to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have challenged the United States....
“....Chavez has replaced U.S. military contracts with those of Russian and Chinese companies, and created a new military alliance with Russia that brought Russian naval vessels to Venezuela.”
The End of Indispensability
Shor quotes Emmanuel Todd, who maintains that the US "is pretending to remain the world's indispensable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries," but[6] "this America... is hardly the indispensable nation it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now."
Still it has the effect of creating “perpetual war.” “Such perpetual war is no longer about achieving victory, whatever that means, but perpetrating military imperialism. Although that imperialism is anchored in protecting economic prerogatives, it's also an obsession with a matrix of control and destruction, resulting in imperial overkill.”
[....]
Addicted to War
“.... Using a multiplier effect, the economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the long-term expenses for those wars to be in excess of three times the expended amount. This is all part of a growing debt [9] of $13 trillion dollars. Moreover, with U. S. casualties rising in Afghanistan and with a record number of closed head injuries among American soldiers, the costs in human terms are enormous. And still, the Pentagon is seeding future wars by the extensive operations of Special Forces.”
In Afghanistan, US contractors...contribute money [10] to Taliban warlords in order to guarantee safe delivery of U. S. supplies over Afghan routes. These payoffs also allow an unending cycle of violence that stokes the military machine and its imperial enablers.
[....]
“....Many voices on the left and the right are calling for Washington to admit it cannot "win" in Afghanistan. However, like other empires of the past, those in power remain convinced that they have a global mission to perform, even if it leads to self-destructive imperial overkill.”
© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus
Francis Shor teaches history at Wayne State University. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, he is the author of Dying Empire: U. S. Imperialism and Global Resistance [11].
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/27-7
Imperial Overkill and the Death of US Empire
by Francis Shor
The main point of Shor’s article is that US foreign policy is a militarized foreign policy. This reflects a faltering US economy, the rising power of the Pentagon within the US, and a last ditch effort to avoid the decline of US hegemony around the world. You can go back to C. Wright Mills' book, The Power Elite (published 1956) to get an idea of the some of the roots of the military elites and US policy. Seymour Melman, now deceased, provided a monumental account in his books of how "the permanent war economy" was leading to a decline in "American capitalism. His books include: Out Depleted Society (1965), The Permanent War Economy (1974), Profits Without Production (1983), among others.
While the centrality of the Pentagon and military spending has long been prominent in US affairs, Shor argues that, unlike the past, it is not the cold war that spurs US militarism at home and abroad but the decline of and growing challenges to US imperialism.
Here are excerpts from the article.
“... beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy.”
[Imperial overkill] reflects: “The compulsion to rely even more heavily on the military to compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains - and to contend with shrinking resources (especially hydrocarbons), rising adversaries (especially China) and growing resistance (especially non-state Islamic militants and Latin American national-popular governments) - led to a record number of direct U. S. interventions. In turn, two of the most massive interventions, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, underscored the inability of Washington to realize all of its imperial goals.”
[....]
The Obama administration has expanded [2] the role of Special Operations forces from 60 to 75 countries, and given these forces the go-ahead to "get more aggressive much more quickly." In the process, the Obama administration has ramped up the extrajudicial assassinations first approved by the previous administration and added on a nearly 6 percent increase in the Special Operations budget.”
Shor adds:
...with special operations planting the seeds for eventually larger military engagements, the Pentagon has to plan for permanent war. This doctrine of "Long War" has bipartisan support in Washington, and is key to the forms of disaster capitalism that enrich the military-industrial complex and private contractors like Halliburton, Blackwater, and DynCorp, among many others.
Garrisoning the Globe [Shor’s section heading.]
The US efforts to maintain its military superiority is indicated by the fact that “the Pentagon still manages to receive the equivalent of what all of the other nations around the globe spend on their militaries,” continues to be “the overwhelming leader in military exports to the tune of 70 percent of the weapons market,” flouts “ international treaties, such as those on cluster bomb,” thus eroding “international legal standards,” and has over 700 military based positioned around the world.
[....]
“ This imperium is under attack not only by adversaries, but also by those who no longer accept U. S. economic and ideological models, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007.” Shor gives the following examples. “Continuing resistance in Okinawa has roiled Japanese politics. In Latin America, leftist leaders from Rafael Correa in Ecuador to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have challenged the United States....
“....Chavez has replaced U.S. military contracts with those of Russian and Chinese companies, and created a new military alliance with Russia that brought Russian naval vessels to Venezuela.”
The End of Indispensability
Shor quotes Emmanuel Todd, who maintains that the US "is pretending to remain the world's indispensable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries," but[6] "this America... is hardly the indispensable nation it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now."
Still it has the effect of creating “perpetual war.” “Such perpetual war is no longer about achieving victory, whatever that means, but perpetrating military imperialism. Although that imperialism is anchored in protecting economic prerogatives, it's also an obsession with a matrix of control and destruction, resulting in imperial overkill.”
[....]
Addicted to War
“.... Using a multiplier effect, the economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the long-term expenses for those wars to be in excess of three times the expended amount. This is all part of a growing debt [9] of $13 trillion dollars. Moreover, with U. S. casualties rising in Afghanistan and with a record number of closed head injuries among American soldiers, the costs in human terms are enormous. And still, the Pentagon is seeding future wars by the extensive operations of Special Forces.”
In Afghanistan, US contractors...contribute money [10] to Taliban warlords in order to guarantee safe delivery of U. S. supplies over Afghan routes. These payoffs also allow an unending cycle of violence that stokes the military machine and its imperial enablers.
[....]
“....Many voices on the left and the right are calling for Washington to admit it cannot "win" in Afghanistan. However, like other empires of the past, those in power remain convinced that they have a global mission to perform, even if it leads to self-destructive imperial overkill.”
© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus
Francis Shor teaches history at Wayne State University. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, he is the author of Dying Empire: U. S. Imperialism and Global Resistance [11].
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/27-7
Monday, July 26, 2010
Aljazeera adds details on Wikileak's Afghan war revelations
Aljazeera
UPDATED ON:Monday, July 26, 2010 17:10 Mecca time, 14:10 GMT
VIDEO
Pakistani agents 'aiding Taliban'
Pakistan has rejected the reports that its intelligence service gave support to the Taliban [AFP]
US officials believe that the intelligence agency of ally Pakistan, which receives billions of dollars in aid from Washington, has been secretly supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, leaked records say.
Wikileaks, the online whistleblower organisation, published more than 90,000 secret US military documentson Sunday, revealing an unedited account of the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The unverified files say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the country's spy service, has been holding strategy sessions with Taliban leaders to aid their efforts in Afghanistan.
An ISI spokesman denied the allegations, saying they were "far-fetched and unsubstantiated," but said the agency would be examining the files.
Wikileaks' documents, which cover a period from January 2004 to December 2009, include descriptions of a covert US special operations unit formed to target high-level al-Qaeda and Taliban figures. They say more than 2,000 leaders are on a "kill or capture" list, but missions to hunt them down have led to unreported civilian deaths.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, said he expected the leaked records would "shape a [new] understanding of the past six years".
"The real story of this material is that it's war, it's one damn thing after another," Assange said at a news conference in London on Monday. "It is the continuous small events, the continuous death of children, insurgents, allied forces, the maimed people."
Taliban dealings
The New York Times in the United States, Britain's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were all given about a month's advanced access to the dosier, with each jointly unveiling their findings on Sunday.
According to the Times report, the documents suggest Pakistan "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Talibanin secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders".
IN DEPTH
Reports reveal Afghan war details
Ex-spy chief denies Taliban links
Excerpts: A less encouraging story
Video: Ability of Afghan forces questioned
Focus: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, called the release of the files "irresponsible" and said it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.
"The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities," Haqqani said in a statement.
"The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are strategic partners and are jointly endeavouring to defeat al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies militarily and politically," he said.
The US government also condemned the records' disclosure, saying they could threaten national security and endanger the lives of its forces.
"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," James Jones, the US national security adviser, said.
"These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies."
Assange, however, defended his organisation's decision to release the classified files, saying Wikileaks "tried hard to make sure this material does not put innocents at harm", adding that all the documents were at least seven months old.
Rejecting US government claims, he said: "We are familiar with groups whose abuse we expose attempting to criticise the messenger, to distract from the power of the message ... we don't see any difference in the White House's response in this case to the other groups that we have exposed."
'Grimmer picture'
According to the records, the US has tried to cover up the fact that the Taliban have heat-seeking surface-to-air "stinger" missiles.
The documents also show that the Taliban's widening use of roadside bombs have killed more than 2,000 civilians.
The documents reveal new details about Afghan civilian deaths [EPA]
Eric Schmitt, one of the New York Times reporters who worked on analysing the files over the last month, told Al Jazeera that the documents gave an unvarnished view of the war, a "very fine grain, down on the ground level detail that hasn't been revealed before ... whether it's in firefights or drone activities, secret operations performed by commandos of the CIA".
He said they painted "a much grimmer picture and portrayal than either the Bush or Obama administrations have allowed so far".
Included in the many revelations of the leaked documents were also reports that the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and ran the Afghan spy agency from 2001-2008.
Pakistan's ISI had helped establish the Taliban's government in the 1990s, when Afghanistan was wracked by infighting following the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
The country's leadership reversed course after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, agreeing to assist the US against the Taliban, which the US accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader.
But US officials and analysts have persistently questioned whether all of Pakistan's security apparatus is on the same page, with some believing that Islamabad's main interest is to ensure continued influence in Afghanistan.
