Now that a team of US Special Forces has found and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, what are the chances of the US government withdrawing the hundred thousand US troops from Afghanistan over the next 12 months or so.
Bear in mind the cost of maintaining this large force is not a piddling sum in an economy with 16 percent of the work force unemployed, given up looking for a job after months of searching for one, plus those working part-time only because they cannot find a full-time job. There other signs of decline, including 59 million or so Americans who are without health insurance for part of a year or the entire year. There are also an unprecedented number of Americans who have been forced into foreclosure or who are paying more for their mortgages than their houses are worth and they can afford. There are other social indicators that times are hard for Americans. While wealthy people and most large corporations, especially in finance, pharmaceuticals, and oil, are making substantial profits and paying low actual rates of taxes, the overall trend in both income and wealth distributions show that only the top few percent of the population are reaping benefits. In the meantime wages stagnate or fall and more and more families are lucky to have even one member in a job.
If US policymakers decided to end the war/occupation in Afghanistan, and used the savings from the occupation/war for pressing domestic needs in our country, it would make a significant difference. Just one example. The Center for Budget Policies and Priorities estimates that the budget shortfalls for 44 of the 50 states will total $112 billion for fiscal year 2012, which begins on July 2, 2011. The anticipated state deficits could be paid for by what is now being spent on the US occupation of Afghanistan. The CBPP report notes that one of the reasons for why the state deficits is this: “Federal assistance for states, which has been enormously helpful in allowing states to avert some of the most harmful potential budget cuts, will be largely gone by the end of fiscal year 2011.” The $120 billion spent annually by the US government on the Afghanistan war/occupation would go a long way in averting the state deficits and in the process save tens of thousands of public-sector jobs. (http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711)
Afghanistan War OptionsThere are three general options being considered on the issue of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and this has been true for some years. I’ll start with the most conservative option, then consider the slow and hedged withdrawal option, and finally focus on the accelerated withdrawal option, the option that we at “stopafghanwar” have advocated.
The Republican/Conservative Option: Increase or sustain US troop levels and do what it takes to “win” the war in Afghanistan.From this perspective, US government policymakers and military leaders should support an increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. This is the position of Sen. McCain and most Republicans, excluding those with libertarian values. Max Boot writes in an article for Commentary magazine (4-19-11) that we need to build more military bases in Afghanistan to assure the Afghan government and people that the US will not again abandon them. Boot contends: “ if we are to safeguard hard-fought gains, we will need to maintain a military presence in that country for many years too, just as we have in Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc.”
Anthony Dimaggio refers to other Republican positions on Afghanistan, and writes:
“John McCain announced shortly following the ’09 Afghanistan escalation that any inclusion of a withdrawal date was ‘dispiriting,’ and would guarantee that Afghans would be less likely to ‘risk their lives to take our side in this fight.’ The withdrawal date, McCain argued, is one that ‘enemies can exploit to weaken and intimidate our friends.’ In March of this year, Republican Congressman Mike Coffman similarly announced that he was skeptical of a possible withdrawal, considering the ‘security interests in Afghanistan that we must accept…we need to make sure that the Taliban don’t take over the country.’ Coffman’s comments came at a time when a non-binding House resolution calling for a full, accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan (by year’s end) was defeated by a vote of 93-321, with only eight Republicans voting in support.” (http://www.counterpunch.org/dimaggio04262011.html)
The expectation of the Republicans and most conservatives is that additional US forces, as many as are deemed necessary, will finally result in the conquest of the Taliban and any other insurgents, the creation of a stable central government, the realization of Afghan military and police forces capable of maintaining law and order in the country, and a situation where warlords, drug lords, and tribal elders are willing to go along with the US project. When all of this is accomplished, the US would then be able to withdraw some of its troops with honor, its stature as the strongest military power intact, and in a position to influence geopolitical and fossil fuel issues in the Middle East and Caspian Sea regions. After all is said and done, winning and maintaining the US hegemonic position is what matters most.
The Republican/Conservative vision is, in the end, wishful thinking that will waste resources and lives and serve the further destabilize the world.
Second Option, Realists/Pragmatists in the Political Center: Surges in troop levels coupled with the Promise of Token Withdrawals of troops
President Obama and his administration are among the paramount realists/pragmatists when it comes to Afghanistan. They want to compromise. On the one hand, they want to continue the war toward an ultimate victory, that is, continuing the status quo in troop levels with periodic surges in troop levels. On the other hand, they will bend to public opinion and political realities with promises of the withdrawal of some troops and even actual, though token, withdrawal of some troops now and again.
The compromise is likely next to be based on token withdrawals, referring to an end date, say, the end of 2014, and hedging this date by specifying that “conditions on the ground” and recommendations from the military brass may lengthen the time the same level of troops, or more than now, stay in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has recently recommended that 5,000 US troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan beginning in July of this year (2011) and another 5,000 in December.
It’s not clear yet what Obama will do in July with respect of the status of US troops in Afghanistan. But it is clear that he savored the “victory” of bin Laden’s killing. Here again from our last post on this site is a summary of what Obama said on May 2 to the nation and world in his celebratory announcement of bin Laden’s death.
He suggested that after ten years Osama bin Laden had been located, thanks to “the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals,” and then killed by the heroic “men who carried out the operation.” The implications of bin Laden’s death are profound, in Obama’s view, because they take out the leader and symbol of al-Qaeda. His death “is not the end of our efforts,” the President said. Al Qaeda groups may be in disarray but they “continue to pursue attacks against us.” The President maintains that the costs of the war in Afghanistan and anywhere else al-Qaeda threatens the US or its friends, are justified and necessary for the sake of our country’s security. The war(s) will continue because “the cause of security [for] our country is not complete.” In the end, the President says, America will prevail because “America can do whatever we set out mind to” and because we are “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Will the president tilt to the status quo or support a token withdrawal in July? Whichever it is, Obama was exalted by the killing of bin Laden, with the implication that we can “win” this war in time. Bear in mind also that if there are token withdrawals, this does not rule out surges in troop levels in the future.
Anthony Dimaggo, whose article is cited above, suggests also that Obama will tilt for the foreseeable future toward the status quo, with perhaps periodic emergency surges. His argument is persuasive.
“In the case of Afghanistan, the Obama administration announced that the beginning of a phased withdrawal could begin as early as July of 2011, and continue through 2014. The 2011 withdrawal date was promised as far back as late 2009, at the same time that Obama announced his ‘surge’ of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Obama’s ‘09 withdrawal announcement, made simultaneously alongside his announcement of the escalation of war, was unprecedented in U.S. history. Rarely do aggressors provide an ‘exit strategy’ at the onset of their onslaughts. This novel development, however, reflected not so much the ‘democratic’ responsiveness of the Obama administration to the public (considering that most Americans opposed the war at the time, and continue to do so today), but rather a begrudging concession on the part of the Democrats that they can no longer pursue (a la Bush) bloody wars without a (at least vague) promised end in sight. Still the unprecedented escalation-de-escalation strategy should hardly be viewed as a ‘revolutionary’ development in U.S. foreign policy. After all, under Obama the Afghan war is set to endure for a grueling 13 years at minimum, considering the initial escalation of the conflict began immediately following the September 11th attacks. Furthermore, through the first four years of his presidency, Obama will have spent more on the military than even George W. Bush did by the end of his first term. If anything, Obama has demonstrated that imperialist policies and military escalation can be even more effectively pursued under Democratic regimes, with ‘anti-war’ figures like Obama farcically celebrated as a proponent of ‘de-escalation’ and ‘peace.’
A third option, Liberals, progressives, leftists: Planning for a responsible withdrawal of US Troops from Afghanistan over the coming 12 months
This is generally the position we on this blog take and which, according to recent surveys of American attitudes, a growing number of Americans endorse, namely, to have policymakers plan for a full withdrawal by some date in the near future.
Proponents - There are those, like us, who advocate the position for a quick withdrawal of troops, removing a majority of US troops by the end of this year and the remainder by the end of July 2012. After setting aside some of the “historic” reasons supporting our position, we then turn to immediate justifications, and finish by consideration a general consequence of ending the US occupation of Afghanistan in these terms.
PUTTING ASIDE SOME HISTORIC FACTS - Putting aside the fact that the US, with the significant assistance of Saudi Arabia, supported bin Laden and other foreign mujahedeen to fight against the Soviet occupation of the country during the 1980s. We helped to create al Qaeda in the first place. Putting aside the question of whether the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was necessary or not and the assertion that the Taliban leaders were unwilling to negotiate on whether to hand over bin Laden to the US or not. As Noam Chomsky has documented, the Taliban leaders had not slammed the door on further negotiations. Putting aside the fact that the US did too little to support the Afghan government and people after bin Laden fled and the Taliban were defeated. Putting aside the concern that the escalated and surged military occupation of Afghanistan is based on US interests in having an oil pipeline built through from the Casipan Sea region down through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. Putting such flawed or self-interest-based policies aside, there are other justifications for our position in favor of a quick withdrawal.
#1 - NO CLEAR GOAL - The US has not stated publicly a goal for staying in Afghanistan, except somehow to ensure that bin Laden is killed or captured (this is done), that al Qaeda is eliminated from Afghanistan (haven’t had a substantial number for years), and that al Qaeda must not return to Afghanistan in large numbers and use the country as its base of worldwide terrorist operations. This last point is based on the assumption that the Taliban will take over the Afghan government when and if a US/NATO occupation is ended and that this government will welcome al Qaeda to return to Afghanistan. The issue is taken up in the next point.
#2 – TALIBAN ARE NOT AL QAEDA – An article from Reuters, “Separating the Taliban from al Qaeda (February 7 2001) captures one of the basic differences between. The article refers to research by Kandahar-based researchers Alex Strick, van Linschoten and Felex Kuehn that has recently be released by New York University. The researchers found that:
“the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda was strained both before and after the September 11 2001 attacks, partly because of their very different ideological roots. Al Qaeda grew out of militant Islamism in the Middle East, notably in Egypt, which — when fused with the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan — created its own view of global jihad. Taliban leaders grew up in rural southern Afghanistan, isolated from world events. Many were too young to play a big role in the Afghan jihad, and had no close ties to al Qaeda until after they took power in 1996.
“’Many Taliban leaders of the older generation are still potential partners for a negotiated settlement. They are not implacably opposed to the U.S. or West in general but to specific actions or policies in Afghanistan. These figures now understand the position of the international community much better than they did before 2001. They are not seeking a return to the failed interactions between the Taliban and the international community of the 1990s. At present they still represent the movement,’ the report concludes.
http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2011/02/08/separating-the-taliban-from-al-qaeda
#3 – SUICIDE ATTACKS IN AFGHANISTAN ARE LINKED TO OCCUPATION, NOT TO ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST AND SUPRA-NATIONAL GOALS
Consider the facts notes by Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman in their book, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It. They maintain that suicide bombings in Afghanistan increased in response to the impact of the occupation.
“In the immediate aftermath of America’s conquest, Afghanistan experienced only a small number of suicide attacks – fewer than 15 total attacks from 2002 through 2005. Suddenly suicide attacks began to increase by an order of magnitude – with 93 in 2006, 137 in 2007, 136 in 2008, and 98 in 2009. Moreover, the overwhelming percentage of the suicide attacks (80%) has been against security targets related to American and allied forces, and nearly all (90%) carried out by Afghan nationals.”
Pape and Feldman make the following point about the principal cause of the rise in suicide bombing. “Although there are multiple causes, one stands out: the growth and redeployment outside of Kabul of Western Forces in Afghanistan” (p. 34).
The implication of their analysis is that if you end the occupation, you diminish or end suicide bombings. Another implication is that the principal opposition to the occupation is home-grown, not international in its participants or ideology.
ETCETERA – The goals of making Afghanistan a democracy, social order, economic progress, etc., have not been achieved over the last ten years of the US military presence and surges.
Consider the following incomplete, but telling, list of points, which have been discussed one time or another on our blog over the last18 months of the costs and lack of success.
