Afghanistan in the first days of 2011 - bad news overwhelms good news

There are mixed results over the last two weeks, including the first days of the new year, regarding the US-dominated/NATO occupation and war in Afghanistan. There is some good news, but, sadly, the bad news remains greatly ascendant.

First the good news. Jason Ditz reports on Antiwar.com (12/30/10) that the newest CNN/Opinion Research poll finds that “63 percent of the American public opposed to the war, the largest opposition yet from the regular poll.” Another question posed by the pollsters finds that “56 percent of Americans believe the war is going either ‘moderately badly’ or ‘very badly.” Ditz notes that this poll was taken after the president’s December 16 speech on Afghanistan, indicating that Obama’s upbeat message did not resonate well with most of the American public.

While such poll findings may be momentarily uplifting for those of us who have opposed the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from the beginning, going back to 2001 or even before, public opinion does not much affect US Afghan policies. A positive note is that such polls may reflect a growing awareness among an increasing number of Americans that the war is too costly financially and much too injurious (or lethal) for American troops and their families. One implication is that there is a growing sentiment that we need to direct our attention to the serious domestic problems in America of unemployment and underemployment, the continuing housing crisis, a pressing need to channel more support to public education through college, the overall debt-ridden American government, economy, and society, research and technology on green energy, and so forth. On this score, Tom Engelhardt comments in one of the paragraphs from his much longer article on Antiwar.com, “The Urge to Surge,” January 4, 2011:

"The U.S. economy looks increasingly sclerotic; moneys for an aging and rotting infrastructure are long gone; state and city governments are laying off teachers, police, even firefighters; Americans are unemployed in near record numbers; global oil prices (for a country that has in no way begun to wean itself from its dependence on foreign oil) are ominously on the rise; and yet taxpayer money continues to pour into the military and into our foreign wars. It has recently been estimated, for instance, that after spending $11.6 billion in 2011 on the training, supply, and support of the Afghan army and police, the U.S. will continue to spend an average of $6.2 billion a year at least through 2015 (and undoubtedly into an unknown future) – and that’s but one expense in the estimated $120 billion to $160 billion a year being spent at present on the Afghan War, what can only be described as part of America’s war stimulus package abroad." (http://original/antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/01/04/the-urge-to-surge-4)

However, the increasingly plutocratic nature of the US political system, the power of the military-industrial complex, the foreign policy based on force as always a viable, if not preferred, option, the continuing and increasing dependence on foreign oil - all represent some of the dominant influences with respect to foreign policy generally and to Afghanistan specifically. Public opinion appears little more than a passing annoyance to the decision-makers, especially when there is yet no strong anti-Afghan war movement.

Among the other bad news items, Jason Ditz’s Antiwar.com column on January 6, 2011 offers the following example, reporting that “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has approved yet another escalation of the war in Afghanistan, this time approving another 1,400 Marines who are expected to be sent to Afghanistan within a matter of weeks.”

How many US troops are already in Afghanistan? According to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), there were 90,000 US troops in Afghanistan near the end of 2010, along with 39,215 troops with allied countries, ranging from no troops from Jordan and Tonga to 9,500 troops from the UK. http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/Placeats/14DEC%202010%20Placemat.pdf

Other reports have indicated the US troop level closer to 100,000. With the additional 1,400 US troops, the total number now rises to 91,400 or to above 100,000.

The numbers don’t end there. There are an unknown number of CIA operatives and US Special Forces, plus US-connected contractors. Further, according to Wikipedia, there were in 2010 138,200 Afghan National Army troops and 120,500 Afghan National Police officers. There are regular reports that indicate many of the Afghan troops and police officers are not well trained, not reliable, and/or infiltrated by people who are sympathetic to the Taliban.