Iraq video
Wikileaks has become one of the biggest and most controversial sources of classified government information, even publishing a document showing that US intelligence had plans to shut it down.
In April, Wikileaks released video footage from a helicopter cockpit showing a deadly 2007 aerial strike in the Iraqi capital that killed 12 civilians, including two journalists from the Reuters news agency.
Army Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, was charged this month with misconduct and putting national security at risk for allegedly leaking the classified video, and has now been implicated in the release of the Afghan documents as well.
Sunday's released records consist largely of classified reports and assessments from junior officers in the field that analysts use to advise policymakers.
The leak is expected to put further pressure on Barack Obama, the US president, to get results in Afghanistan as he send thousands of additional troops to bolster forces already in the country.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
UPDATED ON:Monday, July 26, 2010 17:10 Mecca time, 14:10 GMT
VIDEO
Pakistani agents 'aiding Taliban'
Pakistan has rejected the reports that its intelligence service gave support to the Taliban [AFP]
US officials believe that the intelligence agency of ally Pakistan, which receives billions of dollars in aid from Washington, has been secretly supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, leaked records say.
Wikileaks, the online whistleblower organisation, published more than 90,000 secret US military documentson Sunday, revealing an unedited account of the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The unverified files say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the country's spy service, has been holding strategy sessions with Taliban leaders to aid their efforts in Afghanistan.
An ISI spokesman denied the allegations, saying they were "far-fetched and unsubstantiated," but said the agency would be examining the files.
Wikileaks' documents, which cover a period from January 2004 to December 2009, include descriptions of a covert US special operations unit formed to target high-level al-Qaeda and Taliban figures. They say more than 2,000 leaders are on a "kill or capture" list, but missions to hunt them down have led to unreported civilian deaths.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, said he expected the leaked records would "shape a [new] understanding of the past six years".
"The real story of this material is that it's war, it's one damn thing after another," Assange said at a news conference in London on Monday. "It is the continuous small events, the continuous death of children, insurgents, allied forces, the maimed people."
Taliban dealings
The New York Times in the United States, Britain's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were all given about a month's advanced access to the dosier, with each jointly unveiling their findings on Sunday.
According to the Times report, the documents suggest Pakistan "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Talibanin secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders".
IN DEPTH
Reports reveal Afghan war details
Ex-spy chief denies Taliban links
Excerpts: A less encouraging story
Video: Ability of Afghan forces questioned
Focus: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, called the release of the files "irresponsible" and said it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.
"The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities," Haqqani said in a statement.
"The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are strategic partners and are jointly endeavouring to defeat al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies militarily and politically," he said.
The US government also condemned the records' disclosure, saying they could threaten national security and endanger the lives of its forces.
"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," James Jones, the US national security adviser, said.
"These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies."
Assange, however, defended his organisation's decision to release the classified files, saying Wikileaks "tried hard to make sure this material does not put innocents at harm", adding that all the documents were at least seven months old.
Rejecting US government claims, he said: "We are familiar with groups whose abuse we expose attempting to criticise the messenger, to distract from the power of the message ... we don't see any difference in the White House's response in this case to the other groups that we have exposed."
'Grimmer picture'
According to the records, the US has tried to cover up the fact that the Taliban have heat-seeking surface-to-air "stinger" missiles.
The documents also show that the Taliban's widening use of roadside bombs have killed more than 2,000 civilians.
The documents reveal new details about Afghan civilian deaths [EPA]
Eric Schmitt, one of the New York Times reporters who worked on analysing the files over the last month, told Al Jazeera that the documents gave an unvarnished view of the war, a "very fine grain, down on the ground level detail that hasn't been revealed before ... whether it's in firefights or drone activities, secret operations performed by commandos of the CIA".
He said they painted "a much grimmer picture and portrayal than either the Bush or Obama administrations have allowed so far".
Included in the many revelations of the leaked documents were also reports that the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and ran the Afghan spy agency from 2001-2008.
Pakistan's ISI had helped establish the Taliban's government in the 1990s, when Afghanistan was wracked by infighting following the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
The country's leadership reversed course after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, agreeing to assist the US against the Taliban, which the US accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader.
But US officials and analysts have persistently questioned whether all of Pakistan's security apparatus is on the same page, with some believing that Islamabad's main interest is to ensure continued influence in Afghanistan.
Iraq video
Wikileaks has become one of the biggest and most controversial sources of classified government information, even publishing a document showing that US intelligence had plans to shut it down.
In April, Wikileaks released video footage from a helicopter cockpit showing a deadly 2007 aerial strike in the Iraqi capital that killed 12 civilians, including two journalists from the Reuters news agency.
Army Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, was charged this month with misconduct and putting national security at risk for allegedly leaking the classified video, and has now been implicated in the release of the Afghan documents as well.
Sunday's released records consist largely of classified reports and assessments from junior officers in the field that analysts use to advise policymakers.
The leak is expected to put further pressure on Barack Obama, the US president, to get results in Afghanistan as he send thousands of additional troops to bolster forces already in the country.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Wikileaks blows whistle again and again on US military actions in Afghanistan
The central point: WikiLeaks has published more than 90,000 internal (i.e., classified) records of US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years. Democracy Now features a roundtable discussion of this story on today's program, July 26, 2010. You can link to the program at http://www.democracynow.org. Here is the introductory description from Democracy Now.
The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War
It’s one of the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 internal records of US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years have been published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The documents provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency. We host a roundtable discussion with independent British journalist Stephen Grey; Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg; former State Department official in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh; independent journalist Rick Rowley; and investigative historian Gareth Porter.
The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War
It’s one of the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 internal records of US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years have been published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The documents provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency. We host a roundtable discussion with independent British journalist Stephen Grey; Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg; former State Department official in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh; independent journalist Rick Rowley; and investigative historian Gareth Porter.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Six more facts for why Congress should vote against supplemental funding for Afghan occupation
David Swanson, the author of the following article, is a cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ProsecuteBushCheney.org, Washington director of Democrats.com, and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America. Last year (2009), he published Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. Thom Hartmann said of the book, "Daybreak offers a powerful and compelling picture of what real change in America could look like. The world needs more true advocates of democracy like David Swanson."
Here David Swanson offers six facts for why the minority of Americans who support the Afghan war should reconsider their support and why the majority who oppose it should strengthen their opposition. The costs of the war are exorbitant, often wasteful, counterproductive (e.g., strengthening the Taliban and other insurgent groups), adding to the US debt, and heart-breaking for the relatives and friends of American soldiers who give their lives.
Swanson writes that now is the time to contact our congressional representatives in Washington, D.C., telling them to oppose the supplemental war funding now being considered by them. The numbers in brackets in the article refer to "links" at the end of the article.
Six Facts No War Supporter Knows
By David Swanson
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Created 2010-07-24
This coming week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on $33 billion for war. A majority of Americans opposes this, but a sizable minority of Americans supports it. No one who supports it can be aware of any of the following six facts.
1. For many months, probably years, at least the second largest and probably the largest source of revenue for the Taliban has been U.S. taxpayers. We are giving the Taliban our money instead of investing it in useful things at home or abroad. "WARLORD, INC.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan [1]," is a report from the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. The report documents [2] payoffs to the Taliban for safe passage of U.S. goods, payoffs very likely greater [2] than the Taliban's profits from opium, its other big money maker. And this is neither new nor unknown [3] to top U.S. officials. But it must be unknown to Americans supporting the war. You can't support a war where you're funding both sides unless you want both sides to lose. We lock people away [2] for giving a pair of socks to the enemy, while our own government serves as chief financial sponsor.
2. Our top consumer of oil is the U.S. military. We don't just fight wars in areas of the globe that are coincidentally rich in oil, but fighting those wars is the single biggest way [4] in which we burn oil. We pollute the air in the process of poisoning the earth with all variety of weaponry. According to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book, when oil consumption is broken down per capita, the U.S. military ranks fourth in the world, behind just three actual nations. There's no way to care about the environment while allowing the money that could create renewable energy to be spent instead on an operation whose destructiveness is rivaled only by BP. We could have 20 green energy jobs at $50 K each for what it costs to send one soldier to Afghanistan. We're fighting wars for the fuel to fight wars, even though the process is eating up the funds we could use to try to survive its side-effects.
3. Over half of every U.S. tax dollar is spent on wars, the military, and payments on debt for past wars and military spending. Here's a pie chart [5] that breaks it down for you. If you're concerned about government spending, you can't just be concerned with the minority of it that is carefully funded with taxes and off-setting cuts elsewhere. You have to also consider the single biggest item, the one that takes up a majority of the budget, large chunks of which are routinely funded off the books, borrowed from China, and passed with so-called "emergency supplemental" bills of the sort now before the House of Representatives, the sole purpose of which is to keep the money outside the budget. Numerous economic studies [6] have shown that investing in the military, even at home, does less for the economy than tax cuts, which do less for the economy than investing in education, energy, infrastructure, and other areas. Its wars or jobs, we can't have both. The labor movement has mostly (with some good exceptions) been silent on war spending, in part because jobs spending has been packaged into the same bill. Now it's not. Now the House is confronted with a bill that spends on war the money that is needed for jobs, for housing, for schools, for green energy, for retirement. Will advocates of these raise their voices this week?