• the corruption used to consolidate central government power
. the central Afghan government has not earned legitimacy in the minds of the majority of Afghan people
• the continuing ethnic divisions
• the fact that the Afghan economy remains dependent on foreign aid and the production and distribution of drugs
• the warlords sometimes with their own militia
• infrastructure problems have not been adequately addressed
• the continuing discrimination against girls/women in state law and traditions
• the absence of a well trained and committed Afghan army and police force
• the poverty, limited education, and lack of opportunities for the majority of Afghans
• the US cannot afford to spend tens of billions of dollars on another endless war
• the casualties and deaths to American troops
• the rising health care costs for US Afghan veterans for both long-term or life-long physical and psychological health services
• public opinion polls indicate support for a withdrawal of troops – a Gallup poll conducted May 5-8 found that 59% of those surveyed favored bringing the troops home
Some implications
The withdrawal of a large percentage of US troops in Afghanistan is not likely next year or for several or even many years (decades?). At the same time, the opposition to the war is likely to grow. The difficulty is that there are so many problems besetting Americans that they may not be sufficiently galvanized for the level of protests that are necessary to achieve the quick withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan that the liberal/progressive/left so desires. And the electoral alternatives may not give voters the option of a genuine and heightened withdrawal of troops.
In the meantime, those reporting on the war, those engaging in the sustained collection of evidence on the war and its effects, and those offering proposals for an end to the Afghanistan war, will serve an important purpose – helping to keep the significance
Showing posts with label Pres Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pres Obama. Show all posts
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Implications of bin Laden's killing for US Afghanistan and broader military policies
The killing of Osama bin Laden by 25 special force members of the Navy Seals Team Six has produced a speech-for-the-moment from President Obama, followed by a media frenzy of news and commentary.
President Obama offered his views in a televised statement to the country (and world). He suggested that after ten years Osama bin Laden had been located, thanks to “the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals,” and then killed by the heroic “men who carried out the operation.” The implications of bin Laden’s death are profound, in Obama’s view, because they take out the leader and symbol of al-Qaeda. His death “is not the end of our efforts,” the President said. Al Qaeda groups may be in disarray but they “continue to pursue attacks against us.” The President maintains that the costs of the war in Afghanistan and anywhere else al-Qaeda threatens the US or its friends, are justified and necessary for the sake of our country’s security. The war(s) will continue because “the cause of security [for] our country is not complete.” In the end, the President says, America will prevail because “America can do whatever we set out mind to” and because we are “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
The media, at least initially echoed the president’s themes. Joshua Holland sums it up nicely:
“The Obama administration deftly shaped the media coverage of its prized kill by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unraveled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains. As Glenn Greenwald put it, that's par for the course: ‘the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.’”
(http://www.alternet.org/story/150857/7_deceptions_about_bin_laden%27s_killing_pushed_by_the_obama_administration)
In this celebratory account by the President, the killing of Osama is a “victory,” honorable, something only the US can do, and it enhances America’s security. Any terrorist group that threatens America or its allies will eventually be squashed. Former President Bush, Jr., could not have told the story any better. There is no context here, no history, no accounting of how US interference has been significant for over thirty years in bringing al-Qaeda to life and shaping, directly and indirectly, the devastation of an already impoverished Afghanistan society. There is no reference to any US interests in oil pipelines, minerals, and the sheer geo-political desire to maintain some semblance of US dominance in the region.
There are a few other issues that stand out for many of us who opposed the war in Afghanistan from the beginning and who support an expedited withdrawal. The ten-year-old war against and the occupation of Afghanistan have been overwhelmingly against a multi-faceted Taliban, who are variously fighting to advance their own interests, the commands of warlords, the corruption of the national police in their areas and a society ridden by corruption, the US air war, the Special Forces’ mid-night raids, the weakness of reconstruction projects, the illegitimate central government, conflicting interests among ethnic groups, prisons known for torture, refugee camps, high rates of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. This is a classic story of neo-colonialism, hardly a story of democracy, let alone a march toward true equality. By the way, there are no credible sources that establish that most so-called Taliban are linked to or dominated by the regional and international ambitions of al-Qaeda.
Democracy Now covered well the critical narrative of this killing of Osama. On the May 5th program, co-host Amy Goodman asked Allan Nairn, award-winning journalist and activist, for his thoughts on the event and whether, in his view, this could “mean the end of the US war with Afghanistan?” Before turning to Nairn’s answer to the first part of this question, consider the second part of it. Obama did not explicitly address the question of withdrawal; however, the thrust of his statement is in praise of military valor and an endless commitment to fighting our “enemies.” We’ll see by July whether Obama decides to withdraw many US troops from Afghanistan or not. His decision then will tell us something about his intentions and how much powerful military and corporate interests in the society continue to influence him.
ALLAN NAIRN [in response to Amy Goodman’s question]: “I don’t think it will [change much]. It should. It definitely should be an occasion for rethinking everything on a much bigger scale than Afghanistan.
“The first thing that struck me was seeing the Americans out in the streets celebrating outside the White House, outside the old World Trade Center site, people cheering, people exultant. And while some of that may come from bloodlust, I think a lot of it comes from a sense of justice. People like justice. They want to see it. And in this case, I think many people have the feeling, well, he got what he deserved. This was a man who had massacred civilians; he got what he deserved. And there’s a lot of truth to that. But if we recognize that someone who is willing to kill civilians en masse, someone who is willing to send young people out with weapons and bombs to, as President Obama put it, see to it that a family doesn’t have a loved one sitting at the dinner table anymore, see to it that a child and a parent never meet again, if we say that someone like that deserves to die, then we have to follow through on that idea, and we have to recognize, OK, if these things really are so enormous, we have to stop them. Killing bin Laden does not stop them. Bin Laden is dead, but the world is still governed by bin Ladens. People cheer because they thought they saw justice, but this was not justice delivered by—a kind of rough justice delivered by victims. This was one killer killing another, a big killer, the United States government, killing another, someone who’s actually a smaller one, bin Laden….
“Every day, the U.S., directly with its own forces, or indirectly through its proxy forces, its clients, is killing, at a minimum, dozens of people. I mean, just since Obama came in, in the one limited area of drone strikes in Pakistan, something like 1,900 have been killed just under Obama. And that started decades before 9/11. We have to stop these people, these powerful people like Obama, like Bush, like those who run the Pentagon, and who think it’s OK to take civilian life. And it doesn’t seem that they can be stopped by normal, routine politics, because under the American system, as in most other systems, people don’t even know this is happening. People know the face of bin Laden. They know the evil deeds that he’s done. They see that he is dead, and they say, "Oh, great, we killed bin Laden." But they don’t see the other 20, 30, 50, 100 people who the U.S. killed that day, many of them children, many of them civilians. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be out in the street cheering about those deaths.
“We’ve got to stop this practice. And Americans aren’t doing it. Egyptians, Tunisians are doing their part. They’ve risen up against the repression they face. I think we need an American uprising, if we’re to put a stop to this kind of killing of innocent people. And we need an American Romero, someone like Archbishop Romero of Salvador, who, in the face of massacres, of daily massacres of what in the end was more than 70,000 Salvadorans, stood up and said to the army of his country, 'Stop the repression. Defy your orders to kill, because there’s a higher principle.' About a little more than a week ago, I was in El Salvador and visited Romero’s old home, which I had never been to before, and saw that on his bookshelf he had Why Not the Best?, a campaign book by Jimmy Carter, which he had apparently been reading. Romero wrote to Jimmy Carter in his capacity as the archbishop in 1980, asking Carter to stop supporting the Salvadoran military that was slaughtering his people. And from what I know of Romero, he probably really believed that Carter would respond. He didn’t. Carter kept sending the aid. And within weeks, Romero himself was assassinated by death squad, that had originated from U.S. backing. Writing letters didn’t work in that case. And it doesn’t work here. You know, we’ve got to put a stop to this. Bin Laden is dead. And bin-Ladenism, if you want to call it that, should die also.”
Implications of Nairn’s statements.
The US has not brought peace and justice anywhere in the last 50 years or so through its military interventions or through US supported military dictatorships. Rather, it has supported regimes that have suppressed and stolen from their people, or allowed foreign transnational corporations ravage their environments and take their wealth.
(See Robert Scheer’s article, “A Monster of Our Own Creation,” for an overview of US involvement in Afghanistan over the last 30 years: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_monster_of_our_own_creation_20110504)
The American people are by and large ignorant of this long and brutal history. Nairn contends that the only way to challenge the US power structure and its militarized foreign policy is for the people to engage in massive protests and civil disobedience. It’s not clear how Americans will go from relative ignorance to involvement in such engagements. If it should happen, such an eruption would likely stem initially from declining economic conditions rather than the squandering of resources on foreign wars against poor countries. But once riled up, Americans may come to see the connection as salient, that is, the money spent on foreign wars and the military-industrial complex is mis-spent and needs to be redirected to building a sustainable and just society here at home.
Other issues connected to the killing of Osama include how much the Pakistan military and government knew about Bin Laden’s whereabouts, whether carrying out assassinations (killings) in other countries is legal and moral, whether it is time to withdraw troops or build on this “victory” and stay the course in Afghanistan. The question of what Pakistan’s authorities knew is still not resolved, though it doesn’t look like it will much alter Pakistan-US relations. It is indeed a violation of another country’s sovereignty, one of the bedrock assumptions of international law, such as it is. And the odds are in favor of keeping US troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2014 at least, that is, continuing the policy that has already be espoused by the President and military leaders.
There is another issue as well, that is, the issue of how helpful “torture” of key captives helped US intelligence to identify Bin Laden’s place of residence.
Is the right-wing assertion correct that “torture,” or what government officials have called “enhanced interrogation,” provided the information that enabled US authorities to locate the whereabouts of bin Laden? Many of us thought this was an issue long ago resolved, that is, torture has not borne useful intelligence about bin Laden’s location or on any other important issue related to this war.
Democracy Now provides the following summary of a position that rebuts right-wing assertions on its May 4th program.
“The death of Osama bin Laden has sparked a debate over whether torture of suspects held at places such as the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay helped track down and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Some claim the mission vindicated controversial Bush policies on harsh interrogation techniques. We speak with Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq. "The laying of the groundwork, if you will, of these [Bush-era] techniques, I believe wholeheartedly, slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda," Alexander says. "I’m convinced we would have found him a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse." (http://democracynow.org/2011/5/4/former_military_interrogator_matthew_alexander_despite
Here are excerpts from the interview.
MATTHEW ALEXANDER:
“The debate is skewed at this point. And one reason why is because we don’t know all the details, and secondly, because a lot is being left out of the conversation. And let me talk a little bit about that. One of the things that people aren’t talking about is the fact that one of the people that was confronted with this information that bin Laden had a courier is Sheikh al-Libi, who was held in a CIA secret prison and was tortured and who gave his CIA interrogators the name of the courier as being Maulawi Jan. And the CIA chased down that information and found out that person didn’t exist, that al-Libi had lied. And nobody is talking about the fact that al-Libi caused us to waste resources and time by chasing a false lead because he was tortured.
“The other thing that’s being left out of this conversation is the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed certainly knew the real name of the courier, whose nom de guerre or nickname was Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had to have known his real name or at least how to find him, a location that we might look, but he never gave up that information. And so, what we’re seeing is that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques, just like professional interrogators have been saying for years, always result in either limited information, false information or no information.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, what’s happening now is being used by many to justify torture.
MATTHEW ALEXANDER: “That’s correct. And, you know, when you look at the use of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques in the case of the trail of evidence that leads to Osama bin Laden, what you find is, time and time again, it slows down the chase. In 2003, when we—or '02, when we have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we have the person most likely to be able to lead us to bin Laden, and yet we don't get to him until 2011. You know, by any interrogation standard, eight years is a long time to not get information from people, and that’s probably directly related to the fact that he was waterboarded 183 times.