Despite the growing number of US and other troops and police in Afghanistan, the situation there appears to be getting worse. The Dailykos.com website quotes from Agence France-Presse, December 27, 2010, on two confidential UN maps showing “a clear deterioration in security in parts of Afghanistan.” Quoting Kieran Dwyer, “communications director of the UN mission in Afghanistan, “There are parts of the country that have become increasingly difficult to operate in during 2010 due to insecurity.” The article notes further, “Violence in the north has steadily worsened over the last two years despite the Taliban insurgency having its powerbase in the south.” (http://www.kailykos.com/story/2010/12/28/931769/-Open-thread-for-night-owls:-Insecurity-rises-in-Afghanistan

Juan Cole identifies the “top ten myths about Afghanistan,” including this one on the deteriorating security environment in the country. (“Top Ten Myths About Afghanistan,” Informed Comment, December 27, 2010.) First the myth, then the fact.

Myth: “There has been significant progress in tamping down the insurgency in Afghanistan.”

Fact: A recent National Intelligence Estimate by 16 intelligence agencies found no progress. It warned that large swathes of the country were at risk of falling to the Taliban and that they still had safe havens in Pakistan, with the Pakistani government complicit. The UN says there were over 6000 civilian casualties of war in Afghanistan in the first 10 months of 2010, a 20% increase over the same period in 2009. Also, 701 US and NATO troops have been killed this year, compared to 521 last year, a 25% increase. There were typically over 1000 insurgent attacks per month in Afghanistan this year, often twice as many per month as in 2009, recalling the guerrilla war in Iraq in 2005.

US Afghanistan policy has a pronounced surreal quality about it. Tom Engelhardt captures some of this when he compares the recent surge in US troops to how Soviet generals were thinking back in the 1980s about the future progress of their occupation. Both the Soviet generals and the US decision-makers are caught up in pipedreams, though with lots of destructive consequences. Engelhardt writes:

“As 2011 begins, what could be eerier than reading secret Soviet documents from the USSR’s Afghan debacle of the 1980s? It gives you chills to run across Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at a Politburo meeting in October 1985, almost six years after Soviet troops first flooded into Afghanistan, reading letters aloud to his colleagues from embittered Soviet citizens (‘The Politburo had made a mistake and must correct it as soon as possible – every day precious lives are lost’); or, in November 1986, insisting to those same colleagues that the Afghan war must be ended in a year, ‘at maximum, two.’ Yet, with the gut-wrenching sureness history offers, you can’t help but know that, even two years later, even with a strong desire to leave (which has yet to surface among the Washington elite a decade into our own Afghan adventure), imperial pride and fear of loss of ‘credibility’ would keep the Soviets fighting on to 1989.” (http://original/antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/01/04/the-urge-to-surge-4)

Withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and join protests on Oct 7-10

The following email was distributed by United for Peace and Justice, with reference to a recently created website, http://www.endafghanistanwar.com The website was launched by Peace Action, AFSC and WRL, and a host of other national peace organizations. In the following message, the coalition of peace groups bring our attention to reasons why we should support the withdrawal of US (and foreign) troops from Afghanistan and also issue a call to action in support of this goal.


Our Call to Action: October 7-10, 2010

As we approach the ninth anniversary of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, we call for decentralized international days of action October 7-10 to bring U.S. and NATO troops home. We call for a ceasefire, negotiations and the withdrawal of foreign forces.

The U.S.-NATO phase of the Afghan War has been predictably deadly and counterproductive since the beginning. Even U.S. military leaders now concede that there is no military solution to what is at its core an Afghan civil war. Yet, in an era defined by the highest levels of unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s, instead of investing in job creation and provision of essential social services, our governments are flushing colossal amounts of taxpayers’ money down the drain of a futile, murderous and destructive war.

Rather than “winning hearts and minds”, the war and long-term foreign military occupation have alienated the Afghan people and fueled deepening and increasingly widespread armed resistance by local communities and the fractured Taliban. A new civilian UN mandate in Afghanistan is needed to create and develop human security. A growing majority of Afghans no longer see U.S. and NATO forces as liberators. Instead, they see Western occupiers as the primary cause of their insecurity and suffering and want them to leave. As the international press reports, “a drumbeat is starting to sound across Afghanistan in favor of talking to the Taliban”.