4. A leading, and probably the leading, cause of death in the U.S. military is suicide. U.S. troops are killing themselves in record numbers [7]. One central reason for this is likely that these troops have no idea what it is they are risking their lives, and taking others' lives, for. Can we expect them to know, when top officials in Washington don't? When the President's special representative to Afghanistan testified in the Senate recently, senators from both parties asked him repeatedly what the goal was, what success would look like, for what purpose the war went on. Richard Holbrooke had no answers. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told the Los Angeles Times: "A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle think this effort is adrift. A lot of folks you'd consider the strongest hawks in the country are scratching their heads in concern." Corker complained that after listening for 90 minutes to Holbrooke he had "no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front. So far, this has been an incredible waste of time."
5. The $33 billion about to be voted on cannot possibly be needed to continue the war in Afghanistan, because it is exclusively to be used for escalating that war. The President was publicly pressured by his generals several months ago to begin an escalation, but Congress has yet to fund it. To the extent that it has been begun unfunded, it can be undone. CNN reports: "Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned senators in June that military operations will need to be reduced for the rest of the year unless Congress approves additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." This is nonsense. If this escalation funding were blocked, the war would remain at the level it was at before. And that's if the Pentagon respects the authority of the Congress. The other alternative, openly indicated by Gates, is that the Pentagon will fund the escalation out of its standard budget. Congressman Alan Grayson has a bill called "The War Is Making You Poor Act" which would require that wars be funded out of the military budget, which would eliminate federal taxes on the first $35,000 anyone earned and reduce the national debt. How horrible would that be?
6. War would be the greatest evil on earth even if it were free. Watch this new video [8] of a man whose father was shot and killed while sleeping in bed. More of our tax dollars at work. How many of these stories of what our military does can we write off? Our drones kill both civilians and "insurgents," as do our night raids and check points. Or, maybe not the check points. General Stanley McChrystal said that of the amazing number of people we've killed at check points, none of them have been any threat. And the damage lasts in the places we destroy. Look at this new report [9] on the damage done to the children of Fallujah. This is not because U.S. soldiers aren't brave or their parents didn't raise them well. It's because these wars don't involve pairs of armies on battlefields. We're occupying countries where the enemies look like everyone except us.
Well, maybe our representatives know all of this and still fund wars because people who fund them tell them to. But what can we do about it? We vote whenever there's an election, or at least some of us do. Isn't that our role? What does this have to do with elections? It should have everything to do with them. When we call our congress members this week we should not just ask them to vote No on war money, we should demand it, and we should let them know that we will work to unelect them, even replacing them with someone worse (since you can't get much worse), if they vote for this money. And we should spend August rewarding and punishing accordingly. Here are 88 candidates for Congress this year [10] who have committed to not voting a dime for these wars. They are from every party and political inclination. They should be supported.
If this war funding can be blocked for another week it will be blocked until mid-September and perhaps for good. If we can get closer to doing that than we have before, we will have something to build on. Just holding a straightforward vote in which war opponents vote No and war supporters vote Yes, no matter how close or far we are from winning, will identify who needs to keep their job and who doesn't. If most of the Yes votes are Republican, we will be able to confront the President with the opposition of his own party. We're moving toward peace.
Get resources from http://defundwar.org [11]
FCNL has a toll-free number to call your representative: 1-888-493-5443. Use it.
Source URL: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Links:
[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2010_rpt/warlord-inc_100622.htm
[2] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/53988
[3] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54151
[4] http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/planet-biggest-gas-guzzler.html
[5] http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
[6] http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Publications/NPP_Security_Spending_Primer.pdf
[7] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54004
[8] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54118
[9] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54173
[10] http://caws.us
[11] http://defundwar.org
Here David Swanson offers six facts for why the minority of Americans who support the Afghan war should reconsider their support and why the majority who oppose it should strengthen their opposition. The costs of the war are exorbitant, often wasteful, counterproductive (e.g., strengthening the Taliban and other insurgent groups), adding to the US debt, and heart-breaking for the relatives and friends of American soldiers who give their lives.
Swanson writes that now is the time to contact our congressional representatives in Washington, D.C., telling them to oppose the supplemental war funding now being considered by them. The numbers in brackets in the article refer to "links" at the end of the article.
Six Facts No War Supporter Knows
By David Swanson
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Created 2010-07-24
This coming week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on $33 billion for war. A majority of Americans opposes this, but a sizable minority of Americans supports it. No one who supports it can be aware of any of the following six facts.
1. For many months, probably years, at least the second largest and probably the largest source of revenue for the Taliban has been U.S. taxpayers. We are giving the Taliban our money instead of investing it in useful things at home or abroad. "WARLORD, INC.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan [1]," is a report from the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. The report documents [2] payoffs to the Taliban for safe passage of U.S. goods, payoffs very likely greater [2] than the Taliban's profits from opium, its other big money maker. And this is neither new nor unknown [3] to top U.S. officials. But it must be unknown to Americans supporting the war. You can't support a war where you're funding both sides unless you want both sides to lose. We lock people away [2] for giving a pair of socks to the enemy, while our own government serves as chief financial sponsor.
2. Our top consumer of oil is the U.S. military. We don't just fight wars in areas of the globe that are coincidentally rich in oil, but fighting those wars is the single biggest way [4] in which we burn oil. We pollute the air in the process of poisoning the earth with all variety of weaponry. According to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book, when oil consumption is broken down per capita, the U.S. military ranks fourth in the world, behind just three actual nations. There's no way to care about the environment while allowing the money that could create renewable energy to be spent instead on an operation whose destructiveness is rivaled only by BP. We could have 20 green energy jobs at $50 K each for what it costs to send one soldier to Afghanistan. We're fighting wars for the fuel to fight wars, even though the process is eating up the funds we could use to try to survive its side-effects.
3. Over half of every U.S. tax dollar is spent on wars, the military, and payments on debt for past wars and military spending. Here's a pie chart [5] that breaks it down for you. If you're concerned about government spending, you can't just be concerned with the minority of it that is carefully funded with taxes and off-setting cuts elsewhere. You have to also consider the single biggest item, the one that takes up a majority of the budget, large chunks of which are routinely funded off the books, borrowed from China, and passed with so-called "emergency supplemental" bills of the sort now before the House of Representatives, the sole purpose of which is to keep the money outside the budget. Numerous economic studies [6] have shown that investing in the military, even at home, does less for the economy than tax cuts, which do less for the economy than investing in education, energy, infrastructure, and other areas. Its wars or jobs, we can't have both. The labor movement has mostly (with some good exceptions) been silent on war spending, in part because jobs spending has been packaged into the same bill. Now it's not. Now the House is confronted with a bill that spends on war the money that is needed for jobs, for housing, for schools, for green energy, for retirement. Will advocates of these raise their voices this week?
4. A leading, and probably the leading, cause of death in the U.S. military is suicide. U.S. troops are killing themselves in record numbers [7]. One central reason for this is likely that these troops have no idea what it is they are risking their lives, and taking others' lives, for. Can we expect them to know, when top officials in Washington don't? When the President's special representative to Afghanistan testified in the Senate recently, senators from both parties asked him repeatedly what the goal was, what success would look like, for what purpose the war went on. Richard Holbrooke had no answers. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told the Los Angeles Times: "A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle think this effort is adrift. A lot of folks you'd consider the strongest hawks in the country are scratching their heads in concern." Corker complained that after listening for 90 minutes to Holbrooke he had "no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front. So far, this has been an incredible waste of time."
5. The $33 billion about to be voted on cannot possibly be needed to continue the war in Afghanistan, because it is exclusively to be used for escalating that war. The President was publicly pressured by his generals several months ago to begin an escalation, but Congress has yet to fund it. To the extent that it has been begun unfunded, it can be undone. CNN reports: "Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned senators in June that military operations will need to be reduced for the rest of the year unless Congress approves additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." This is nonsense. If this escalation funding were blocked, the war would remain at the level it was at before. And that's if the Pentagon respects the authority of the Congress. The other alternative, openly indicated by Gates, is that the Pentagon will fund the escalation out of its standard budget. Congressman Alan Grayson has a bill called "The War Is Making You Poor Act" which would require that wars be funded out of the military budget, which would eliminate federal taxes on the first $35,000 anyone earned and reduce the national debt. How horrible would that be?
6. War would be the greatest evil on earth even if it were free. Watch this new video [8] of a man whose father was shot and killed while sleeping in bed. More of our tax dollars at work. How many of these stories of what our military does can we write off? Our drones kill both civilians and "insurgents," as do our night raids and check points. Or, maybe not the check points. General Stanley McChrystal said that of the amazing number of people we've killed at check points, none of them have been any threat. And the damage lasts in the places we destroy. Look at this new report [9] on the damage done to the children of Fallujah. This is not because U.S. soldiers aren't brave or their parents didn't raise them well. It's because these wars don't involve pairs of armies on battlefields. We're occupying countries where the enemies look like everyone except us.
Well, maybe our representatives know all of this and still fund wars because people who fund them tell them to. But what can we do about it? We vote whenever there's an election, or at least some of us do. Isn't that our role? What does this have to do with elections? It should have everything to do with them. When we call our congress members this week we should not just ask them to vote No on war money, we should demand it, and we should let them know that we will work to unelect them, even replacing them with someone worse (since you can't get much worse), if they vote for this money. And we should spend August rewarding and punishing accordingly. Here are 88 candidates for Congress this year [10] who have committed to not voting a dime for these wars. They are from every party and political inclination. They should be supported.
If this war funding can be blocked for another week it will be blocked until mid-September and perhaps for good. If we can get closer to doing that than we have before, we will have something to build on. Just holding a straightforward vote in which war opponents vote No and war supporters vote Yes, no matter how close or far we are from winning, will identify who needs to keep their job and who doesn't. If most of the Yes votes are Republican, we will be able to confront the President with the opposition of his own party. We're moving toward peace.