“The other piece of the story that we don’t know yet is we don’t know how the CIA learned the real family name of the courier, who again, his nickname was Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. And we don’t know how the CIA got his real family name, which really was the key piece of information that led us to be able to monitor phone calls and emails and discover his first name, his full name, which led to us finding him and then him leading us to the compound. So, until we have that information, which we don’t even know if it came from interrogations or if it came from a source, then we really don’t have a complete picture of how we got to bin Laden.
[….]
MATTHEW ALEXANDER: “ I was a senior interrogator in charge of an interrogation team. I conducted quite a few interrogations myself, over 300. I went out with the raid teams on these kill-or-capture missions to try and kill or capture, you know, leaders of al-Qaeda specifically. The time I was on the team, we were hunting a man named Zafar, who was in charge of the suicide bombing operations in northern Iraq.
And what I found is a couple things, Amy. The first is that non-coercive techniques, time and time again, proved extremely effective against al-Qaeda, especially techniques that came from law enforcement that were based on rapport building.
[….]
“And American interrogators have proven this time and time again, from World War II through Vietnam, through Panama, through the First Gulf War. And let’s go back to the successes of American interrogators. You know, American interrogators found Saddam Hussein without using torture. We found and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda Iraq, which helped turn the Iraq war, without using torture. And numerous other leaders that we have found and captured—another guy named Zafar, that I describe in my book—all these successes have come without the use of torture.” [The title of Alexander’s book is Kill or Capture.]
The Upshot –
It’s great that Osama bin Laden has been killed, though the illegal means used to do this give us pause. In the broad scope of US involvement in Afghanistan, it is like a blink of an eye. It is probably a morale booster for those who favor the war and helps to confirm in their minds that we are still a great military power and can do whatever we set our sights on. For critics of the war, it could –doubtfully - open up an opportunity to withdraw the troops: Mission Accomplished.
Close scrutiny of the US intervention in Afghanistan should leave little doubt that Obama and Congress should take decisive steps to bring it to a responsible end
President Obama offered his views in a televised statement to the country (and world). He suggested that after ten years Osama bin Laden had been located, thanks to “the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals,” and then killed by the heroic “men who carried out the operation.” The implications of bin Laden’s death are profound, in Obama’s view, because they take out the leader and symbol of al-Qaeda. His death “is not the end of our efforts,” the President said. Al Qaeda groups may be in disarray but they “continue to pursue attacks against us.” The President maintains that the costs of the war in Afghanistan and anywhere else al-Qaeda threatens the US or its friends, are justified and necessary for the sake of our country’s security. The war(s) will continue because “the cause of security [for] our country is not complete.” In the end, the President says, America will prevail because “America can do whatever we set out mind to” and because we are “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
The media, at least initially echoed the president’s themes. Joshua Holland sums it up nicely:
“The Obama administration deftly shaped the media coverage of its prized kill by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unraveled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains. As Glenn Greenwald put it, that's par for the course: ‘the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.’”
(http://www.alternet.org/story/150857/7_deceptions_about_bin_laden%27s_killing_pushed_by_the_obama_administration)
In this celebratory account by the President, the killing of Osama is a “victory,” honorable, something only the US can do, and it enhances America’s security. Any terrorist group that threatens America or its allies will eventually be squashed. Former President Bush, Jr., could not have told the story any better. There is no context here, no history, no accounting of how US interference has been significant for over thirty years in bringing al-Qaeda to life and shaping, directly and indirectly, the devastation of an already impoverished Afghanistan society. There is no reference to any US interests in oil pipelines, minerals, and the sheer geo-political desire to maintain some semblance of US dominance in the region.
There are a few other issues that stand out for many of us who opposed the war in Afghanistan from the beginning and who support an expedited withdrawal. The ten-year-old war against and the occupation of Afghanistan have been overwhelmingly against a multi-faceted Taliban, who are variously fighting to advance their own interests, the commands of warlords, the corruption of the national police in their areas and a society ridden by corruption, the US air war, the Special Forces’ mid-night raids, the weakness of reconstruction projects, the illegitimate central government, conflicting interests among ethnic groups, prisons known for torture, refugee camps, high rates of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. This is a classic story of neo-colonialism, hardly a story of democracy, let alone a march toward true equality. By the way, there are no credible sources that establish that most so-called Taliban are linked to or dominated by the regional and international ambitions of al-Qaeda.
Democracy Now covered well the critical narrative of this killing of Osama. On the May 5th program, co-host Amy Goodman asked Allan Nairn, award-winning journalist and activist, for his thoughts on the event and whether, in his view, this could “mean the end of the US war with Afghanistan?” Before turning to Nairn’s answer to the first part of this question, consider the second part of it. Obama did not explicitly address the question of withdrawal; however, the thrust of his statement is in praise of military valor and an endless commitment to fighting our “enemies.” We’ll see by July whether Obama decides to withdraw many US troops from Afghanistan or not. His decision then will tell us something about his intentions and how much powerful military and corporate interests in the society continue to influence him.
ALLAN NAIRN [in response to Amy Goodman’s question]: “I don’t think it will [change much]. It should. It definitely should be an occasion for rethinking everything on a much bigger scale than Afghanistan.
“The first thing that struck me was seeing the Americans out in the streets celebrating outside the White House, outside the old World Trade Center site, people cheering, people exultant. And while some of that may come from bloodlust, I think a lot of it comes from a sense of justice. People like justice. They want to see it. And in this case, I think many people have the feeling, well, he got what he deserved. This was a man who had massacred civilians; he got what he deserved. And there’s a lot of truth to that. But if we recognize that someone who is willing to kill civilians en masse, someone who is willing to send young people out with weapons and bombs to, as President Obama put it, see to it that a family doesn’t have a loved one sitting at the dinner table anymore, see to it that a child and a parent never meet again, if we say that someone like that deserves to die, then we have to follow through on that idea, and we have to recognize, OK, if these things really are so enormous, we have to stop them. Killing bin Laden does not stop them. Bin Laden is dead, but the world is still governed by bin Ladens. People cheer because they thought they saw justice, but this was not justice delivered by—a kind of rough justice delivered by victims. This was one killer killing another, a big killer, the United States government, killing another, someone who’s actually a smaller one, bin Laden….
“Every day, the U.S., directly with its own forces, or indirectly through its proxy forces, its clients, is killing, at a minimum, dozens of people. I mean, just since Obama came in, in the one limited area of drone strikes in Pakistan, something like 1,900 have been killed just under Obama. And that started decades before 9/11. We have to stop these people, these powerful people like Obama, like Bush, like those who run the Pentagon, and who think it’s OK to take civilian life. And it doesn’t seem that they can be stopped by normal, routine politics, because under the American system, as in most other systems, people don’t even know this is happening. People know the face of bin Laden. They know the evil deeds that he’s done. They see that he is dead, and they say, "Oh, great, we killed bin Laden." But they don’t see the other 20, 30, 50, 100 people who the U.S. killed that day, many of them children, many of them civilians. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be out in the street cheering about those deaths.
“We’ve got to stop this practice. And Americans aren’t doing it. Egyptians, Tunisians are doing their part. They’ve risen up against the repression they face. I think we need an American uprising, if we’re to put a stop to this kind of killing of innocent people. And we need an American Romero, someone like Archbishop Romero of Salvador, who, in the face of massacres, of daily massacres of what in the end was more than 70,000 Salvadorans, stood up and said to the army of his country, 'Stop the repression. Defy your orders to kill, because there’s a higher principle.' About a little more than a week ago, I was in El Salvador and visited Romero’s old home, which I had never been to before, and saw that on his bookshelf he had Why Not the Best?, a campaign book by Jimmy Carter, which he had apparently been reading. Romero wrote to Jimmy Carter in his capacity as the archbishop in 1980, asking Carter to stop supporting the Salvadoran military that was slaughtering his people. And from what I know of Romero, he probably really believed that Carter would respond. He didn’t. Carter kept sending the aid. And within weeks, Romero himself was assassinated by death squad, that had originated from U.S. backing. Writing letters didn’t work in that case. And it doesn’t work here. You know, we’ve got to put a stop to this. Bin Laden is dead. And bin-Ladenism, if you want to call it that, should die also.”
Implications of Nairn’s statements.
The US has not brought peace and justice anywhere in the last 50 years or so through its military interventions or through US supported military dictatorships. Rather, it has supported regimes that have suppressed and stolen from their people, or allowed foreign transnational corporations ravage their environments and take their wealth.
(See Robert Scheer’s article, “A Monster of Our Own Creation,” for an overview of US involvement in Afghanistan over the last 30 years: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_monster_of_our_own_creation_20110504)
The American people are by and large ignorant of this long and brutal history. Nairn contends that the only way to challenge the US power structure and its militarized foreign policy is for the people to engage in massive protests and civil disobedience. It’s not clear how Americans will go from relative ignorance to involvement in such engagements. If it should happen, such an eruption would likely stem initially from declining economic conditions rather than the squandering of resources on foreign wars against poor countries. But once riled up, Americans may come to see the connection as salient, that is, the money spent on foreign wars and the military-industrial complex is mis-spent and needs to be redirected to building a sustainable and just society here at home.
Other issues connected to the killing of Osama include how much the Pakistan military and government knew about Bin Laden’s whereabouts, whether carrying out assassinations (killings) in other countries is legal and moral, whether it is time to withdraw troops or build on this “victory” and stay the course in Afghanistan. The question of what Pakistan’s authorities knew is still not resolved, though it doesn’t look like it will much alter Pakistan-US relations. It is indeed a violation of another country’s sovereignty, one of the bedrock assumptions of international law, such as it is. And the odds are in favor of keeping US troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2014 at least, that is, continuing the policy that has already be espoused by the President and military leaders.
There is another issue as well, that is, the issue of how helpful “torture” of key captives helped US intelligence to identify Bin Laden’s place of residence.
Is the right-wing assertion correct that “torture,” or what government officials have called “enhanced interrogation,” provided the information that enabled US authorities to locate the whereabouts of bin Laden? Many of us thought this was an issue long ago resolved, that is, torture has not borne useful intelligence about bin Laden’s location or on any other important issue related to this war.
Democracy Now provides the following summary of a position that rebuts right-wing assertions on its May 4th program.
“The death of Osama bin Laden has sparked a debate over whether torture of suspects held at places such as the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay helped track down and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Some claim the mission vindicated controversial Bush policies on harsh interrogation techniques. We speak with Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq. "The laying of the groundwork, if you will, of these [Bush-era] techniques, I believe wholeheartedly, slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda," Alexander says. "I’m convinced we would have found him a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse." (http://democracynow.org/2011/5/4/former_military_interrogator_matthew_alexander_despite
Here are excerpts from the interview.
MATTHEW ALEXANDER:
“The debate is skewed at this point. And one reason why is because we don’t know all the details, and secondly, because a lot is being left out of the conversation. And let me talk a little bit about that. One of the things that people aren’t talking about is the fact that one of the people that was confronted with this information that bin Laden had a courier is Sheikh al-Libi, who was held in a CIA secret prison and was tortured and who gave his CIA interrogators the name of the courier as being Maulawi Jan. And the CIA chased down that information and found out that person didn’t exist, that al-Libi had lied. And nobody is talking about the fact that al-Libi caused us to waste resources and time by chasing a false lead because he was tortured.
“The other thing that’s being left out of this conversation is the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed certainly knew the real name of the courier, whose nom de guerre or nickname was Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had to have known his real name or at least how to find him, a location that we might look, but he never gave up that information. And so, what we’re seeing is that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques, just like professional interrogators have been saying for years, always result in either limited information, false information or no information.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, what’s happening now is being used by many to justify torture.
MATTHEW ALEXANDER: “That’s correct. And, you know, when you look at the use of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques in the case of the trail of evidence that leads to Osama bin Laden, what you find is, time and time again, it slows down the chase. In 2003, when we—or '02, when we have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we have the person most likely to be able to lead us to bin Laden, and yet we don't get to him until 2011. You know, by any interrogation standard, eight years is a long time to not get information from people, and that’s probably directly related to the fact that he was waterboarded 183 times.