Instead of the promised peace and security, Afghans are suffering an ever-growing civilian death toll. The corruption of the increasingly unpopular U.S.-imposed warlord/Karzai government, which controls little more than the capital Kabul, is now infamous. The 2010 presidential election has been universally condemned as a fraud. Massive increases in poppy cultivation have further corrupted the Karzai government, warlords and the Taliban, who use the drug trade to maintain their privileges and finance the continuing civil war. By allying with minority non-Pashtun warlords to overthrow the Taliban in 2001 and making them the foundation of the Karzai government, the majority Pashtuns were further alienated from the rulers in Kabul. And, with the exception of Kabul, the values shared by warlords and the Taliban have meant few or no changes for women.

We therefore call for decentralized international days of nonviolent action October 7-10 urging a ceasefire, Afghan and international negotiations, and the urgent withdrawal of all foreign military forces from that beleaguered nation. With actions from vigils, banner drops, conferences and meetings with government officials to teach-ins, demonstrations and civil disobedience, we can move our governments to end this catastrophic war.

New Poll: A majority of Americans oppose Afghan War

Jason Ditz comments on a recent national poll that confirms growing American opposition against the Afganistan war/occupation. He suggests that the opposition is based on "war exhaustion," that is, that US troops have been in Afghanistan for nearly nine years without being any closer to winning the war. Growing opposition to the war/occupation also has something to do perhaps with the lack of a clear and convincing objective and strategy, the huge and rising costs of the war, the high rate of unemployment in the U.S. and a long-list of unmet domestic needs, and an ever-rising national debt.

Poll Shows Growing Opposition to Afghan War
Posted By Jason Ditz On August 20, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/08/20/poll-shows-growing-opposition-to-afghan-war

Just weeks after a USA Today/Gallup poll showed support for the Afghan War was plummeting, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows the trend continuing, with 58 percent of Americans now firmly opposed to the war, the worst such toll in the well publicized poll since the 2001 US invasion.

The poll also showed that less than 1 in 5 Americans, only 19%, expect the war to get any better in the next year. When President Obama announced the escalation in December, 31% of Americans expected progress.

All of the questioned showed a trend toward greater opposition to the war and greater pessimism about the war. It seems that, nearly nine years after the US invasion, war exhaustion is driving Americans to increasingly call for a pullout.

The poll showed that Americans largely approve of the idea of withdrawing troops from Iraq, though the validity of this question must be in doubt as it was couched in terms of support or opposition for President Obama’s mythical end to the war this month. The poll did show about two thirds of Americans oppose of the Iraq War, however.

Article printed from News From Antiwar.com: http://news.antiwar.com

US goal of creating a "client state" in Afghanistan not achievable

Counter Punch
June 17, 2010

Echoes of Vietnam
Washington's False Promise in Afghanistan
By RON JACOBS

One of the predominant rationales put forth by US civilian and military officials regarding the nature of the insurgency categorized as the Taliban in Afghanistan is that their support is derived from coercion. Pronouncements from these officials stating this belief as objective truth are obediently parroted in media reports and repeated by politicians. Yet, according to US Army General McChrystal, there is not enough support among Afghans for his proposed pacification effort in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan. “When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them," are the words McChrystal used when asked about why he was delaying the proposed operation. In other words, the Afghans do not see the US military as its protector and want nothing to do with them and their plans.

While one must acknowledge that McChrystal's honesty is a welcome rarity from the Pentagon, the more appropriate question is how long will it be before Washington decides that it doesn't really care whether or not it has Afghan support and launches its Kandahar operation anyhow. After all, there is a supposed deadline in 2011 that McChrystal is operating under that requires him to be able to at least say things are different for Washington in Afghanistan than they were in summer 2009. Of course, that deadline becomes more nebulous by the week, just like those deadlines always do without popular pressure in the US demanding an end to a particular military operation.

Let's go back to that recruitment by coercion supposition that the Pentagon is operating on at least in public. Despite the seeming impossibility of a recruitment effort based primarily on coercion to raise a devoted guerrilla force capable not only of survival for ten years under fire, but also of expanding its reach and numbers, that is exactly what Washington wants us to believe is occurring with the Taliban. It's as if the military and political establishment found an old playbook from the 1960s, scribbled out the words "Viet Cong" and replaced them with "the Taliban." For example, here's a quote from a CIA cable dated October 5, 1961.