Get resources from http://defundwar.org [11]
FCNL has a toll-free number to call your representative: 1-888-493-5443. Use it.
Source URL: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Links:
[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2010_rpt/warlord-inc_100622.htm
[2] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/53988
[3] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54151
[4] http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/planet-biggest-gas-guzzler.html
[5] http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
[6] http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Publications/NPP_Security_Spending_Primer.pdf
[7] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54004
[8] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54118
[9] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54173
[10] http://caws.us
[11] http://defundwar.org
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan spurred by US and NATO attacks
Without Juan Cole's blog, the Middle East would be more in an intellectual fog than it is. In the following post from today's Informed Comment, Cole refers to two recent studies indicating that after civilian deaths from attacks by US/NATO, Afghan insurgents or others retaliate - and the war escalates and drags on.
Civilian Casualties are Causing the War in the First Place: Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 4
Posted on July 24, 2010 by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 24- 2010
[....]
A new study by America’s National Bureau for Economic Research looking at the circumstances around 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan found a high correlation between NATO killing of even two civilians in an area and a spike of attacks on NATO and US troops. It turns out that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s much-maligned stricter rules of engagement, especially limitations on blunt air strikes, actually likely reduced the number of attacks. Gen. David Petraeus is said to be considering altering the ROE.
There is only one way to interpret the NBER report, which is that President Obama was wrong to escalate the Afghanistan war, since US and NATO war-fighting, which inevitably causes civilian deaths, is actually ratcheting up the war. A heavy footprint and more NATO operations likely will create the monster Washington fears, a growing insurgency, rather than ‘blunting the momentum’ of the ‘Taliban’ as Obama and Petreaus hope.
The Afghan Human Rights Monitor recently issued a report on civilian casualties in the first half of 2010. AFP summarized key findings:
‘ About 1,074 civilians were killed and more than 1,500 injured in war-related incidents in the first six months of 2010, compared with 1,059 killed in the same period last year, ARM said. “Up to 1,200 security incidents were recorded in June, the highest number of incidents compared to any month since 2002,” it said. . . In a breakdown of parties to blame for civilian deaths, ARM says 61 percent were caused by insurgents, 30 percent by US, NATO and Afghan forces, six percent by “criminals and private security firms”, with three percent unknown.
The full report in pdf format is here
See also their report, “Children Suffered the Brunt of War Casualties in 2009″
Aljazeera English has a recent report on rising children and adult Afghan casualties:
and here is Rethinking Afghanistan pt. 4: http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/civilian-casualties-rethinking-afghanistan-pt-4.html;
Civilian Casualties are Causing the War in the First Place: Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 4
Posted on July 24, 2010 by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 24- 2010
[....]
A new study by America’s National Bureau for Economic Research looking at the circumstances around 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan found a high correlation between NATO killing of even two civilians in an area and a spike of attacks on NATO and US troops. It turns out that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s much-maligned stricter rules of engagement, especially limitations on blunt air strikes, actually likely reduced the number of attacks. Gen. David Petraeus is said to be considering altering the ROE.
There is only one way to interpret the NBER report, which is that President Obama was wrong to escalate the Afghanistan war, since US and NATO war-fighting, which inevitably causes civilian deaths, is actually ratcheting up the war. A heavy footprint and more NATO operations likely will create the monster Washington fears, a growing insurgency, rather than ‘blunting the momentum’ of the ‘Taliban’ as Obama and Petreaus hope.
The Afghan Human Rights Monitor recently issued a report on civilian casualties in the first half of 2010. AFP summarized key findings:
‘ About 1,074 civilians were killed and more than 1,500 injured in war-related incidents in the first six months of 2010, compared with 1,059 killed in the same period last year, ARM said. “Up to 1,200 security incidents were recorded in June, the highest number of incidents compared to any month since 2002,” it said. . . In a breakdown of parties to blame for civilian deaths, ARM says 61 percent were caused by insurgents, 30 percent by US, NATO and Afghan forces, six percent by “criminals and private security firms”, with three percent unknown.
The full report in pdf format is here
See also their report, “Children Suffered the Brunt of War Casualties in 2009″
Aljazeera English has a recent report on rising children and adult Afghan casualties:
and here is Rethinking Afghanistan pt. 4: http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/civilian-casualties-rethinking-afghanistan-pt-4.html;
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Karzai's plan and the extension of the US-led occupation and assistance
The following story is taken from Al Jazeera, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107205263440298.html
The key point is that the Obama administration, repesented by Hilary Clinton, has joined with other nations to extend the US-led occupation for at least another four years. If there is further official confirmation of the agreement, this means that the conditional withdrawal of US troops next summer is out the window. And, according to the Al Jazeera story, even after another four years the withdrawal of troops is only a possibility.
There are four proposals in Karzai's plan referred to in Al Jazeera's report.
The US and the officials of other nations, along with the UN, have accepted President Karzai's plan - conditionally? - that by 2014 Afghanistan will have adequate police and army forces to bring security to the country.
[According to this wishful aspiration, Afghanistan will no longer need foreign troops by 2014. Hard to believe. It implies, by the way, that the US counterinsurgency strategy has turned the corner and is able to win the "hearts and minds" of millions of Afghan citizens.]
Karzai also proposes that money from "international donors give him more control over billions of dollars in aid.
[But there have been many and ongoing reports that Karzai is a weak and illegitimate president, running a government filled with corruption, and having little or no control outside of Kabul.]
In addition, Karzai pledges to create 300,000 new jobs over the next four years. [The Afghanistan government relies heavily on international donors and the US-led occupation and its "reconstruction." Will the donors and occupiers support this job-creating notion? Job creation is not so easy. Just look at how little the Obama administration has done, after spending tens of billions of dollars on an economic "stimulus," and hundreds of billions of saving the big US banks.]
Finally, Karzai's plan says that his government will create [or support the - foreign? - development of] the infrastructure to tap into Afghanistan's billions of dollars of mineral wealth."
Dream on!
Afghan handover plan endorsed
Karzai and Clinton toured a market in Kabul after delivering their opening speeches [AFP]
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has received international backing for plans that would see Afghan forces to take over security across the country in four years.
Karzai outlined the plans at an international conference in Kabul attended by ministers and diplomats from around the world.
"I remain determined that our Afghan national security forces will be responsible for all military and law enforcement operations throughout our country by 2014," Karzai told delegates at the meeting in the Afghan capital.
It was the ninth conference on Afghanistan since the US-led war began there in 2001.
After hearing Karzai's speak, international leaders offered support for the plans he had outlined.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, described the plan as "comprehensive" and said the conference marked a "turning point," while David Cameron, the British prime minister, said plans for a transition in four years were "realistic".'Conditions, not calendars'
Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general who chaired the conference with Karzai, said the final communique reflected the determination of the international community. "Now we must focus all our energies on making this vision a reality," he said.
IN DEPTH
Kabul conference cheat sheet: A recap
Focus: Afghanistan's paths to peace
Meanwhile, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general, said Nato would not withdraw from Afghanistan until Afghan security forces were able to provide their own security.
"Our mission will end when, only when, the Afghans are able to maintain security on their own," he said. "Our transition will be based on conditions, not calendars."
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Rasmussen said he would not outline a timeline for when Nato forces might start to withdraw, or which provinces they would exit first.
Delegates had been expected to press Karzai to accelerate and improve the training of the Afghan army and police, to facilitate the withdrawal of thousands of Nato troops serving in the country.
Projects and programmes
Karzai also asked international donors to give his government more control over billions of dollars in aid. More than three-quarters of Afghan aid money is spent by NGOs and other organisations, not by the Afghan government.
The Afghan government wants 50 per cent of aid to be channeled through ministries in the next two years.
Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen talks to Al Jazeera's James Bays
"Delivering our resources through hundreds of isolated projects will not achieve the desired results," Karzai said. "It is time to concentrate our efforts on a limited number of projects and programmes."
Also high on the agenda at the conference was Karzai's plan to offer jobs and cash to Taliban members in exchange for them laying down their weapons.
That plan was endorsed at the last major conference on Afghanistan, held in London in January.
Clinton said the United States has seen "positive steps" from Karzai's outreach to insurgents.
Omar Zakhilwal, the Afghan finance minister, presented a list of "national priority programmes," which will be the focus for international aid efforts. He pledged to create 300,000 new jobs over three years through agricultural programmes; to expand women's access to education; and to create infrastructure to tap into Afghanistan's billions of dollars in mineral wealth.
"We are expecting your full support and alignment," Zakhilwal said.
'Concrete steps'
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, has called for the Afghan president to unveil "concrete" steps to improve governance and promote national reconciliation.
"We expect President Karzai and his government would come up with a concrete action plan... about the way to enhance good governance, promote further reconciliation and also how he can improve the security situation in his country," Ban told the AFP news agency.
Karzai said the Afghan government currently has enough aid funding for the next three years. And Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, promised a lengthy international commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan.
"We have no intention of abandoning our long-term vision," Clinton said. "Too many nations... have suffered too many losses to let this country slide backwards."
Clinton arrived in the Afghan capital late on Monday, following a visit to neighbouring Pakistan. On that leg of the trip, Clinton announced the first part of a $7.5bn aid package for the country, including funds for energy and water projects.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
The key point is that the Obama administration, repesented by Hilary Clinton, has joined with other nations to extend the US-led occupation for at least another four years. If there is further official confirmation of the agreement, this means that the conditional withdrawal of US troops next summer is out the window. And, according to the Al Jazeera story, even after another four years the withdrawal of troops is only a possibility.