“The other piece of the story that we don’t know yet is we don’t know how the CIA learned the real family name of the courier, who again, his nickname was Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. And we don’t know how the CIA got his real family name, which really was the key piece of information that led us to be able to monitor phone calls and emails and discover his first name, his full name, which led to us finding him and then him leading us to the compound. So, until we have that information, which we don’t even know if it came from interrogations or if it came from a source, then we really don’t have a complete picture of how we got to bin Laden.
[….]
MATTHEW ALEXANDER: “ I was a senior interrogator in charge of an interrogation team. I conducted quite a few interrogations myself, over 300. I went out with the raid teams on these kill-or-capture missions to try and kill or capture, you know, leaders of al-Qaeda specifically. The time I was on the team, we were hunting a man named Zafar, who was in charge of the suicide bombing operations in northern Iraq.
And what I found is a couple things, Amy. The first is that non-coercive techniques, time and time again, proved extremely effective against al-Qaeda, especially techniques that came from law enforcement that were based on rapport building.
[….]
“And American interrogators have proven this time and time again, from World War II through Vietnam, through Panama, through the First Gulf War. And let’s go back to the successes of American interrogators. You know, American interrogators found Saddam Hussein without using torture. We found and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda Iraq, which helped turn the Iraq war, without using torture. And numerous other leaders that we have found and captured—another guy named Zafar, that I describe in my book—all these successes have come without the use of torture.” [The title of Alexander’s book is Kill or Capture.]
The Upshot –
It’s great that Osama bin Laden has been killed, though the illegal means used to do this give us pause. In the broad scope of US involvement in Afghanistan, it is like a blink of an eye. It is probably a morale booster for those who favor the war and helps to confirm in their minds that we are still a great military power and can do whatever we set our sights on. For critics of the war, it could –doubtfully - open up an opportunity to withdraw the troops: Mission Accomplished.
Close scrutiny of the US intervention in Afghanistan should leave little doubt that Obama and Congress should take decisive steps to bring it to a responsible end
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Both Iraq and Afghanistan wars fail
Afghanistan: a destructive and losing situation for Afghans, US troops, US taxpayers; generating instability and violence in Central Asia; creating problems not solving them….
This site, stopafghanwar, has sought to gather information that illuminates why it is justifiable to oppose the US government’s war/occupation on Afghanistan. We have logged 343 posts since the site was begun by George Hartley back in November, 2009. Posts have covered diverse topics, including: Afghan government corruption, the use by warlords and druglords of private armies and militias to control local populations in areas not under Taliban influence, US contractor abuses, civilian deaths, infrastructure destruction, refugees, US troop casualties and deaths, the costs in dollars to US taxpayers, the confusion and ineffectiveness in US military strategies, how the war/occupation fits into the US imperialist goal of maintaining control over oil in the Middle East and Caspian Sea regions, the flawed Afghan elections, detention and torture of Afghani citizens, the use of cluster bombs and drones by the US air force, the lack of reconstruction, the brutality of the occupation, the need for negotiations with all parties, and so on.
We’ve been inspired by the brave voice of Malalai Joya through her book, Women Among Warlords, her extraordinary courage, and her articles and speeches. Joya writes in the “Introduction” to her book:
“We need security and a helping hand from friends around the world, but not this endless US-led ‘war on terror,’ which is in fact a war against the Afghan people. The Afghan people are not terrorists; we are the victims of terrorism Today the soil of Afghanistan is full of land mines, bullets, and bombs – when what we really need is an invasion of hospitals, clinics, and schools for boys and girls.” Then, a few sentences later: “We are caught between two enemies – the Taliban on one side and the US/NATO forces and their warlord friends on the other….During his election campaign, the new president of the United States, Barack Obama, spoke of sending tens of thousands more foreign troops to Afghanistan, but he did not speak out against the twin plagues of corruption and warlordism that are destroying my country. But for Afghans, Obama’s military build up will only bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians, while it may not even weaken the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”
We also need to be reminded that the Iraq war and occupation also do not represent “success” stories and should not be used as examples to justify the continuation of the war/occupation in Afghanistan
US actions in Iraq, from 1991 to the present left the country in ruins, insofar as the majority of the population is concerned. On the Dec. 22, 2010 post, I offered selected parts of a series of articles and reports that help to confirm the environmental destruction and the human misery among Iraqis caused or facilitated by the US-led war and occupation. My general point then and now is that the Iraq war is an illegal war, war crimes were committed, and the country has been devastated and its people subjected to great harm and death. (see
http://stopafghanwar.blogspot.com/2010/12/iraq-war-will-not-end-with-us-troop.html, or google “stopafghanwar, Iraq war will not end with withdrawal of US troops".)
"The US leaders said that we were invading Iraq to “liberate” it. Tom Engelhardt summarizes in the following paragraph from his book, The American Way of War (2010) the “devastation” that US forces brought to the country.
“Since then, Saddam Hussein’s killing fields have been dwarfed by a fierce set of destructive US military operations, as well as insurgencies cum-civil-wars-cum-terrorist-acts: major cities have been largely or partially destroyed, or ethnically cleansed; millions of Iraqis have been forced from their homes, becoming internal refugees or going into exile; untold numbers of Iraqis have been imprisoned, assassinated, tortured, or abused; and the country’s cultural heritage has been ransacked. Basic services – electricity, water, food – were terribly impaired and the economy was simply wrecked. Health services were crippled. Oil production upon which Iraq now depends for up to 90 percent of its government funds, has only relatively recently barely surpassed the worst levels of the pre-invasion era” (155)
The majority of Republicans polled still think our war/occupation in Iraq is a “success.”
Polls done in December, 2010, by the Pew Research Center and by the Gallup Poll Third, found a bipartisan split among respondents, with Republican majorities viewing the war as the “right decision” and as a “success,” while a large majority of Democrats holding the opposite views. These findings are unsettling, particularly because of the Republican political gains in the 2010 US congressional and state elections and their right-wing and militaristic agendas.
Pew Research Center poll – http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
Gallup poll – http://www.politicsdailey.com/2010/08.21/iraq-war-seen-as-failure-by-53-percent-of-americans - e.g., 70% of the Democrats say it will go down as a failure, while 60% of Republicans think the war will be judged as a success.”
Some of the delusions of our foreign policy decision makers
One important implication of presenting Iraq as a “success” story is that it helps to rationalize US interventions and long wars and occupations in other places, including Afghanistan. The idea is that if we continue long enough in a given war, then it will turn out better than if we withdraw “prematurely.” Derek Leebaert explores this kind of thinking in his book, Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy.” Leebaert identifies six delusions, two of which are especially pertinent to the present discussion:
“A sensation of urgency and of ‘crisis’ that accompanies the belief that most any resolute action is superior to restraint; it’s a demeanor that’s joined by the emergency man’s eagerness to be his country’s revealer of dangers, real and imagined.”
“The repeated belief that America can shape the destiny of other countries overnight and that the hearts and minds of distant people are throbbing to be transformed into something the way we see ourselves” (pp. 7-8).
Good War, Bad War - Nonsense!
Captured by such delusions perhaps, or by the imperatives of imperialistic constraints, US leaders, most illustriously President Obama, have defined the US-led Iraq war and occupation as a “bad” but successful war, and the Afghan war as a “good” war. Well, to repeat a point made many times on this site, we believe that the Afghan war is misbegotten and horrible, not a “good” war. Every war is unimaginably destructive, especially on the surroundings and people caught up in and trapped by this or that war. In this sense, the so-called successful Iraq war is another nightmarish example in these terms. If anything, the Iraq war should not serve as an example for continuing the Afghanistan war but as an example for ending it now.
A cop out - President Obama’s “Oval Office Speech on Iraq,” August 31, 2010
On August 31 of 2010, President Obama gave a speech in which, among things, he said that we had achieved our military goals in Iraq and thus:
(1) “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended [not true];
(2) “[we] have removed nearly 100,000 troops from Iraq….[and] closed or transferred hundreds of bases to the Iraqis….[and] moved millions of pieces of equipment out of Iraq.”[but over 90 bases remain in US hands, including the biggest bases]….
(3) “all US troops will leave by the end of next year” [now its 2014 - maybe].
(4) He also said that there is an “elected government” in power” [fragile, with Sunni participation fragile and key decisions about the distribution of oil revenues still to be made] and
(5) the Iraqi people have rejected“sectarian conflict” [there still violent attacks, though down in number but trending upward]
There are two principal implications of President Obama’s speech. First, the speech emphasizes that the US occupation forces and allied for forces have achieved victory, or something like it, in Iraq. Second, the speech suggests that the US war/occupation can serve as a model for how to deal effectively with authoritarian governments, insurgents or “terrorists” in other parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, or anywhere else in “developing countries.” The strong thrust of the speech is that the US has the right to intervene anywhere it identifies a threat to the US or its allies in the developing world, launch attacks by the US military and special forces, and attempt to replace a government that is antagonistic to US interests or “a failed state” or strengthen a government that acts in US interests. This latter point suggests that US leaders prefer governments, even dictatorial governments, that will advance or protect US interests regardless of the effects of the people of a given country. This has been true of many US interventions in many “developing” countries for the last 150 years or so. (See a partial but detailed documentation of this point in William Blum’s Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.)
Bush-like
We think that President Obama’s declaration of a successful end of the US combat involvement in Iraq is disappointingly close to Bush’s misbegotten statement of “mission accomplished.” Today, Iraq represents seven years of turmoil and violence for millions of Iraqis, and counterproductive costs in life and resources for both Iraq and the United States. Obama says nothing in his speech about the devastation of Iraq’s physical and social infrastructures or the great harm we have done to Iraqi civilians – children as well. Rather, Obama’s statements bring to mind I.F. Stone’s belief that “all governments lie,” or the title of David Swanson’s recent book, War is a Lie.
The Compass of Compassion
I found these words in a book I've just finished reading by Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point. The book focuses on Safina's experiences during a year observing "nature," all sorts of birds, fish-life, and various habitats, while also discussing the mostly bad news about how humans are destroying the earth's habitats. On the last page of the book, Safina writes these inspiring and uplifting words:
"The compass of compassion asks not, 'What is good for me?' but 'What is good?' Not what is best for me but what is best. Not what is right for me, but what is right. Not "How much can we take? but "How much ought we leave?' and "How much might we give?' Not what is easy but what is worthy. Not what is practical but what is moral. With each action we decide whether to sow the grapes of wrath or the seeds of peace.
"The compass of compassion suggests that very few things, each simple, are needed. We shouldn't hate people for the group they were born into, or because we hold conflicting beliefs about things that cannot be proven, seen, or measured. We can't infinitely take more from - or infinitely add more people to - a finite planet. While living in a world endowed with self-renewing energy, we can't run civilization on energy that diminishes the world. If we can get these simple things under control, I think we could be okay. Simple does not mean easy. Yet more than ever before in history, we can now understand what's needed. But nations need to act boldly and soon. Time runs short at an accelerating pace" (p 356).
This site, stopafghanwar, has sought to gather information that illuminates why it is justifiable to oppose the US government’s war/occupation on Afghanistan. We have logged 343 posts since the site was begun by George Hartley back in November, 2009. Posts have covered diverse topics, including: Afghan government corruption, the use by warlords and druglords of private armies and militias to control local populations in areas not under Taliban influence, US contractor abuses, civilian deaths, infrastructure destruction, refugees, US troop casualties and deaths, the costs in dollars to US taxpayers, the confusion and ineffectiveness in US military strategies, how the war/occupation fits into the US imperialist goal of maintaining control over oil in the Middle East and Caspian Sea regions, the flawed Afghan elections, detention and torture of Afghani citizens, the use of cluster bombs and drones by the US air force, the lack of reconstruction, the brutality of the occupation, the need for negotiations with all parties, and so on.