The Viet Cong live upon locally produced food which they either grow themselves or levy upon villages. They meet most of their currency needs by taxing areas under their control, by robbery, or by blackmail.

Newspaper accounts that reported on the war echoed this interpretation of events in southern Vietnam. Stories of torture and execution style shootings by Viet Cong cadre were given as reasons for Vietnamese support for the National Liberation Front (NLF). The refusal or inability of the Pentagon and its supporters to see and understand that the bombing raids, search and destroy missions, and the removal of entire populations from villages under Operation Phoenix by US troops made any such transgressions by the NLF forces minor by comparison.

Other misunderstandings were of a more philosophical nature. In a column on February 2, 1968, while the Tet offensive raged on, New York Times columnist James Reston described the men and women fighting for the NLF as essentially suicidal given the armed might arrayed against them and wondered when these "men (and women) whose religion teaches them that death is preferable to life" would come to their sense and accept the greater power of Washington's forces. When one reads articles speculating as to the motivations of the Afghan insurgents (or the Iraqis in that unresolved war of the very recent past), a phrase about "seventy virgins" is never far from being repeated. Without getting into a debate about whether or not Buddhism or Islam teaches that death is preferable to life any more than Christianity does, this barely qualifies as motivation to leave one's family just to go and fight other people. Indeed, perhaps the motivation has much more to do with the desire to chase invaders from your village and homeland. or maybe you just want to battle those who have killed your family members.

There is a current of thought in the United States that believes Washington had its chance in the early months of the Afghan occupation to achieve its goal of an obedient Afghan nation. According to this line of reasoning, Washington failed because the Bush White House invaded Iraq. leaving its mission to founder in Afghanistan. I am unconvinced of this argument's veracity. After all, the stated intention of the invasion of Afghanistan was the capture of Bin Laden and the destruction of the Taliban. The invasion did not achieve either of these stated goals and the years since that day in October 2001 when the troops first landed have erased much of the memory of those goals. Instead, the world has watched while foreign militaries under the direction of the Pentagon have attempted to create a client state whose real leadership is in Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the continued failure of the US to perceive the elements of the Afghan insurgency as homegrown forces intent on keeping the invaders out of their homes and villages insures its continued inability to achieve its goal of pacifying the Afghan people under a government chosen by Washington.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

Reasons why US military should exit Afghanistan

David Swanson informatively expounds on six points for why the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan should be brought to an end. In a seventh point, he writes that we, as citizens, have the constitutional means, if enough of us act on them, to accomplish the goal of bringing U.S. troops back to their homes. I identify his key points with selected excerpts on each of them. You can retreive the full article at: http://www.zcommunications.org/seven-deadly-sins-in-afghanistan-by-david-swanson. It was printed there on May 5, 2010.

His principal assumptions are that clear and well-documented arguments will, sooner or later, convince American voters that the war in and occupation of Afghanistan must be ended. He puts his faith in the potential rationality of the American electorate, and that if properly educated democracy will overcome plutocracy, the unprecedent power of the Pentagon, corporate-domination of all major sectors of the economy and the media, and the desire of the U.S. ruling class to maintain American hegemony in the Middle-East and Central Asia, especially because of the resources (especially oil) in these regions.

First point: The US occupation of Afghanistan is illegal under the UN Charter and Article VI of our Constitution. Additionally, Swanson writes:

"Revenge is not a legal ground for war and makes very little sense on its own terms. The 9-11 hijackers were already dead and not from Afghanistan. Much of the planning had been done in Europe and this country. And Al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan. We're fighting a war against the Taliban that, because it is a foreign occupation and there are no other jobs, fuels the extremely unpopular Taliban, which wouldn't invite Al Qaeda into Afghanistan if it could. And Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would not make the United States less safe than Al Qaeda in the locations it's in now, except to the extent that we enrage the people of Afghanistan against us.

The US occupation represents the "supreme international crime.

"Our crimes include using weapons that kill large numbers of civilians, targeting civilians, using cluster bombs and depleted uranium, assassination, imprisoning people without charge, abusing and torturing. The United Nations has warned the United States about its growing illegal use of drones. A former assistant secretary of state during Bush's presidency wrote in the Washington Post this April 2nd that if the International Criminal Court begins prosecuting crimes of aggression this year, potential defendants will include members of congress who fund aggressive wars.