There are four proposals in Karzai's plan referred to in Al Jazeera's report.
The US and the officials of other nations, along with the UN, have accepted President Karzai's plan - conditionally? - that by 2014 Afghanistan will have adequate police and army forces to bring security to the country.
[According to this wishful aspiration, Afghanistan will no longer need foreign troops by 2014. Hard to believe. It implies, by the way, that the US counterinsurgency strategy has turned the corner and is able to win the "hearts and minds" of millions of Afghan citizens.]
Karzai also proposes that money from "international donors give him more control over billions of dollars in aid.
[But there have been many and ongoing reports that Karzai is a weak and illegitimate president, running a government filled with corruption, and having little or no control outside of Kabul.]
In addition, Karzai pledges to create 300,000 new jobs over the next four years. [The Afghanistan government relies heavily on international donors and the US-led occupation and its "reconstruction." Will the donors and occupiers support this job-creating notion? Job creation is not so easy. Just look at how little the Obama administration has done, after spending tens of billions of dollars on an economic "stimulus," and hundreds of billions of saving the big US banks.]
Finally, Karzai's plan says that his government will create [or support the - foreign? - development of] the infrastructure to tap into Afghanistan's billions of dollars of mineral wealth."
Dream on!
Afghan handover plan endorsed
Karzai and Clinton toured a market in Kabul after delivering their opening speeches [AFP]
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has received international backing for plans that would see Afghan forces to take over security across the country in four years.
Karzai outlined the plans at an international conference in Kabul attended by ministers and diplomats from around the world.
"I remain determined that our Afghan national security forces will be responsible for all military and law enforcement operations throughout our country by 2014," Karzai told delegates at the meeting in the Afghan capital.
It was the ninth conference on Afghanistan since the US-led war began there in 2001.
After hearing Karzai's speak, international leaders offered support for the plans he had outlined.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, described the plan as "comprehensive" and said the conference marked a "turning point," while David Cameron, the British prime minister, said plans for a transition in four years were "realistic".'Conditions, not calendars'
Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general who chaired the conference with Karzai, said the final communique reflected the determination of the international community. "Now we must focus all our energies on making this vision a reality," he said.
IN DEPTH
Kabul conference cheat sheet: A recap
Focus: Afghanistan's paths to peace
Meanwhile, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general, said Nato would not withdraw from Afghanistan until Afghan security forces were able to provide their own security.
"Our mission will end when, only when, the Afghans are able to maintain security on their own," he said. "Our transition will be based on conditions, not calendars."
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Rasmussen said he would not outline a timeline for when Nato forces might start to withdraw, or which provinces they would exit first.
Delegates had been expected to press Karzai to accelerate and improve the training of the Afghan army and police, to facilitate the withdrawal of thousands of Nato troops serving in the country.
Projects and programmes
Karzai also asked international donors to give his government more control over billions of dollars in aid. More than three-quarters of Afghan aid money is spent by NGOs and other organisations, not by the Afghan government.
The Afghan government wants 50 per cent of aid to be channeled through ministries in the next two years.
Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen talks to Al Jazeera's James Bays
"Delivering our resources through hundreds of isolated projects will not achieve the desired results," Karzai said. "It is time to concentrate our efforts on a limited number of projects and programmes."
Also high on the agenda at the conference was Karzai's plan to offer jobs and cash to Taliban members in exchange for them laying down their weapons.
That plan was endorsed at the last major conference on Afghanistan, held in London in January.
Clinton said the United States has seen "positive steps" from Karzai's outreach to insurgents.
Omar Zakhilwal, the Afghan finance minister, presented a list of "national priority programmes," which will be the focus for international aid efforts. He pledged to create 300,000 new jobs over three years through agricultural programmes; to expand women's access to education; and to create infrastructure to tap into Afghanistan's billions of dollars in mineral wealth.
"We are expecting your full support and alignment," Zakhilwal said.
'Concrete steps'
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, has called for the Afghan president to unveil "concrete" steps to improve governance and promote national reconciliation.
"We expect President Karzai and his government would come up with a concrete action plan... about the way to enhance good governance, promote further reconciliation and also how he can improve the security situation in his country," Ban told the AFP news agency.
Karzai said the Afghan government currently has enough aid funding for the next three years. And Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, promised a lengthy international commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan.
"We have no intention of abandoning our long-term vision," Clinton said. "Too many nations... have suffered too many losses to let this country slide backwards."
Clinton arrived in the Afghan capital late on Monday, following a visit to neighbouring Pakistan. On that leg of the trip, Clinton announced the first part of a $7.5bn aid package for the country, including funds for energy and water projects.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Obstacles to a settlement in Afghanistan
The following article, orginally from Guardian newspaper online, was included in short commentaries and a list of abridged articles from various sites on today's Just Foreign Policy website: http://justforeignpolicy.org, July 20-10.
One of the central points of the article, expressing the views of various experienced and knowledgeable analysts, is that the US-led occupation cannot succeed. Why? The insurgency is too strong, the Afghanistan state is in shambles, and the sanctuaries to which insurgents can retreat and regroup are plentiful across the border in Pakistan. In addition, the US-led counterinsurgency is focused on Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where the Taliban have their greatest influence. Counterinsurgency is not effective in this context.
Some analysts now think that there is no constructive point in extending the conflict. In the end, there will be a settlement that allows the Taliban to control southern provinces, while warlords will dominate elsewhere in the country. There is not much attention paid in this discussion to "democracy." US and/or UN forces would, it's suggested, keep the Taliban confined in the south. Pakistan could play a vital role in constraining the Taliban. If there is a settlement of this kind in the not-to-distant future, it would leave little room for democratic participation, secular education, or women's rights.
Taliban talks: the obstacles to a peace deal in AfghanistanJon Boone, Guardian, 19 July 2010 20.02 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/19/taliban-talks-obstacles-peace-deal-aghanistanKabul -
[...]
Organisers have attempted to attach great historic symbolism to the half-day conference. Of the nine international conferences on Afghanistan held in the last nine years, this is the first to actually convene inside Afghanistan. But even diplomats involved in the five-hour event roll their eyes when asked whether it is going to produce any dramatic changes in policy.
The communique - already leaked in draft form to the media - focuses on efforts to build up the Afghan state by making it more effective, better funded and less corrupt. But on the fringes of the conference the hot topic is a subject that is barely mentioned in the draft and until recently eschewed by the US administration; making peace with the Taliban.
That's because despite the fact that the Afghan government is finally strong enough to organise its own conference, the prospect of that government ultimately prevailing over an ever stronger insurgency has never looked more bleak. At an evening reception a few days before the conference, a senior European diplomat said glumly: "I cannot think of a single reason to die for Afghanistan."The country, which has suffered almost 30 years of war of one form or the other, is a problem for its neighbours, not for Europe, he said. It was a different a few years ago, when most people still thought victory was possible, he said. But now, pessimism has taken over.
"Afghanistan is in a state of freefall and I don't think strategy proposals announced at a one-day conference will solve that," said Candace Rondeaux, a senior analyst from the International Crisis Group. A paper by the Afghanistan NGO Security Office articulated what most people believe: that the counter-insurgency programme cannot win. It sees this summer's surge of US troops in southern Afghanistan as the "grand finale" of a western intervention which is looking to wind itself up.
The biggest problem is that what Nato soldiers are trying to do cannot be achieved on the time frames of the "political clocks" ticking down in Washington and its allied cities. In a recent off-record briefing, one of the most senior US soldiers in Afghanistan pointed out that no counter-insurgency has prevailed against an enemy with sanctuaries of the size the Taliban and other groups enjoy over the border in Pakistan.
No wonder then that most people's thoughts, including Barack Obama's administration, are turning to some sort of negotiated settlement with the insurgents. It is now part of the conventional wisdom in Kabul that the west will have to make compromises with insurgents that once would have been unthinkable, including dropping efforts for women to be given a more equal place in Afghan society. Few people put it quite as bluntly as Francesc Vendrell, a retired senior diplomat who served first the UN in Afghanistan before 2001 and then worked as the top representative of the European Union in Kabul. He recently told the Guardian that the current military effort to push the Taliban out of Kandahar and Helmand was particularly foolish because these are precisely the areas that, in his view, will have to be handed over to Taliban control.
Such a handover of the south could be achieved, he argued, through constitutional reform that would decentralise power from Kabul. In a trice, the south would be ceded to Taliban control, under the pretence of local democracy. Meanwhile, the north would similarly be handed back to the old warlords, the former strongmen who rose to prominence during the 1980s resistance to the Soviet occupation and its violent aftermath.
[...]
European diplomats say that whatever the latest thinking in the White House might be, David Petraeus, the new US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan seems interested in making the fight against the Taliban last as long as possible. After years of refusing to contemplate even the most secret of discussions with a movement viewed as partly responsible for the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Americans have precious few ways of reaching out to the other side.
A security official who has in the past been involved in efforts to reach out to the Taliban bemoaned the fact that so many years had been wasted, pointing out that in Northern Ireland the British government had contacts "from the beginning".
Instead of a well-organised effort to talk to the Taliban, there is currently an extraordinary free-for-all, with a whole range of people and countries trying to make contacts with the quetta shura, the Taliban's leadership council. They include Karzai's elder brother Qayoum, and even Burhanuddin Rabbani, a northern power broker and former president. Countries interested in getting in on the act are the UK, Germany, Turkey and Indonesia.
[...]