We’ve been inspired by the brave voice of Malalai Joya through her book, Women Among Warlords, her extraordinary courage, and her articles and speeches. Joya writes in the “Introduction” to her book:
“We need security and a helping hand from friends around the world, but not this endless US-led ‘war on terror,’ which is in fact a war against the Afghan people. The Afghan people are not terrorists; we are the victims of terrorism Today the soil of Afghanistan is full of land mines, bullets, and bombs – when what we really need is an invasion of hospitals, clinics, and schools for boys and girls.” Then, a few sentences later: “We are caught between two enemies – the Taliban on one side and the US/NATO forces and their warlord friends on the other….During his election campaign, the new president of the United States, Barack Obama, spoke of sending tens of thousands more foreign troops to Afghanistan, but he did not speak out against the twin plagues of corruption and warlordism that are destroying my country. But for Afghans, Obama’s military build up will only bring more suffering and death to innocent civilians, while it may not even weaken the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”
We also need to be reminded that the Iraq war and occupation also do not represent “success” stories and should not be used as examples to justify the continuation of the war/occupation in Afghanistan
US actions in Iraq, from 1991 to the present left the country in ruins, insofar as the majority of the population is concerned. On the Dec. 22, 2010 post, I offered selected parts of a series of articles and reports that help to confirm the environmental destruction and the human misery among Iraqis caused or facilitated by the US-led war and occupation. My general point then and now is that the Iraq war is an illegal war, war crimes were committed, and the country has been devastated and its people subjected to great harm and death. (see
http://stopafghanwar.blogspot.com/2010/12/iraq-war-will-not-end-with-us-troop.html, or google “stopafghanwar, Iraq war will not end with withdrawal of US troops".)
"The US leaders said that we were invading Iraq to “liberate” it. Tom Engelhardt summarizes in the following paragraph from his book, The American Way of War (2010) the “devastation” that US forces brought to the country.
“Since then, Saddam Hussein’s killing fields have been dwarfed by a fierce set of destructive US military operations, as well as insurgencies cum-civil-wars-cum-terrorist-acts: major cities have been largely or partially destroyed, or ethnically cleansed; millions of Iraqis have been forced from their homes, becoming internal refugees or going into exile; untold numbers of Iraqis have been imprisoned, assassinated, tortured, or abused; and the country’s cultural heritage has been ransacked. Basic services – electricity, water, food – were terribly impaired and the economy was simply wrecked. Health services were crippled. Oil production upon which Iraq now depends for up to 90 percent of its government funds, has only relatively recently barely surpassed the worst levels of the pre-invasion era” (155)
The majority of Republicans polled still think our war/occupation in Iraq is a “success.”
Polls done in December, 2010, by the Pew Research Center and by the Gallup Poll Third, found a bipartisan split among respondents, with Republican majorities viewing the war as the “right decision” and as a “success,” while a large majority of Democrats holding the opposite views. These findings are unsettling, particularly because of the Republican political gains in the 2010 US congressional and state elections and their right-wing and militaristic agendas.
Pew Research Center poll – http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
Gallup poll – http://www.politicsdailey.com/2010/08.21/iraq-war-seen-as-failure-by-53-percent-of-americans - e.g., 70% of the Democrats say it will go down as a failure, while 60% of Republicans think the war will be judged as a success.”
Some of the delusions of our foreign policy decision makers
One important implication of presenting Iraq as a “success” story is that it helps to rationalize US interventions and long wars and occupations in other places, including Afghanistan. The idea is that if we continue long enough in a given war, then it will turn out better than if we withdraw “prematurely.” Derek Leebaert explores this kind of thinking in his book, Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy.” Leebaert identifies six delusions, two of which are especially pertinent to the present discussion:
“A sensation of urgency and of ‘crisis’ that accompanies the belief that most any resolute action is superior to restraint; it’s a demeanor that’s joined by the emergency man’s eagerness to be his country’s revealer of dangers, real and imagined.”
“The repeated belief that America can shape the destiny of other countries overnight and that the hearts and minds of distant people are throbbing to be transformed into something the way we see ourselves” (pp. 7-8).
Good War, Bad War - Nonsense!
Captured by such delusions perhaps, or by the imperatives of imperialistic constraints, US leaders, most illustriously President Obama, have defined the US-led Iraq war and occupation as a “bad” but successful war, and the Afghan war as a “good” war. Well, to repeat a point made many times on this site, we believe that the Afghan war is misbegotten and horrible, not a “good” war. Every war is unimaginably destructive, especially on the surroundings and people caught up in and trapped by this or that war. In this sense, the so-called successful Iraq war is another nightmarish example in these terms. If anything, the Iraq war should not serve as an example for continuing the Afghanistan war but as an example for ending it now.
A cop out - President Obama’s “Oval Office Speech on Iraq,” August 31, 2010
On August 31 of 2010, President Obama gave a speech in which, among things, he said that we had achieved our military goals in Iraq and thus:
(1) “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended [not true];
(2) “[we] have removed nearly 100,000 troops from Iraq….[and] closed or transferred hundreds of bases to the Iraqis….[and] moved millions of pieces of equipment out of Iraq.”[but over 90 bases remain in US hands, including the biggest bases]….
(3) “all US troops will leave by the end of next year” [now its 2014 - maybe].
(4) He also said that there is an “elected government” in power” [fragile, with Sunni participation fragile and key decisions about the distribution of oil revenues still to be made] and
(5) the Iraqi people have rejected“sectarian conflict” [there still violent attacks, though down in number but trending upward]
There are two principal implications of President Obama’s speech. First, the speech emphasizes that the US occupation forces and allied for forces have achieved victory, or something like it, in Iraq. Second, the speech suggests that the US war/occupation can serve as a model for how to deal effectively with authoritarian governments, insurgents or “terrorists” in other parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, or anywhere else in “developing countries.” The strong thrust of the speech is that the US has the right to intervene anywhere it identifies a threat to the US or its allies in the developing world, launch attacks by the US military and special forces, and attempt to replace a government that is antagonistic to US interests or “a failed state” or strengthen a government that acts in US interests. This latter point suggests that US leaders prefer governments, even dictatorial governments, that will advance or protect US interests regardless of the effects of the people of a given country. This has been true of many US interventions in many “developing” countries for the last 150 years or so. (See a partial but detailed documentation of this point in William Blum’s Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.)
Bush-like
We think that President Obama’s declaration of a successful end of the US combat involvement in Iraq is disappointingly close to Bush’s misbegotten statement of “mission accomplished.” Today, Iraq represents seven years of turmoil and violence for millions of Iraqis, and counterproductive costs in life and resources for both Iraq and the United States. Obama says nothing in his speech about the devastation of Iraq’s physical and social infrastructures or the great harm we have done to Iraqi civilians – children as well. Rather, Obama’s statements bring to mind I.F. Stone’s belief that “all governments lie,” or the title of David Swanson’s recent book, War is a Lie.
The Compass of Compassion
I found these words in a book I've just finished reading by Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point. The book focuses on Safina's experiences during a year observing "nature," all sorts of birds, fish-life, and various habitats, while also discussing the mostly bad news about how humans are destroying the earth's habitats. On the last page of the book, Safina writes these inspiring and uplifting words:
"The compass of compassion asks not, 'What is good for me?' but 'What is good?' Not what is best for me but what is best. Not what is right for me, but what is right. Not "How much can we take? but "How much ought we leave?' and "How much might we give?' Not what is easy but what is worthy. Not what is practical but what is moral. With each action we decide whether to sow the grapes of wrath or the seeds of peace.
"The compass of compassion suggests that very few things, each simple, are needed. We shouldn't hate people for the group they were born into, or because we hold conflicting beliefs about things that cannot be proven, seen, or measured. We can't infinitely take more from - or infinitely add more people to - a finite planet. While living in a world endowed with self-renewing energy, we can't run civilization on energy that diminishes the world. If we can get these simple things under control, I think we could be okay. Simple does not mean easy. Yet more than ever before in history, we can now understand what's needed. But nations need to act boldly and soon. Time runs short at an accelerating pace" (p 356).
Saturday, January 29, 2011
What Obama didn't say about the US intervention in Afghanistan
In his State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama did not spend much time on foreign policy and, with respect to Afghanistan, offered an upbeat picture that doesn’t jive with many reports of the actual conditions in that country. Consider some of the highlights from just a few of the sources that challenge Obama’s things-are-going-well assessment.
----------
Mismanaged War, Corrupt Afghan Government, Spreading Taliban Control –
Robert Dreyfuss provides an excellent analysis of the foreign-policy aspects of Obama’s speech in an article titled, “State of the Union Glosses Over Obama’s Foreign Policy Failures.” Of particular interest for this website, Dreyfuss makes the following points on some of the bad news from Afghanistan that Obama disregards.
“On Afghanistan... Obama put a rosy gloss on the catastrophically mismanaged war, in which more and more Afghan provinces have fallen under Taliban control or influence, with impregnable safe havens in neighboring Pakistan feeding an insurgency that won’t go away, in a country whose government is irreparably corrupt and feckless. To Obama, though, everything’s fine.”
Source: http://www.thenation.com/blog/158034/obamas-sotu-make-world-go-away
----------
No clear withdrawal date for bringing US troops home. Even Obama is unsure.
Jason Ditz focuses on the on contradictory statements coming from the White House regarding a withdrawal date for at least a start of withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Here Ditz refers to President Obama’s SOTU speech.
“…he [President Obama] lauded the Afghan War and the “enduring partnership” it was creating. Perhaps the only interesting thing, and I say this only for desperation to find something, is that he insisted troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in July.
“Of course, he announced the July drawdown in December, and the comments seem to be taken largely from that, but it seems that his speechwriters forget that he publicly disavowed the July 2011 drawdown date in June, and several more times since then.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/25/president-obama-rehashes-dubious-claims-about-wars/
----------
Some officials believe the occupation of Afghan will continue well beyond 2014. Obama has not rejected this belief.
In another post, Jason Ditz quotes a EU envoy who can imagine another 30 years of NATO (including US) occupation, while less effusive US and other officials see the war/occupation lasting past 2014, the latest target date mentioned by Obama.
“Speaking today from Kabul, European Union Special Representative Vygaudas Usackas mocked the notion of ending the Afghan War in 2014, insisting it was time to “be honest with ourselves” that the war will last much, much longer.
“How long? Well according to Usackas, who was the former Foreign Minister of Luthuania, he believes NATO will have to commit to another 30 years of war, though he conceded that somewhere along the line, the 150,000 NATO troops could probably be reduced before then.
“…Despite repeated claims of vague “progress” in the war a number of officials from the US and Britain have openly talked about the war lasting another decade or longer.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/26/eu-envoy-eyes-another-30-years-of-nato-occupation-in-afghanistan
----------
US building more military bases in Afghanistan – another fact Obama failed to include in his State of the Union address
The Skeptics, writing on The National Interest blog, note that President Obama is not much interested in informing the American people about “the expansion of America’s Afghan military bases.” The Skeptic draw their evidence from Nick Turse, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, who “has done a fantastic job collating which of America’s forward operating bases (FOBs) are being expanded, improved, and hardened.” Here’s one example:
“FOB Shank in Logar Province has a new $12 million, 1.4-mile-long airstrip that can accommodate Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. According to Turse, government documents released in August show that in addition, FOB Shank ‘will be adding a new two-story barracks, constructed of containerized housing units known as ‘relocatable buildings’ or RLBs, to accommodate 1,100 more troops. Support facilities, access roads, parking areas, new utilities, and other infrastructure required to sustain the housing complex will also be installed for an estimated $5 million to $10 million….New aircraft maintenance facilities and 80,000 square feet more of taxiways will also be built at the cost of another $10 million to $25 million.’”
You can find the full list at: The Skeptics Base Building in Afghanistan? The National Interest, Jan 25, 2011-01-29. Source: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/base-building-afghanistan-4774
----------
Jason Ditz points to recent evidence of a “dramatic increase in US troops killed by Afghanistan IEDs in 2010.” Obama stayed away from this subject.
Citing “official war data,” the trend in US military fatalities and wounded continues upward.
“The toll showed a 60 percent increase in deaths, with 268 US troops killed in 2010. This was also about the same number as were killed in all of 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. This was despite claims from officials that the Pentagon several times during 2010 that the number of IEDs was ‘falling’.”