President Obama has reasserted his power to make war

"... President Obama asserted his power to make war in a peace prize acceptance speech in Oslo, and recently created a policy of never using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, with the exception of Iran."

Second Point: This war is immoral.

"... most of the people we kill with drones are civilians....

"... Killing the people of Afghanistan is the mission of the U.S. military.

"We are killing thousands of civilians per year, plus non-civilians, plus over 1,000 US troops with over 5,000 wounded, plus mercenaries, plus those diagnosed with brain injuries after leaving Afghanistan, plus suicides which are now probably higher than combat deaths, plus the violence to others that troops bring home, plus anyone damaged by heroin during our occupation of Afghanistan. Arguing that the other guys kill more civilians than we do is not the point, and clearly not a point the people of Afghanistan weigh heavily. From their point of view, we are killing their brothers, whether civilian or not, and we are foreign occupiers.

Third point: This war and occcupation are against the public will in Afghanistan and in the US.

"A recent survey of Kandahar, the area where the escalation is planned, found that 94% of the people there prefer peace negotiations to U.S. attacks, and 85% see the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers." The survey was funded by that radical pacifist organization, the United States Army.

Back in December, U.S. pollsters asked Americans if they supported funding an escalation, and in several polls a majority said No. So a lot of congress members voted for more war funding but promised to oppose the escalation funding in the spring. Then the White House began the escalation, and the pollsters (apparently assuming that our servile congress would fund anything the president had already begun, even if the people opposed it) stopped polling on the escalation. Polling just on the war, pollsters find the US public evenly split or leaning slightly in support. But they ask whether people support the president, not how much longer they want the war to last or whether that's their top choice for where to spend a trillion dollars."

"...Yesterday, the Pentagon issued a new report finding that one in four Afghans in important areas support Karzai's government, violence is up 87% in the past year, European allies are bailing out, corruption runs rampant, insurgents still control Marjah, the Taliban is growing, and the Afghan government is getting weaker."

Fourth point: It is economically catastrophic.

"The money we are spending to take away lives could be spent to save even more lives. So the casualty figures must be more than doubled. We could save millions from starvation and disease around the world or in Afghanistan or our own country. We could have 20 green energy jobs paying $50,000 per year for every soldier sent to Afghanistan: a job for that former soldier and 19 more, and reduced demand for the oil and gas and pipelines and bases. We're spending as much as $100 per gallon to bring gas into Afghanistan where the US military used 27 million gallons of the stuff last month. We're spending hundreds of millions to bribe nations to be part of what we pretend is a coalition effort. We're spending at least that much to bribe Afghans to join the right side, an effort that has recruited 646 of the Taliban's 36,000 soldiers, but then lost many of them who took the money and ran back to the other side."

"We've spent $268 billion on making war on Afghanistan, and using Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz' analysis of Iraq we need to multiply that by four or five to get a realistic cost including debt, veterans care, energy prices, and lost opportunities. Public investment in most other industries or in tax cuts produces more jobs than investment in military."

Fifth point: It's counterproductive militarily and in the "war against terrorism."

"During the global war of terror we have seen a global increase in terrorism."

"...A RAND Corporation study just released looked at 89 of what it called insurgencies. With a weak government, like that of the Mayor of Kabul, the insurgency won 90% of the time."

Sixth point: It is a cynically motivated and based on a hidden agenda.

"Last summer a majority of the Democrats in the House voted for a so-called exit-strategy. A simple truth has been lost. You do not exit a war by escalating it."

"...We know that last year President Obama sent 21,000 more troops and 5,000 more mercenaries to Afghanistan, and that violence increased as a result. What's staggering is that the president said he was going to send those troops first and then figure out a plan for Afghanistan later. Sending the troops was an end in itself."

"We know that a pipeline and major military bases are part of the desired plan, but so is winning elections back home, which is where war opposition comes in."

Seventh point: Americans have the potential power, if only they use it, to end the policy supporting the Afghanistan war and occupation.