One of the central points of the article, expressing the views of various experienced and knowledgeable analysts, is that the US-led occupation cannot succeed. Why? The insurgency is too strong, the Afghanistan state is in shambles, and the sanctuaries to which insurgents can retreat and regroup are plentiful across the border in Pakistan. In addition, the US-led counterinsurgency is focused on Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where the Taliban have their greatest influence. Counterinsurgency is not effective in this context.
Some analysts now think that there is no constructive point in extending the conflict. In the end, there will be a settlement that allows the Taliban to control southern provinces, while warlords will dominate elsewhere in the country. There is not much attention paid in this discussion to "democracy." US and/or UN forces would, it's suggested, keep the Taliban confined in the south. Pakistan could play a vital role in constraining the Taliban. If there is a settlement of this kind in the not-to-distant future, it would leave little room for democratic participation, secular education, or women's rights.
Taliban talks: the obstacles to a peace deal in AfghanistanJon Boone, Guardian, 19 July 2010 20.02 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/19/taliban-talks-obstacles-peace-deal-aghanistanKabul -
[...]
Organisers have attempted to attach great historic symbolism to the half-day conference. Of the nine international conferences on Afghanistan held in the last nine years, this is the first to actually convene inside Afghanistan. But even diplomats involved in the five-hour event roll their eyes when asked whether it is going to produce any dramatic changes in policy.
The communique - already leaked in draft form to the media - focuses on efforts to build up the Afghan state by making it more effective, better funded and less corrupt. But on the fringes of the conference the hot topic is a subject that is barely mentioned in the draft and until recently eschewed by the US administration; making peace with the Taliban.
That's because despite the fact that the Afghan government is finally strong enough to organise its own conference, the prospect of that government ultimately prevailing over an ever stronger insurgency has never looked more bleak. At an evening reception a few days before the conference, a senior European diplomat said glumly: "I cannot think of a single reason to die for Afghanistan."The country, which has suffered almost 30 years of war of one form or the other, is a problem for its neighbours, not for Europe, he said. It was a different a few years ago, when most people still thought victory was possible, he said. But now, pessimism has taken over.
"Afghanistan is in a state of freefall and I don't think strategy proposals announced at a one-day conference will solve that," said Candace Rondeaux, a senior analyst from the International Crisis Group. A paper by the Afghanistan NGO Security Office articulated what most people believe: that the counter-insurgency programme cannot win. It sees this summer's surge of US troops in southern Afghanistan as the "grand finale" of a western intervention which is looking to wind itself up.
The biggest problem is that what Nato soldiers are trying to do cannot be achieved on the time frames of the "political clocks" ticking down in Washington and its allied cities. In a recent off-record briefing, one of the most senior US soldiers in Afghanistan pointed out that no counter-insurgency has prevailed against an enemy with sanctuaries of the size the Taliban and other groups enjoy over the border in Pakistan.
No wonder then that most people's thoughts, including Barack Obama's administration, are turning to some sort of negotiated settlement with the insurgents. It is now part of the conventional wisdom in Kabul that the west will have to make compromises with insurgents that once would have been unthinkable, including dropping efforts for women to be given a more equal place in Afghan society. Few people put it quite as bluntly as Francesc Vendrell, a retired senior diplomat who served first the UN in Afghanistan before 2001 and then worked as the top representative of the European Union in Kabul. He recently told the Guardian that the current military effort to push the Taliban out of Kandahar and Helmand was particularly foolish because these are precisely the areas that, in his view, will have to be handed over to Taliban control.
Such a handover of the south could be achieved, he argued, through constitutional reform that would decentralise power from Kabul. In a trice, the south would be ceded to Taliban control, under the pretence of local democracy. Meanwhile, the north would similarly be handed back to the old warlords, the former strongmen who rose to prominence during the 1980s resistance to the Soviet occupation and its violent aftermath.
[...]
European diplomats say that whatever the latest thinking in the White House might be, David Petraeus, the new US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan seems interested in making the fight against the Taliban last as long as possible. After years of refusing to contemplate even the most secret of discussions with a movement viewed as partly responsible for the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Americans have precious few ways of reaching out to the other side.
A security official who has in the past been involved in efforts to reach out to the Taliban bemoaned the fact that so many years had been wasted, pointing out that in Northern Ireland the British government had contacts "from the beginning".
Instead of a well-organised effort to talk to the Taliban, there is currently an extraordinary free-for-all, with a whole range of people and countries trying to make contacts with the quetta shura, the Taliban's leadership council. They include Karzai's elder brother Qayoum, and even Burhanuddin Rabbani, a northern power broker and former president. Countries interested in getting in on the act are the UK, Germany, Turkey and Indonesia.
[...]
Neither counterinsurgency nor US occupation under any guise works
Tom Engelhardt writes in the article below that counterinsurgency is not advancing US goals in Afghanistan. Along with special forces operations, counterinsurgency kills too many civilians, fails to win the "hearts and minds" of most Afghanis, and puts many Afghanis in the intolerable position of having to choose between the occupation, with all of its lethal manifestations, or the Taliban, often led by foreigners from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere in the Middle East.
Before turning to Engelhardt's article, I want to recommend and pull a quote from his new book titled The American Way of War: How Bush's War Became Obama's. It is a collection of essays that originally appeared on TomDispatch.com. On p. 187, Engelhardt captures some of the failures of the US-led occuation where he writes:
"If it weren't so grim, despite all the upbeat benchmarks and encouraging worlds in the president's speech [i.e., Obama's speech], this would certainly qualify as Monty Python in Afghanistan. After all, three cabinet ministers and twelve former ministers are under investigation in Afghanistan on corruption charges. And that barely scratches the surface of the problems in a country that one Russian expert recently referred to as an 'international drug firm." where at least one-third of the gross national produce comes from the drug trade. The Taliban now reportedly take a cut of the billions of dollars in US development aid flowing into the county, much of which is otherwise squandered, and of the American money that goes into 'protecting' the convoys that bring supplies to US troops throughout the country. One out of every four Afghan soldiers has quit or deserted the Afghan National Army, while the ill-paid, largely illiterate, hapless Afghan police with their 'well-deserved reputation for stealing and extorting bribes,' not to speak of a drug abuse rate estimated at 15 percent, as it's politely put, 'years away from a functioning independently. Meanwhile, the insurgency is spreading to new areas of the country and reviving it in others."
The article.
Advice for General Petraeus on the Rules of Engagement:It’s Neither/Nor, Not Either/Or
Guest Editorial: Tom Engelhardt, author of the recently-published The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books, July 2010) and editor of Tomdispatch.com, writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment:
Posted on Juan Cole's blog, Informed Comment, July 20, 2010
Recently, we’ve been flooded with news stories and debate about the “rules of engagement” for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Now-discredited war commander General Stanley McChrystal, we’ve been told, instituted fiercely restrictive rules of engagement to lessen the number of Afghan civilians who died or were wounded at the hands of American forces, and to “protect the people,” just as the “hearts and minds” part of counterinsurgency doctrine tells us should be done.
Specifically, he made it far harder for U.S. troops under fire to call in air strikes or artillery support if civilians might possibly be in the vicinity of any firefight. Grumbling about this among those troops, according to Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter whose piece took McChrystal down, had already reached something close to fever pitch by the time the general and his special ops cronies began mouthing off in frustration in Paris.
Articles in which troops or mid-level officers claim to be “handcuffed by our chain of command” are now almost as common as implicitly critical stories about the dismal failure of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, on being given command of the war effort, turned immediately to those rules of engagement, promising not to change them, but to thoroughly review and “clarify” their “implementation and interpretation.”
What this means, we don’t yet know, but we should know one thing: the present discussion of counterinsurgency and of those rules of engagement makes little sense. They are being presented as a kind of either/or option — kill us or kill them — when it would be more accurate to say that it’s a neither/nor situation.
After all, in another, less protective part of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency war, he was bulking up special operations forces in the country and sending them out on night raids searching for Taliban mid-level leaders. These raids continue to caused a cascade of civilian casualties, as well as an increasing uproar of protest among outraged Afghans. In addition, even with McChrystal’s tight rules for normal grunts, stories about the deaths of civilians, private security guards, and Afghan soldiers from air strikes, misplaced artillery fire, checkpoint shootings, and those night raids continue to pour out, followed by the usual American initial denials and then formulaic apologies for loss of life.
Whatever the rules, civilians continue to die in striking numbers at the hands of guerrillas and of American forces, and here’s the thing: tighten those rules, loosen them, fiddle with them, bend them, evade them, cancel them — at some level it’s all still neither/nor, not either/or. In any counterinsurgency war where guerrillas, faced with vastly superior fire power, fight from cover and work hard to blend in with the populace, where the counterinsurgents are foreigners about as alien from the land they are to “protect” as humanly possible, and fight, in part, from on high or based on “intelligence” from others about a world they can’t fathom, civilians will die. Lots of civilians. Continually. Whatever rules you make up. The issue isn’t the “rules of engagement.” No rules of engagement will alter the fact that civilian death is the central fact of such wars.
It’s time to stop talking about those rules and start talking about the madness of making counterinsurgency the American way of war. It wasn’t always so. Not so long ago, after all, it was considered a scandal that, post-Vietnam, the U.S. military rebuilt its all-volunteer force without rewriting or reconsidering its counterinsurgency manual. The high command, in fact, let counterinsurgency go to hell, exactly where they thought it deserved to rest in peace, and were focused instead on preventing Soviet armies from pouring through Germany’s Fulda Gap (something they were conveniently never likely to do). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military would continue to focus for some years on Colin Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force, decisive victory, and quick exit.