“The number of wounded was even worse, however, with figures showing a 178 percent increase from 2009 to 2010, and 3,366 confirmed injuries from IED attacks. This was dramatically more than had been wounded by IEDs in the entire rest of the war.”
Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/26/dramatic-increase-in-us-troops-killed-by-afghanistan-ieds-in-2010
----------
US plans for supporting Afghan national security forces ineffective and a waste of billions. Nothing like this from Obama.
Marisa Taylor writes for McClatchy Newspapers on a report by “auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” who find that the “Obama administration’s $11.4 billion plan to bolster Afghanistan’s security forces is ‘at risk’ because of poor planning.” The report was released on Wednesday, January 26.
“Auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said the U.S. government ‘could not provide the plans or justifications’ for building nearly 900 police stations and garrisons and other facilities for Afghanistan's national security forces.
“The report confirms earlier findings in a series late last year by McClatchy that found the ambitious strategy, like much of the wider Afghan reconstruction effort, is faltering. The program is a linchpin of President Barack Obama's strategy to strengthen Afghan security forces so 100,000 U.S. troops can come home by the end of 2014.”
[….]
“McClatchy also discovered that dozens of structures across the country either were poorly constructed or never completed at all. Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers who were supposed to be living in garrisons were still housed in tents.”
[….]
"’The government of Afghanistan does not have the financial or technical capacity to sustain’" buildings once they are completed, the auditors concluded.
“As a result, the U.S. has awarded two contracts to ITT Corp. totaling $800 million to help maintain the facilities.”
[….]
“McClatchy found that ITT's work was one of nearly $4.5 billion in contracts in Afghanistan that were awarded to companies even though they violated laws or had high-profile disputes over previous projects.”
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/26/107500/watchdog-faults-obamas-afghan.html#
Also see: http://thehill.com/news-by-subjetc-defense-homeland-security/139729-afghanistan-watchdog-says-11-billion-in-us-funds-are-at-risk
----------
Other failures in US-funded reconstruction projects, including the largest power plant in Kabul. Generally, projects are over-budget, of poor construction, involving corrupt officials, unfinished, unmaintained if and when completed. Another subject the Obama administration leaves alone.
Reporting for McClatchy Newspapers, Marisa Taylor and Dion Nissenbaum write on “Kabul's largest power plant project” and how it has been held up by US officials as “a shining example of how American taxpayers' dollars would pull Afghanistan out of grinding poverty and decades of demoralizing conflict.” This is just one of the examples of inefficiency on which they report. Here I quote from the article.
“But behind the scenes…officials were voicing outrage over the slow pace of the [power plant] project and its skyrocketing costs. The problems were so numerous that one company official told the U.S. government that he'd understand if the contract were canceled.
“‘We are discouraged and exhausted with the continued flow of bad information,’ one U.S. official complained in an internal memo that McClatchy obtained. ‘This is a huge example of poor performance on an extremely important development project.’
“Despite expressing serious misgivings in internal memos and meetings, the U.S. agency [USAID] that was overseeing the project more than doubled the plant's budget.
[….]
“In the rush to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. government has charged ahead with ever-expanding development programs despite questions about their impact, cost and value to America's multi-billion-dollar campaign to shore up the pro-Western Afghan president and prevent Taliban insurgents from seizing control.
[….]
“An approach that experts denounce as ad hoc and politicized has led to programs with mixed, if not poor, results and has soured many Afghans on the U.S. military's presence in their country, even as the Obama administration is banking on their support.
“McClatchy found that U.S. government funding for at least 15 large-scale programs and projects grew from just over $1 billion to nearly $3 billion despite the government's questions about their effectiveness or cost.
[….]
“The projects, overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development, are designed to address different goals in Afghanistan but all offer evidence that the U.S. has downplayed their waste and inefficiency in its zeal to demonstrate short-term success.”
"Meanwhile, Afghanistan is littered with scores of unfinished or hazardous buildings constructed with American money. Programs continue to receive tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid even as contractors or government officials concede that the goals are unrealistic or inappropriate for Afghanistan. For instance, the U.S. is seeking to dramatically increase the number of women employed by local governments, even though previous projects with similar aims have failed because of threats to female workers.
“While many of the programs were launched under the Bush administration, several have continued and have been given more money on President Barack Obama's watch.
[….]
“Adding to the problems, the list of recipients seemed to include thousands of phantom farmers: Fingerprints collected as proof that the farmers had received vouchers for buying seeds appeared to be falsified in more than half the 4,500 records the auditors reviewed.
“Even so, the Obama administration revamped the program's safeguards, dramatically increased its budget and transformed it into a broader counterinsurgency initiative that hands out jobs, fertilizer and support to farmers who are willing to cooperate with the U.S-backed government.
The program's original price tag: $33 million. Since the questions were raised: $431 million.
[….]
Some U.S. officials and contractors acknowledge privately that they're spending more on high-profile, flawed projects because of the pressure to show results quickly that could help bolster the government of President Hamid Karzai.
[….]
“To manage spending in Afghanistan, the USAID increased its staff, but it still struggles to keep tabs on programs. One U.S. official said the agency got "tied down doing paperwork and can't get out into the field to see if the projects are moving ahead." At the same time, it's quadrupled its overall spending to $300 million a month, with more than a quarter of it going directly to the Afghan government.
“When it comes to large-scale, ambitious aid programs, many outside experts are at a loss as how to handle programs in Afghanistan better, and they say the problems raise fundamental questions about whether the U.S.'s efforts to rebuild the country can work.”
[….]
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/12/106681/troubled-us-afghan-projects-mushroom.html#
----------
Poppy eradication efforts by NATO and Afghan government backfiring. Such efforts have frequently ended up supporting large heroin dealers and corrupt government officials, while driving farmers to look for protection from various Taliban groups. Obama - not a word.
Ryan Harvey explores how large poppy growers and high government officials have benefited from the Afghan governments “efforts” to eradicate poppy farms. That’s called counter-productive, not counter-insurgency. Here I quote the first paragraphs from Harvey’s long and informative article.
“It has long been known inside Afghanistan that heroin dealers in high positions benefit from the United States and Afghan governments' counternarcotics policies.
“Now the American public can get a glimpse. US embassy cables published recently by WikiLeaks expose the insider opinion that Afghan officials are using poppy eradication teams to weed out the competitors of major traffickers with whom they are linked.
“The leaked cables follow previous observations, investigations, government reports and testimonials by former contractors that say eradication efforts have long been corrupted and misused, and that Afghan officials have consistently thwarted any serious attempts at stemming the heroin trade.
“The US and Britain began the operations in 2002, with the Afghan government acting as a silent partner and contractors like DynCorp pulling security. The theory was that if the Taliban was to be defeated, it would largely be through removing their access to the heroin industry and its associated taxes and bribes.
[….]
“But many of the people who were and still are responsible for the eradication program are corrupt officials in the Afghan government, most of whom are just as involved in the heroin economy, if not more, as the growers they are targeting.
“Indeed, instead of hurting the Taliban, the operations, in the words of former US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, were ‘driving farmers into the hands of the Taliban.’
“It was for that reason that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has stepped back recently, giving the Afghan government the reins in order to give the programs an "Afghan face." Consolidating Power
“But there's more to NATO's shift than farmers running to the Taliban after having their livelihoods destroyed by eradication teams.
“US embassy cables written in 2007 and leaked this December suggest that poppy eradication teams have been used by warlords and other powerful provincial leaders to consolidate power.”
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/how-afghan-poppy-eradication-efforts-are-helping-worlds-largest-heroin-dealers67175
----------
In short, Obama’s words begin to appear hollow when the darker aspects of the US/NATO war/occupation of Afghanistan are put forth. Politically, the President's upbeat message and references to a hopeful future may temporarily grip his audience and raise their spirits, but it is not sustainable in light of the facts.
David Swanson concludes his fine article, “Why Pentagon Claims MLK Would Love War in Afghanistan, with the following words from Martin Luther King, Jr,” making clear that the Obama administration is hardly in the King tradition when it comes of Afghanistan.
"I am convinced," King said, "that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society into a person-oriented society. . . . On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. . . . The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military 'defense' than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Source: http://zcommunications.org/why-pentagon-claims-mlk-would-love-war-on-afghanistan-by-david-swanson
.
----------
Mismanaged War, Corrupt Afghan Government, Spreading Taliban Control –
Robert Dreyfuss provides an excellent analysis of the foreign-policy aspects of Obama’s speech in an article titled, “State of the Union Glosses Over Obama’s Foreign Policy Failures.” Of particular interest for this website, Dreyfuss makes the following points on some of the bad news from Afghanistan that Obama disregards.
“On Afghanistan... Obama put a rosy gloss on the catastrophically mismanaged war, in which more and more Afghan provinces have fallen under Taliban control or influence, with impregnable safe havens in neighboring Pakistan feeding an insurgency that won’t go away, in a country whose government is irreparably corrupt and feckless. To Obama, though, everything’s fine.”
Source: http://www.thenation.com/blog/158034/obamas-sotu-make-world-go-away
----------
No clear withdrawal date for bringing US troops home. Even Obama is unsure.
Jason Ditz focuses on the on contradictory statements coming from the White House regarding a withdrawal date for at least a start of withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Here Ditz refers to President Obama’s SOTU speech.
“…he [President Obama] lauded the Afghan War and the “enduring partnership” it was creating. Perhaps the only interesting thing, and I say this only for desperation to find something, is that he insisted troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in July.
“Of course, he announced the July drawdown in December, and the comments seem to be taken largely from that, but it seems that his speechwriters forget that he publicly disavowed the July 2011 drawdown date in June, and several more times since then.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/25/president-obama-rehashes-dubious-claims-about-wars/
----------
Some officials believe the occupation of Afghan will continue well beyond 2014. Obama has not rejected this belief.
In another post, Jason Ditz quotes a EU envoy who can imagine another 30 years of NATO (including US) occupation, while less effusive US and other officials see the war/occupation lasting past 2014, the latest target date mentioned by Obama.
“Speaking today from Kabul, European Union Special Representative Vygaudas Usackas mocked the notion of ending the Afghan War in 2014, insisting it was time to “be honest with ourselves” that the war will last much, much longer.
“How long? Well according to Usackas, who was the former Foreign Minister of Luthuania, he believes NATO will have to commit to another 30 years of war, though he conceded that somewhere along the line, the 150,000 NATO troops could probably be reduced before then.
“…Despite repeated claims of vague “progress” in the war a number of officials from the US and Britain have openly talked about the war lasting another decade or longer.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/26/eu-envoy-eyes-another-30-years-of-nato-occupation-in-afghanistan
----------
US building more military bases in Afghanistan – another fact Obama failed to include in his State of the Union address
The Skeptics, writing on The National Interest blog, note that President Obama is not much interested in informing the American people about “the expansion of America’s Afghan military bases.” The Skeptic draw their evidence from Nick Turse, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, who “has done a fantastic job collating which of America’s forward operating bases (FOBs) are being expanded, improved, and hardened.” Here’s one example:
“FOB Shank in Logar Province has a new $12 million, 1.4-mile-long airstrip that can accommodate Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. According to Turse, government documents released in August show that in addition, FOB Shank ‘will be adding a new two-story barracks, constructed of containerized housing units known as ‘relocatable buildings’ or RLBs, to accommodate 1,100 more troops. Support facilities, access roads, parking areas, new utilities, and other infrastructure required to sustain the housing complex will also be installed for an estimated $5 million to $10 million….New aircraft maintenance facilities and 80,000 square feet more of taxiways will also be built at the cost of another $10 million to $25 million.’”
You can find the full list at: The Skeptics Base Building in Afghanistan? The National Interest, Jan 25, 2011-01-29. Source: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/base-building-afghanistan-4774
----------
Jason Ditz points to recent evidence of a “dramatic increase in US troops killed by Afghanistan IEDs in 2010.” Obama stayed away from this subject.
Citing “official war data,” the trend in US military fatalities and wounded continues upward.
“The toll showed a 60 percent increase in deaths, with 268 US troops killed in 2010. This was also about the same number as were killed in all of 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. This was despite claims from officials that the Pentagon several times during 2010 that the number of IEDs was ‘falling’.”