"No matter how awful Afghanistan is when the U.S. military leaves, it can never become a decent place to live during a foreign occupation. And the post-occupation Afghanistan is likely to be worse the longer the occupation has lasted."

"...But there is no reason our troops could not employ their bravery to clean up cluster bombs before they leave. There is no reason we cannot fund non-drug agriculture as our ambassador to Afghanistan advises us to do instead of escalating the war. Ron Fisher, who helped plan this event, has a plan available on the table. Jobsforafghans.org recommends spending $5 billion for jobs through the National Solidarity Program, which is run by local elected leaders."

"...Congress needs to build a caucus large enough to vote down war funding whether or not the president approves. Doing so puts the power of war where our Constitution so wisely put it and prevents future wars while ending a current one.

"So I want to see members of Congress join Dennis Kucinich and Jim McGovern in urging their colleagues to vote No on $33 billion. We saw 32 congress members vote No on war funding last June, and that was before the war had worsened, before the president had lost that new car smell, and while people still believed that would be the very last war supplemental bill.

"... Votes to cut-off war funding historically have always provided for orderly withdrawal. The chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, who has probably learned more about the troops than any other congress member, plans to vote No."

"...Senate and the president can do as they please, they just can't escalate a war without our money.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

Headlines on recent developments in Afghanistan

The following four headlines from various media sources were gathered by Just Foreign Policy. Together they point to little progress for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, and growing support for the Taliban/insurgents in southern parts of the country.

Bear in mind, these developments are unfolding after the Obama sanctioned increase to Afghnistan of 30,000 troops this year (bringing US troop levels to about 100,000), along with additional contractors, the ongoing training of Afhan army and police, and including some troops from NATO. The generals in the field now expect that the "need" for the occupation will go on for many years. There are other reports as well indicating that the Pentagon will soon be asking for another 20,000 US soldiers.

As time passes, the US-led occupation seems more and more like a rough re-run of what happened in Vietnam, with its death, destruction of villages and habitat, and lack of support from the indigenous population. In both cases, we were told that the continued escalation of war was necessary to our national security. It all sounds like a broken record. The opportunity costs, or how we might otherwise spend the tens of billions of dollars on the broken economic system of the US itself, are great and increasing.

There are perhaps larger concerns behind the day-to-day reports. While Afghanistan is not rich in fossil fuels, it is geographically situated so that a pipeline could be built through it to transmit the oil from other countries in central Asia. Additionally, Afghanistan figures in the tensions between Pakistan and India. Both countries would like to have a dominating influence in Afghanistan to advance their own perceptions of security and influence in the region. And the US administration and Pentagon apparently want to demonstrate that US hegemonic power is intact. Whatever the larger reasons, Afghanistan appears like a pawn in larger imperialistic plots. The dominos may be falling, but not to advance the interests of the societies that are being directly and indirectly affected.

Bob

---------------------------
Some headlines from Just Foreign Policy, April 30, 2010.

1) Nato's most senior civilian official said US and NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan can expect to be engaged in a combat role for three or four more years, the Guardian reports. Thereafter, they could be expected to remain in Afghanistan, training and mentoring local forces, for a further 10 to 15 years. President Karzai is due to visit Washington on May 10.

3) A U.S. night raid that killed a relative of Afghan parliamentarian Safia Siddiqi was conducted without informing the local police, the Los Angeles Times reports.

4) The most significant revelation in the Pentagon's Afghanistan report this week is that Gen. McChrystal and ISAF acknowledge officially that Taliban insurgents dominate a vast contiguous zone of heavily populated territory across southern Afghanistan that McChrystal regards as the most critical area in the country, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service. The report admits that the population in key districts across most southern provinces is sympathetic to or supportive of the insurgents.

5) The Pentagon's report on the last six months in Afghanistan suggests the situation is little better over all than it was six months ago despite enormous expenditures of effort, money and lives by US and international forces, the New York Times reports. The report is mandated by Congress every six months.