Then, of course, Iraq happened and decisive victory (“mission accomplished”) soured into decisive disaster. It was at this moment, in 2006, that Generals Petraeus and James “Mad Dog” Mattis (now respectively Afghan war commander and head of Centcom) dusted off the old, failed Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine and made it sexy again. They oversaw the writing of a whole new guidebook for the Army and Marines, 472 pages of advice that even got its own (university press) trade edition, and became the toast of Washington and the Pentagon.
So, after being buried and disinterred, COIN, as its known, is once again the reigning monarch of American war-fighting doctrines as the Pentagon prepares for one, two, three Iraqs or Afghanistans — and the scandal is that (surprise, surprise!) it’s not working. This should, of course, hardly have been news. The history of counterinsurgency warfare isn’t exactly a success story, or our present COINistas wouldn’t have taken their doctrine largely from failed counterinsurgency wars in Vietnam and Algeria, among other places. It’s not so encouraging, after all, when the main examples you have before you are defeats.
Our generals might have better spent their time studying the first modern war of this sort. It took place in early nineteenth century Spain when the Islamic fundamentalists of that moment — Catholic peasants and their priests — managed to stop Napoleon’s army (the high-tech force of the moment) in its tracks. Just check out Goya’s “Disasters of War” series, if you want to see how grim it was. And it’s never gotten much better.
Looked at historically, counterinsurgency was largely the war-fighting option of empires, of powers that wanted to keep occupying their restive colonies forever and a day. Of course, past empires didn’t spend much time worrying about “protecting the people.” They knew such wars were brutal. That was their point. As George Orwell summed such campaigns up in 1946 in his essay “Politics and the English Language”: “Defenseless villagers are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set afire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” The rise of anti-colonialism and nationalism after World War II should have made counterinsurgency history. Certainly, there is no place for occupations and the wars that go with them in the twenty-first century.
Unfortunately, none of this has been obvious to Washington or our leading generals. Of course, if they can rewrite the Army’s counterinsurgency manual for a new century, any of us can, so let me offer my one-line rewrite of their 472 pages. It’s simple and guaranteed to save trees as well as lives: “When it comes to counterinsurgency, don’t do it.”
—-Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books),
Recently, we’ve been flooded with news stories and debate about the “rules of engagement” for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Now-discredited war commander General Stanley McChrystal, we’ve been told, instituted fiercely restrictive rules of engagement to lessen the number of Afghan civilians who died or were wounded at the hands of American forces, and to “protect the people,” just as the “hearts and minds” part of counterinsurgency doctrine tells us should be done. Specifically, he made it far harder for U.S. troops under fire to call in air strikes or artillery support if civilians might possibly be in the vicinity of any firefight. Grumbling about this among those troops, according to Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter whose piece took McChrystal down, had already reached something close to fever pitch by the time the general and his special ops cronies began mouthing off in frustration in Paris.
Articles in which troops or mid-level officers claim to be “handcuffed by our chain of command” are now almost as common as implicitly critical stories about the dismal failure of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, on being given command of the war effort, turned immediately to those rules of engagement, promising not to change them, but to thoroughly review and “clarify” their “implementation and interpretation.”
What this means, we don’t yet know, but we should know one thing: the present discussion of counterinsurgency and of those rules of engagement makes little sense. They are being presented as a kind of either/or option — kill us or kill them — when it would be more accurate to say that it’s a neither/nor situation.
After all, in another, less protective part of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency war, he was bulking up special operations forces in the country and sending them out on night raids searching for Taliban mid-level leaders. These raids continue to caused a cascade of civilian casualties, as well as an increasing uproar of protest among outraged Afghans. In addition, even with McChrystal’s tight rules for normal grunts, stories about the deaths of civilians, private security guards, and Afghan soldiers from air strikes, misplaced artillery fire, checkpoint shootings, and those night raids continue to pour out, followed by the usual American initial denials and then formulaic apologies for loss of life.
Whatever the rules, civilians continue to die in striking numbers at the hands of guerrillas and of American forces, and here’s the thing: tighten those rules, loosen them, fiddle with them, bend them, evade them, cancel them — at some level it’s all still neither/nor, not either/or. In any counterinsurgency war where guerrillas, faced with vastly superior fire power, fight from cover and work hard to blend in with the populace, where the counterinsurgents are foreigners about as alien from the land they are to “protect” as humanly possible, and fight, in part, from on high or based on “intelligence” from others about a world they can’t fathom, civilians will die. Lots of civilians. Continually. Whatever rules you make up. The issue isn’t the “rules of engagement.” No rules of engagement will alter the fact that civilian death is the central fact of such wars.
It’s time to stop talking about those rules and start talking about the madness of making counterinsurgency the American way of war. It wasn’t always so. Not so long ago, after all, it was considered a scandal that, post-Vietnam, the U.S. military rebuilt its all-volunteer force without rewriting or reconsidering its counterinsurgency manual. The high command, in fact, let counterinsurgency go to hell, exactly where they thought it deserved to rest in peace, and were focused instead on preventing Soviet armies from pouring through Germany’s Fulda Gap (something they were conveniently never likely to do). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military would continue to focus for some years on Colin Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force, decisive victory, and quick exit.
Then, of course, Iraq happened and decisive victory (“mission accomplished”) soured into decisive disaster. It was at this moment, in 2006, that Generals Petraeus and James “Mad Dog” Mattis (now respectively Afghan war commander and head of Centcom) dusted off the old, failed Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine and made it sexy again. They oversaw the writing of a whole new guidebook for the Army and Marines, 472 pages of advice that even got its own (university press) trade edition, and became the toast of Washington and the Pentagon.
So, after being buried and disinterred, COIN, as its known, is once again the reigning monarch of American war-fighting doctrines as the Pentagon prepares for one, two, three Iraqs or Afghanistans — and the scandal is that (surprise, surprise!) it’s not working. This should, of course, hardly have been news. The history of counterinsurgency warfare isn’t exactly a success story, or our present COINistas wouldn’t have taken their doctrine largely from failed counterinsurgency wars in Vietnam and Algeria, among other places. It’s not so encouraging, after all, when the main examples you have before you are defeats.
Our generals might have better spent their time studying the first modern war of this sort. It took place in early nineteenth century Spain when the Islamic fundamentalists of that moment — Catholic peasants and their priests — managed to stop Napoleon’s army (the high-tech force of the moment) in its tracks. Just check out Goya’s “Disasters of War” series, if you want to see how grim it was. And it’s never gotten much better.
Looked at historically, counterinsurgency was largely the war-fighting option of empires, of powers that wanted to keep occupying their restive colonies forever and a day. Of course, past empires didn’t spend much time worrying about “protecting the people.” They knew such wars were brutal. That was their point. As George Orwell summed such campaigns up in 1946 in his essay “Politics and the English Language”: “Defenseless villagers are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set afire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” The rise of anti-colonialism and nationalism after World War II should have made counterinsurgency history. Certainly, there is no place for occupations and the wars that go with them in the twenty-first century.
Unfortunately, none of this has been obvious to Washington or our leading generals. Of course, if they can rewrite the Army’s counterinsurgency manual for a new century, any of us can, so let me offer my one-line rewrite of their 472 pages. It’s simple and guaranteed to save trees as well as lives: “When it comes to counterinsurgency, don’t do it.”
—-Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books),
Before turning to Engelhardt's article, I want to recommend and pull a quote from his new book titled The American Way of War: How Bush's War Became Obama's. It is a collection of essays that originally appeared on TomDispatch.com. On p. 187, Engelhardt captures some of the failures of the US-led occuation where he writes:
"If it weren't so grim, despite all the upbeat benchmarks and encouraging worlds in the president's speech [i.e., Obama's speech], this would certainly qualify as Monty Python in Afghanistan. After all, three cabinet ministers and twelve former ministers are under investigation in Afghanistan on corruption charges. And that barely scratches the surface of the problems in a country that one Russian expert recently referred to as an 'international drug firm." where at least one-third of the gross national produce comes from the drug trade. The Taliban now reportedly take a cut of the billions of dollars in US development aid flowing into the county, much of which is otherwise squandered, and of the American money that goes into 'protecting' the convoys that bring supplies to US troops throughout the country. One out of every four Afghan soldiers has quit or deserted the Afghan National Army, while the ill-paid, largely illiterate, hapless Afghan police with their 'well-deserved reputation for stealing and extorting bribes,' not to speak of a drug abuse rate estimated at 15 percent, as it's politely put, 'years away from a functioning independently. Meanwhile, the insurgency is spreading to new areas of the country and reviving it in others."
The article.
Advice for General Petraeus on the Rules of Engagement:It’s Neither/Nor, Not Either/Or
Guest Editorial: Tom Engelhardt, author of the recently-published The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books, July 2010) and editor of Tomdispatch.com, writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment:
Posted on Juan Cole's blog, Informed Comment, July 20, 2010
Recently, we’ve been flooded with news stories and debate about the “rules of engagement” for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Now-discredited war commander General Stanley McChrystal, we’ve been told, instituted fiercely restrictive rules of engagement to lessen the number of Afghan civilians who died or were wounded at the hands of American forces, and to “protect the people,” just as the “hearts and minds” part of counterinsurgency doctrine tells us should be done.
Specifically, he made it far harder for U.S. troops under fire to call in air strikes or artillery support if civilians might possibly be in the vicinity of any firefight. Grumbling about this among those troops, according to Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter whose piece took McChrystal down, had already reached something close to fever pitch by the time the general and his special ops cronies began mouthing off in frustration in Paris.