“The number of wounded was even worse, however, with figures showing a 178 percent increase from 2009 to 2010, and 3,366 confirmed injuries from IED attacks. This was dramatically more than had been wounded by IEDs in the entire rest of the war.”
Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/26/dramatic-increase-in-us-troops-killed-by-afghanistan-ieds-in-2010
----------
US plans for supporting Afghan national security forces ineffective and a waste of billions. Nothing like this from Obama.
Marisa Taylor writes for McClatchy Newspapers on a report by “auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” who find that the “Obama administration’s $11.4 billion plan to bolster Afghanistan’s security forces is ‘at risk’ because of poor planning.” The report was released on Wednesday, January 26.
“Auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said the U.S. government ‘could not provide the plans or justifications’ for building nearly 900 police stations and garrisons and other facilities for Afghanistan's national security forces.
“The report confirms earlier findings in a series late last year by McClatchy that found the ambitious strategy, like much of the wider Afghan reconstruction effort, is faltering. The program is a linchpin of President Barack Obama's strategy to strengthen Afghan security forces so 100,000 U.S. troops can come home by the end of 2014.”
[….]
“McClatchy also discovered that dozens of structures across the country either were poorly constructed or never completed at all. Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers who were supposed to be living in garrisons were still housed in tents.”
[….]
"’The government of Afghanistan does not have the financial or technical capacity to sustain’" buildings once they are completed, the auditors concluded.
“As a result, the U.S. has awarded two contracts to ITT Corp. totaling $800 million to help maintain the facilities.”
[….]
“McClatchy found that ITT's work was one of nearly $4.5 billion in contracts in Afghanistan that were awarded to companies even though they violated laws or had high-profile disputes over previous projects.”
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/26/107500/watchdog-faults-obamas-afghan.html#
Also see: http://thehill.com/news-by-subjetc-defense-homeland-security/139729-afghanistan-watchdog-says-11-billion-in-us-funds-are-at-risk
----------
Other failures in US-funded reconstruction projects, including the largest power plant in Kabul. Generally, projects are over-budget, of poor construction, involving corrupt officials, unfinished, unmaintained if and when completed. Another subject the Obama administration leaves alone.
Reporting for McClatchy Newspapers, Marisa Taylor and Dion Nissenbaum write on “Kabul's largest power plant project” and how it has been held up by US officials as “a shining example of how American taxpayers' dollars would pull Afghanistan out of grinding poverty and decades of demoralizing conflict.” This is just one of the examples of inefficiency on which they report. Here I quote from the article.
“But behind the scenes…officials were voicing outrage over the slow pace of the [power plant] project and its skyrocketing costs. The problems were so numerous that one company official told the U.S. government that he'd understand if the contract were canceled.
“‘We are discouraged and exhausted with the continued flow of bad information,’ one U.S. official complained in an internal memo that McClatchy obtained. ‘This is a huge example of poor performance on an extremely important development project.’
“Despite expressing serious misgivings in internal memos and meetings, the U.S. agency [USAID] that was overseeing the project more than doubled the plant's budget.
[….]
“In the rush to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. government has charged ahead with ever-expanding development programs despite questions about their impact, cost and value to America's multi-billion-dollar campaign to shore up the pro-Western Afghan president and prevent Taliban insurgents from seizing control.
[….]
“An approach that experts denounce as ad hoc and politicized has led to programs with mixed, if not poor, results and has soured many Afghans on the U.S. military's presence in their country, even as the Obama administration is banking on their support.
“McClatchy found that U.S. government funding for at least 15 large-scale programs and projects grew from just over $1 billion to nearly $3 billion despite the government's questions about their effectiveness or cost.
[….]
“The projects, overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development, are designed to address different goals in Afghanistan but all offer evidence that the U.S. has downplayed their waste and inefficiency in its zeal to demonstrate short-term success.”
"Meanwhile, Afghanistan is littered with scores of unfinished or hazardous buildings constructed with American money. Programs continue to receive tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid even as contractors or government officials concede that the goals are unrealistic or inappropriate for Afghanistan. For instance, the U.S. is seeking to dramatically increase the number of women employed by local governments, even though previous projects with similar aims have failed because of threats to female workers.
“While many of the programs were launched under the Bush administration, several have continued and have been given more money on President Barack Obama's watch.
[….]
“Adding to the problems, the list of recipients seemed to include thousands of phantom farmers: Fingerprints collected as proof that the farmers had received vouchers for buying seeds appeared to be falsified in more than half the 4,500 records the auditors reviewed.
“Even so, the Obama administration revamped the program's safeguards, dramatically increased its budget and transformed it into a broader counterinsurgency initiative that hands out jobs, fertilizer and support to farmers who are willing to cooperate with the U.S-backed government.
The program's original price tag: $33 million. Since the questions were raised: $431 million.
[….]
Some U.S. officials and contractors acknowledge privately that they're spending more on high-profile, flawed projects because of the pressure to show results quickly that could help bolster the government of President Hamid Karzai.
[….]
“To manage spending in Afghanistan, the USAID increased its staff, but it still struggles to keep tabs on programs. One U.S. official said the agency got "tied down doing paperwork and can't get out into the field to see if the projects are moving ahead." At the same time, it's quadrupled its overall spending to $300 million a month, with more than a quarter of it going directly to the Afghan government.
“When it comes to large-scale, ambitious aid programs, many outside experts are at a loss as how to handle programs in Afghanistan better, and they say the problems raise fundamental questions about whether the U.S.'s efforts to rebuild the country can work.”
[….]
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/12/106681/troubled-us-afghan-projects-mushroom.html#
----------
Poppy eradication efforts by NATO and Afghan government backfiring. Such efforts have frequently ended up supporting large heroin dealers and corrupt government officials, while driving farmers to look for protection from various Taliban groups. Obama - not a word.
Ryan Harvey explores how large poppy growers and high government officials have benefited from the Afghan governments “efforts” to eradicate poppy farms. That’s called counter-productive, not counter-insurgency. Here I quote the first paragraphs from Harvey’s long and informative article.
“It has long been known inside Afghanistan that heroin dealers in high positions benefit from the United States and Afghan governments' counternarcotics policies.
“Now the American public can get a glimpse. US embassy cables published recently by WikiLeaks expose the insider opinion that Afghan officials are using poppy eradication teams to weed out the competitors of major traffickers with whom they are linked.
“The leaked cables follow previous observations, investigations, government reports and testimonials by former contractors that say eradication efforts have long been corrupted and misused, and that Afghan officials have consistently thwarted any serious attempts at stemming the heroin trade.
“The US and Britain began the operations in 2002, with the Afghan government acting as a silent partner and contractors like DynCorp pulling security. The theory was that if the Taliban was to be defeated, it would largely be through removing their access to the heroin industry and its associated taxes and bribes.
[….]
“But many of the people who were and still are responsible for the eradication program are corrupt officials in the Afghan government, most of whom are just as involved in the heroin economy, if not more, as the growers they are targeting.
“Indeed, instead of hurting the Taliban, the operations, in the words of former US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, were ‘driving farmers into the hands of the Taliban.’
“It was for that reason that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has stepped back recently, giving the Afghan government the reins in order to give the programs an "Afghan face." Consolidating Power
“But there's more to NATO's shift than farmers running to the Taliban after having their livelihoods destroyed by eradication teams.
“US embassy cables written in 2007 and leaked this December suggest that poppy eradication teams have been used by warlords and other powerful provincial leaders to consolidate power.”
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/how-afghan-poppy-eradication-efforts-are-helping-worlds-largest-heroin-dealers67175
----------
In short, Obama’s words begin to appear hollow when the darker aspects of the US/NATO war/occupation of Afghanistan are put forth. Politically, the President's upbeat message and references to a hopeful future may temporarily grip his audience and raise their spirits, but it is not sustainable in light of the facts.
David Swanson concludes his fine article, “Why Pentagon Claims MLK Would Love War in Afghanistan, with the following words from Martin Luther King, Jr,” making clear that the Obama administration is hardly in the King tradition when it comes of Afghanistan.
"I am convinced," King said, "that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society into a person-oriented society. . . . On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. . . . The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military 'defense' than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Source: http://zcommunications.org/why-pentagon-claims-mlk-would-love-war-on-afghanistan-by-david-swanson
.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
President Obama's speech is misleading
President Obama read from a five-page summary of US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan on Thursday, December 16 (2010). The title of the summary document is “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review. The president does his best to bring an upbeat message to Americans and to defend the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan. But then he says this occupation/war will continue until at least 2014 and perhaps “beyond.” Overall, his rhetoric and evidence are unconvincing.
He shamefully echoes former-president Bush’s rationale for the Afghan invasion and occupation in some instances, when he says that the “core goals” of the US-led Afghanistan occupation is to defeat “al-Qa-ida,” that is, “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa-ida” and “to prevent its return to either country” (i.e., Afghanistan or Pakistan). The evidence overwhelmingly challenges the idea that al-Qaeda is the principal threat to the creation of a stable Afghanistan. There are few Afghans affiliated with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The President maintains that al-Qaeda poses a direct threat to the US. He says: “Al-Qa-ida continues its terrorist plotting…against the United States and our allies and partners.”
Eliminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan will not end the threat of random terrorist attacks on the US or any other country. The roots of such terrorism stem from rage over the US-led occupations and wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, support for dictatorial Middle East regimes (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan), and the one-sided support of the long-standing US support of Israeli oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. (Juan Cole has documented this point many times on his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. Also see: David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis' book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan.)
Experts point out that Al-Qaeda is a decentralized international network located in various parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and some “developing countries” (e.g., Indonesia), but it does not have a consolidated center. The President does acknowledge, “There are a range of other groups, including some affiliated with al-Qa-ida, as well as individuals inspired by al-Qa-ida, who to do harm to our nation and our allies.” (See, for example, Loretta Napaleoni’s new book, The Politics of Fear: How Fighting Terrorism is Bankrupting the World and Making US Less Safe, Seven Stories Press, 2010.)
The major opponents of the foreign US and allied occupiers come from Afghan participants variously associated with the “Taliban,” a category that includes separate, uncoordinated, groups from mainly the Pashtun population of the country. Grievances are local and often responses to the ground and escalating air attacks of the American forces, and to a war that has produced tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, further destruction of infrastructure and communities, widespread corruption, and little reconstruction.
As a consequence, Afghanistan has one of the poorest and most deprived populations in the world. Kathy Kelly provides a glimpse of Afghan impoverishment and the counterproductive use of increasingly destructive weaponry by US forces in an article on Antiwar.com, December 10, 2010:
“In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five.
"’Do you think we like to live this way?’ an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. ‘Do you see how we live? The cold and the rain are coming. How will we protect our children?’ He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent. The blanket immediately ripped.”
[….]
“Inside one of the tents, a young mother welcomed me to sit down on the only available cushion. It appeared that they slept on the ground. The families share one pot over a fire pit, and a few utensils. They also have access to a water pump. Near their area is a tent where they join for prayers, and also one that is used for classes. One man begged us to tell the authorities that they have no medicines in the camp and that many of the children are ill.
[…]
“Although the U.S. military forbids soldiers to mutilate corpses and go on killing sprees that target civilians, the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan have bragged, in recent weeks, about increased capacities to kill with ever more invulnerable weapons. A company of 16 Abrams tanks was recently delivered to Afghanistan. ‘We’ve taken the gloves off,’ said an unnamed U.S. military official, ‘and it has had huge impact.’ (Washington Post, November 19, 2010) The 68-ton tanks fire high explosive, white phosphorus and anti-personnel shells that can destroy a house a mile away. Each tank costs 4.3 million dollars and uses 3 gallons of jet fuel per mile.
“The Pentagon is also sending 12,500 XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapons to Afghanistan, one to each infantry squad and Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The XM25 gun can fire a projectile that will travel the length of eight football fields. ‘When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above a target,’ says the Army Times, ‘raining shrapnel down on an enemy crouched behind cover.’