Kucinich resolution forces debate on whether to continue Afghan war

Published on Friday, March 5, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Kucinich Forces Congress to Debate Afghanistan

by Robert Naiman

On Thursday, Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced H. Con Res. 248 [1], a privileged resolution with 16 original cosponsors that will require the House of Representatives to debate whether to continue the war in Afghanistan. Debate on the resolution is expected early next week.

Original cosponsors of the Kucinich resolution include John Conyers, Ron Paul, José Serrano, Bob Filner, Lynn Woolsey, Walter Jones, Danny Davis, Barbara Lee, Michael Capuano, Raúl Grijalva, Tammy Baldwin, Tim Johnson, Yvette Clarke, Eric Massa, Alan Grayson, and Chellie Pingree.
The Pentagon doesn't want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more [2] to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy.

Ideally, from the point of view of the Pentagon, Congress would fork over that money right away, before the coming Kandahar offensive that the $33 billion is supposed to pay for, because you can expect a lot of bad news out of Afghanistan in the form of deaths of American soldiers [3] and Afghan civilians [4] once the Kandahar offensive starts, and it would sure be awkward if all that bad news reached Washington while the $33 billion was hanging fire.

So it's a great thing that Rep. Kucinich and his 16 allies are forcing Congress to debate the issue, and it would be even better if more Members of Congress would be urged by their constituents [5] to support Kucinich's resolution. That would be a signal to the House leadership that continuation of the open-ended war and occupation is controversial in the House, and the House leadership should not try to ram through $33 billion more for the war on a fast-track without ample opportunity for debate and amendment.

Every day the Afghanistan war continues is another day on which the United States Government plays Russian Roulette with the lives of American soldiers [3] and Afghan civilians [6].

The British Government has more urgency [7] than the U.S. government about ending the war - and is more supportive than the U.S. of a political solution to end the conflict - because in Britain there is greater public outcry [7].

If there were greater public and Congressional outcry in the U.S., we could be more like Britain, and get our government on board the train to a political solution, instead of prolonging the war indefinitely.

The first step towards bringing our troops home is for Members of Congress to hear from their constituents [5].

Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy [8]

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/05-3

New book on Afghanistan

David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis' book, Ending the War in Afghanistan: A Primer, has just been published. I expect to get a copy of the book today. It's a short book, like a similar book Bennis published in 2007, Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer. I expect the book on Afghanistan will provide a historical overview, the demographic and ethnic/tribal facts, identify the political interests involved, the military strategies employed, the effects, and the costs in human, economic, and political costs. I'll write more about the book later.

In the following post, Bennis gives a short plug for the new book. Just one point. Bennis refers to the additional troops that have been authorized by President Obama, but doesn't here refer to the support troops and the thousands of contractors and their employees who will also be part of the misbegotten surge. Further, the biggest portion of the money spent on the surge will go to the military efforts, not for humanitarian or reconstruction projects, or for building long-lasting relations with village elders and other leaders.

Bob

------------------------------
Phyillis Bennis, "Haiti, Afghanistan, and Obama." Here is an excerpt from the article dealing with Afghanistan. You can see the full article at: http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/4114

Afghanistan

My new book, written with my longtime friend and colleague David Wildman, has just been released, and I hope all of you will get a copy. Interlink Publishing will also make it available in bulk - if you buy 10 copies or more, you can get 40 percent off, sell the books, and use the money saved to support your organization's peace and justice work.

Opposition to the Afghanistan war, which had risen to almost 60 percent, diminished after Obama's West Point speech explaining his intention to send more than 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. As I mentioned in my assessment of his speech, there was one way in which Obama's escalation speech brought significant relief to the 59 percent of people in this country, as well as the overwhelming majorities of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and elsewhere who oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan: It was a pretty lousy speech. But we still have a huge amount of educating to do, providing people with the basic information they need to convince others of why the war is wrong and must be ended. The key issues will be the costs - human and economic - of this terrible and rising war. And at this particular moment, even beyond the human costs in Afghanistan and here at home, the economic costs stand out. It should be pretty easy for us to convince people that the $30 BILLION or more it will cost just to send those additional 30,000 troops would be far better spent on creating hundreds of thousands of new green jobs.

But we need the information to do it - and I hope David's and my book will help.