Articles in which troops or mid-level officers claim to be “handcuffed by our chain of command” are now almost as common as implicitly critical stories about the dismal failure of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, on being given command of the war effort, turned immediately to those rules of engagement, promising not to change them, but to thoroughly review and “clarify” their “implementation and interpretation.”
What this means, we don’t yet know, but we should know one thing: the present discussion of counterinsurgency and of those rules of engagement makes little sense. They are being presented as a kind of either/or option — kill us or kill them — when it would be more accurate to say that it’s a neither/nor situation.
After all, in another, less protective part of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency war, he was bulking up special operations forces in the country and sending them out on night raids searching for Taliban mid-level leaders. These raids continue to caused a cascade of civilian casualties, as well as an increasing uproar of protest among outraged Afghans. In addition, even with McChrystal’s tight rules for normal grunts, stories about the deaths of civilians, private security guards, and Afghan soldiers from air strikes, misplaced artillery fire, checkpoint shootings, and those night raids continue to pour out, followed by the usual American initial denials and then formulaic apologies for loss of life.
Whatever the rules, civilians continue to die in striking numbers at the hands of guerrillas and of American forces, and here’s the thing: tighten those rules, loosen them, fiddle with them, bend them, evade them, cancel them — at some level it’s all still neither/nor, not either/or. In any counterinsurgency war where guerrillas, faced with vastly superior fire power, fight from cover and work hard to blend in with the populace, where the counterinsurgents are foreigners about as alien from the land they are to “protect” as humanly possible, and fight, in part, from on high or based on “intelligence” from others about a world they can’t fathom, civilians will die. Lots of civilians. Continually. Whatever rules you make up. The issue isn’t the “rules of engagement.” No rules of engagement will alter the fact that civilian death is the central fact of such wars.
It’s time to stop talking about those rules and start talking about the madness of making counterinsurgency the American way of war. It wasn’t always so. Not so long ago, after all, it was considered a scandal that, post-Vietnam, the U.S. military rebuilt its all-volunteer force without rewriting or reconsidering its counterinsurgency manual. The high command, in fact, let counterinsurgency go to hell, exactly where they thought it deserved to rest in peace, and were focused instead on preventing Soviet armies from pouring through Germany’s Fulda Gap (something they were conveniently never likely to do). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military would continue to focus for some years on Colin Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force, decisive victory, and quick exit.
Then, of course, Iraq happened and decisive victory (“mission accomplished”) soured into decisive disaster. It was at this moment, in 2006, that Generals Petraeus and James “Mad Dog” Mattis (now respectively Afghan war commander and head of Centcom) dusted off the old, failed Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine and made it sexy again. They oversaw the writing of a whole new guidebook for the Army and Marines, 472 pages of advice that even got its own (university press) trade edition, and became the toast of Washington and the Pentagon.
So, after being buried and disinterred, COIN, as its known, is once again the reigning monarch of American war-fighting doctrines as the Pentagon prepares for one, two, three Iraqs or Afghanistans — and the scandal is that (surprise, surprise!) it’s not working. This should, of course, hardly have been news. The history of counterinsurgency warfare isn’t exactly a success story, or our present COINistas wouldn’t have taken their doctrine largely from failed counterinsurgency wars in Vietnam and Algeria, among other places. It’s not so encouraging, after all, when the main examples you have before you are defeats.
Our generals might have better spent their time studying the first modern war of this sort. It took place in early nineteenth century Spain when the Islamic fundamentalists of that moment — Catholic peasants and their priests — managed to stop Napoleon’s army (the high-tech force of the moment) in its tracks. Just check out Goya’s “Disasters of War” series, if you want to see how grim it was. And it’s never gotten much better.
Looked at historically, counterinsurgency was largely the war-fighting option of empires, of powers that wanted to keep occupying their restive colonies forever and a day. Of course, past empires didn’t spend much time worrying about “protecting the people.” They knew such wars were brutal. That was their point. As George Orwell summed such campaigns up in 1946 in his essay “Politics and the English Language”: “Defenseless villagers are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set afire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” The rise of anti-colonialism and nationalism after World War II should have made counterinsurgency history. Certainly, there is no place for occupations and the wars that go with them in the twenty-first century.
Unfortunately, none of this has been obvious to Washington or our leading generals. Of course, if they can rewrite the Army’s counterinsurgency manual for a new century, any of us can, so let me offer my one-line rewrite of their 472 pages. It’s simple and guaranteed to save trees as well as lives: “When it comes to counterinsurgency, don’t do it.”
—-Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books),
Recently, we’ve been flooded with news stories and debate about the “rules of engagement” for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Now-discredited war commander General Stanley McChrystal, we’ve been told, instituted fiercely restrictive rules of engagement to lessen the number of Afghan civilians who died or were wounded at the hands of American forces, and to “protect the people,” just as the “hearts and minds” part of counterinsurgency doctrine tells us should be done. Specifically, he made it far harder for U.S. troops under fire to call in air strikes or artillery support if civilians might possibly be in the vicinity of any firefight. Grumbling about this among those troops, according to Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter whose piece took McChrystal down, had already reached something close to fever pitch by the time the general and his special ops cronies began mouthing off in frustration in Paris.
Articles in which troops or mid-level officers claim to be “handcuffed by our chain of command” are now almost as common as implicitly critical stories about the dismal failure of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, on being given command of the war effort, turned immediately to those rules of engagement, promising not to change them, but to thoroughly review and “clarify” their “implementation and interpretation.”
What this means, we don’t yet know, but we should know one thing: the present discussion of counterinsurgency and of those rules of engagement makes little sense. They are being presented as a kind of either/or option — kill us or kill them — when it would be more accurate to say that it’s a neither/nor situation.
After all, in another, less protective part of McChrystal’s counterinsurgency war, he was bulking up special operations forces in the country and sending them out on night raids searching for Taliban mid-level leaders. These raids continue to caused a cascade of civilian casualties, as well as an increasing uproar of protest among outraged Afghans. In addition, even with McChrystal’s tight rules for normal grunts, stories about the deaths of civilians, private security guards, and Afghan soldiers from air strikes, misplaced artillery fire, checkpoint shootings, and those night raids continue to pour out, followed by the usual American initial denials and then formulaic apologies for loss of life.
Whatever the rules, civilians continue to die in striking numbers at the hands of guerrillas and of American forces, and here’s the thing: tighten those rules, loosen them, fiddle with them, bend them, evade them, cancel them — at some level it’s all still neither/nor, not either/or. In any counterinsurgency war where guerrillas, faced with vastly superior fire power, fight from cover and work hard to blend in with the populace, where the counterinsurgents are foreigners about as alien from the land they are to “protect” as humanly possible, and fight, in part, from on high or based on “intelligence” from others about a world they can’t fathom, civilians will die. Lots of civilians. Continually. Whatever rules you make up. The issue isn’t the “rules of engagement.” No rules of engagement will alter the fact that civilian death is the central fact of such wars.
It’s time to stop talking about those rules and start talking about the madness of making counterinsurgency the American way of war. It wasn’t always so. Not so long ago, after all, it was considered a scandal that, post-Vietnam, the U.S. military rebuilt its all-volunteer force without rewriting or reconsidering its counterinsurgency manual. The high command, in fact, let counterinsurgency go to hell, exactly where they thought it deserved to rest in peace, and were focused instead on preventing Soviet armies from pouring through Germany’s Fulda Gap (something they were conveniently never likely to do). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military would continue to focus for some years on Colin Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force, decisive victory, and quick exit.
Then, of course, Iraq happened and decisive victory (“mission accomplished”) soured into decisive disaster. It was at this moment, in 2006, that Generals Petraeus and James “Mad Dog” Mattis (now respectively Afghan war commander and head of Centcom) dusted off the old, failed Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine and made it sexy again. They oversaw the writing of a whole new guidebook for the Army and Marines, 472 pages of advice that even got its own (university press) trade edition, and became the toast of Washington and the Pentagon.
So, after being buried and disinterred, COIN, as its known, is once again the reigning monarch of American war-fighting doctrines as the Pentagon prepares for one, two, three Iraqs or Afghanistans — and the scandal is that (surprise, surprise!) it’s not working. This should, of course, hardly have been news. The history of counterinsurgency warfare isn’t exactly a success story, or our present COINistas wouldn’t have taken their doctrine largely from failed counterinsurgency wars in Vietnam and Algeria, among other places. It’s not so encouraging, after all, when the main examples you have before you are defeats.
Our generals might have better spent their time studying the first modern war of this sort. It took place in early nineteenth century Spain when the Islamic fundamentalists of that moment — Catholic peasants and their priests — managed to stop Napoleon’s army (the high-tech force of the moment) in its tracks. Just check out Goya’s “Disasters of War” series, if you want to see how grim it was. And it’s never gotten much better.
Looked at historically, counterinsurgency was largely the war-fighting option of empires, of powers that wanted to keep occupying their restive colonies forever and a day. Of course, past empires didn’t spend much time worrying about “protecting the people.” They knew such wars were brutal. That was their point. As George Orwell summed such campaigns up in 1946 in his essay “Politics and the English Language”: “Defenseless villagers are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set afire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” The rise of anti-colonialism and nationalism after World War II should have made counterinsurgency history. Certainly, there is no place for occupations and the wars that go with them in the twenty-first century.
Unfortunately, none of this has been obvious to Washington or our leading generals. Of course, if they can rewrite the Army’s counterinsurgency manual for a new century, any of us can, so let me offer my one-line rewrite of their 472 pages. It’s simple and guaranteed to save trees as well as lives: “When it comes to counterinsurgency, don’t do it.”
—-Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books),
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