“In a report to the November 2010 NATO conference held in Lisbon, 29 aid groups working in Afghanistan warned that the increases in air attacks, the use of night raids, and the destruction of civilian property contributes to ‘rapidly deteriorating" security for most Afghans and a rise in civilian casualties. People who flee from U.S. attacks face food insecurity, loss of income, lack of health care, and homelessness. The aid groups’ report is entitled ‘Nowhere to Turn.’ Increasingly, Afghans living in war zones have nowhere to hide.”
The president claims that US and allied forces are “degrading the Taliban insurgency,” another unsubstantiated claim. Unsurprisingly, as noted above, there is nothing in Obama’s annual review of the conditions in Afghanistan concerning civilian casualties, devastation of those parts of the country invaded by US and allied forces, or the ever-more destructive weaponry employed by these forces in places identified as war zones. And the insurgency is growing. Tom Anderson reports in an article for CommonDreams.org, Dec. 16, 2010, evidence that contradicts President Obama’s claim of degrading the insurgency. Anderson writes:
“A U.S. intelligence estimate presented to President Obama in October 2009 showed that the number of fighters in the insurgency had ballooned to 25,000 from only 7,000 in 2006. Now Matt Waldman, former Head of Policy and Advocacy for Oxfam International in Afghanistan, reports that "today [the NATO force] estimates the Taliban as 35,000 to 40,000. One of the points we have to bear in mind is they have a very large pool of recruits inside Afghanistan and Pakistan."
In the meantime, security is down and violence is up, according to Anderson’s sources.
“Nationwide, security in Afghanistan has not improved. According to the Pentagon's own report to Congress in November 2010, the portion of the population living in districts with a ‘satisfactory' security rating "remains relatively unchanged over the past three quarters." In fact, "the number of Afghans rating their security situation as ‘bad' is the highest since the nationwide survey began in September 2008. This downward trend in security perception is likely due to the steady increase in total violence over the past nine months."
“Violence has dramatically increased in Afghanistan over the last year. Kinetic events -- Pentagon speak for violence -- "are up 300 percent since 2007 and up an additional 70 percent since 2009." The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office reports a 59% increase in insurgent-led attacks in the 3rd quarter of this year over and above the 2009 level. They state: "By any measure 2010 has been the most violent year since ANSO's records began in 2002."
“Any progress toward increased security in the south has been more than offset by increased violence elsewhere in Afghanistan. Insurgent attacks in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan "rose 200% in June compared with June 2009." There are reports that "in northern Afghanistan, security has been deteriorating for the past two years in Kunduz and surrounding provinces" and that "the Taliban also have spread their influence in western Afghanistan and now control several districts."
President Obama’s review of conditions in Afghanistan are similarly dubious on a number of his other claims; for example that US forces are “supporting Afghanistan’s efforts to better improve national and sub-national governance.” Andrews refutes this claim as follows.
“Corruption runs rampant, fueling the insurgency. The Pentagon's own polling from September 2010 ‘shows that 80.6 percent of Afghans polled believe corruption affects their daily lives. This is consistent with the view that corruption is preventing the Afghan Government from connecting with the people and remains a key reason for Afghans supporting the insurgency...’
“As the New York Times reported, after a meeting with President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Walid Karzai, Ambassador Eikenberry wrote that ‘one of our major challenges in Afghanistan [is] how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.’
“And just this past weekend, Afghanistan's Attorney General asked their Supreme Court to nullify the results of recent parliamentary elections due to allegations of fraud and to ‘issue sentences against 14 top officials who organized the vote and oversaw fraud investigations.’”
And, furthermore, Andrews adds:
“Nationwide, governance has not expanded. The Pentagon reports that only ‘38 percent of the population live in areas rated as having ‘emerging' or ‘full authority' Afghan governance. This reflects no substantial change since March 2010.’ ‘Shadow governments’ run by insurgent forces continue to operate in many parts of the south and east, ‘extracting taxes and carrying out ‘official' functions like trials and determining land and marriage disputes.’”
There are other downbeat rather than upbeat issues that Obama omits from his speech. Wasted US aid: Patrick Cockburn documents the “billions down the drain in useless US Afghan aid” (Counter Punch, Dec. 13, 2010). Mounting US debt: the costs of the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq (it’s not over) are undermining the American economy and helping to deepen the US national debt.
In another article, this one for The Independent (Dec 18, 2010), Cockburn provides the words for ending this post and implicitly indicating how misleading Obama’s speech is. Cockburn writes:
“Afghans are adept at concealing their real views. A government official was giving me a bland account of his ministry's activities. Bored, I asked if there was anything he would like to say to me unattributably. ‘Well’, he said, without changing his smooth tone of voice, ‘there is no chance of any progress here so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords.’ But it is to keep these same people in power that the US and Britain are now fighting a war.”
He shamefully echoes former-president Bush’s rationale for the Afghan invasion and occupation in some instances, when he says that the “core goals” of the US-led Afghanistan occupation is to defeat “al-Qa-ida,” that is, “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa-ida” and “to prevent its return to either country” (i.e., Afghanistan or Pakistan). The evidence overwhelmingly challenges the idea that al-Qaeda is the principal threat to the creation of a stable Afghanistan. There are few Afghans affiliated with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The President maintains that al-Qaeda poses a direct threat to the US. He says: “Al-Qa-ida continues its terrorist plotting…against the United States and our allies and partners.”
Eliminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan will not end the threat of random terrorist attacks on the US or any other country. The roots of such terrorism stem from rage over the US-led occupations and wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, support for dictatorial Middle East regimes (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan), and the one-sided support of the long-standing US support of Israeli oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. (Juan Cole has documented this point many times on his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. Also see: David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis' book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan.)
Experts point out that Al-Qaeda is a decentralized international network located in various parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and some “developing countries” (e.g., Indonesia), but it does not have a consolidated center. The President does acknowledge, “There are a range of other groups, including some affiliated with al-Qa-ida, as well as individuals inspired by al-Qa-ida, who to do harm to our nation and our allies.” (See, for example, Loretta Napaleoni’s new book, The Politics of Fear: How Fighting Terrorism is Bankrupting the World and Making US Less Safe, Seven Stories Press, 2010.)
The major opponents of the foreign US and allied occupiers come from Afghan participants variously associated with the “Taliban,” a category that includes separate, uncoordinated, groups from mainly the Pashtun population of the country. Grievances are local and often responses to the ground and escalating air attacks of the American forces, and to a war that has produced tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, further destruction of infrastructure and communities, widespread corruption, and little reconstruction.
As a consequence, Afghanistan has one of the poorest and most deprived populations in the world. Kathy Kelly provides a glimpse of Afghan impoverishment and the counterproductive use of increasingly destructive weaponry by US forces in an article on Antiwar.com, December 10, 2010:
“In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five.
"’Do you think we like to live this way?’ an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. ‘Do you see how we live? The cold and the rain are coming. How will we protect our children?’ He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent. The blanket immediately ripped.”
[….]
“Inside one of the tents, a young mother welcomed me to sit down on the only available cushion. It appeared that they slept on the ground. The families share one pot over a fire pit, and a few utensils. They also have access to a water pump. Near their area is a tent where they join for prayers, and also one that is used for classes. One man begged us to tell the authorities that they have no medicines in the camp and that many of the children are ill.
[…]
“Although the U.S. military forbids soldiers to mutilate corpses and go on killing sprees that target civilians, the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan have bragged, in recent weeks, about increased capacities to kill with ever more invulnerable weapons. A company of 16 Abrams tanks was recently delivered to Afghanistan. ‘We’ve taken the gloves off,’ said an unnamed U.S. military official, ‘and it has had huge impact.’ (Washington Post, November 19, 2010) The 68-ton tanks fire high explosive, white phosphorus and anti-personnel shells that can destroy a house a mile away. Each tank costs 4.3 million dollars and uses 3 gallons of jet fuel per mile.
“The Pentagon is also sending 12,500 XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapons to Afghanistan, one to each infantry squad and Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The XM25 gun can fire a projectile that will travel the length of eight football fields. ‘When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above a target,’ says the Army Times, ‘raining shrapnel down on an enemy crouched behind cover.’
“In a report to the November 2010 NATO conference held in Lisbon, 29 aid groups working in Afghanistan warned that the increases in air attacks, the use of night raids, and the destruction of civilian property contributes to ‘rapidly deteriorating" security for most Afghans and a rise in civilian casualties. People who flee from U.S. attacks face food insecurity, loss of income, lack of health care, and homelessness. The aid groups’ report is entitled ‘Nowhere to Turn.’ Increasingly, Afghans living in war zones have nowhere to hide.”
The president claims that US and allied forces are “degrading the Taliban insurgency,” another unsubstantiated claim. Unsurprisingly, as noted above, there is nothing in Obama’s annual review of the conditions in Afghanistan concerning civilian casualties, devastation of those parts of the country invaded by US and allied forces, or the ever-more destructive weaponry employed by these forces in places identified as war zones. And the insurgency is growing. Tom Anderson reports in an article for CommonDreams.org, Dec. 16, 2010, evidence that contradicts President Obama’s claim of degrading the insurgency. Anderson writes:
“A U.S. intelligence estimate presented to President Obama in October 2009 showed that the number of fighters in the insurgency had ballooned to 25,000 from only 7,000 in 2006. Now Matt Waldman, former Head of Policy and Advocacy for Oxfam International in Afghanistan, reports that "today [the NATO force] estimates the Taliban as 35,000 to 40,000. One of the points we have to bear in mind is they have a very large pool of recruits inside Afghanistan and Pakistan."
In the meantime, security is down and violence is up, according to Anderson’s sources.
“Nationwide, security in Afghanistan has not improved. According to the Pentagon's own report to Congress in November 2010, the portion of the population living in districts with a ‘satisfactory' security rating "remains relatively unchanged over the past three quarters." In fact, "the number of Afghans rating their security situation as ‘bad' is the highest since the nationwide survey began in September 2008. This downward trend in security perception is likely due to the steady increase in total violence over the past nine months."
“Violence has dramatically increased in Afghanistan over the last year. Kinetic events -- Pentagon speak for violence -- "are up 300 percent since 2007 and up an additional 70 percent since 2009." The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office reports a 59% increase in insurgent-led attacks in the 3rd quarter of this year over and above the 2009 level. They state: "By any measure 2010 has been the most violent year since ANSO's records began in 2002."
“Any progress toward increased security in the south has been more than offset by increased violence elsewhere in Afghanistan. Insurgent attacks in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan "rose 200% in June compared with June 2009." There are reports that "in northern Afghanistan, security has been deteriorating for the past two years in Kunduz and surrounding provinces" and that "the Taliban also have spread their influence in western Afghanistan and now control several districts."
President Obama’s review of conditions in Afghanistan are similarly dubious on a number of his other claims; for example that US forces are “supporting Afghanistan’s efforts to better improve national and sub-national governance.” Andrews refutes this claim as follows.
“Corruption runs rampant, fueling the insurgency. The Pentagon's own polling from September 2010 ‘shows that 80.6 percent of Afghans polled believe corruption affects their daily lives. This is consistent with the view that corruption is preventing the Afghan Government from connecting with the people and remains a key reason for Afghans supporting the insurgency...’
“As the New York Times reported, after a meeting with President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Walid Karzai, Ambassador Eikenberry wrote that ‘one of our major challenges in Afghanistan [is] how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.’
“And just this past weekend, Afghanistan's Attorney General asked their Supreme Court to nullify the results of recent parliamentary elections due to allegations of fraud and to ‘issue sentences against 14 top officials who organized the vote and oversaw fraud investigations.’”
And, furthermore, Andrews adds:
“Nationwide, governance has not expanded. The Pentagon reports that only ‘38 percent of the population live in areas rated as having ‘emerging' or ‘full authority' Afghan governance. This reflects no substantial change since March 2010.’ ‘Shadow governments’ run by insurgent forces continue to operate in many parts of the south and east, ‘extracting taxes and carrying out ‘official' functions like trials and determining land and marriage disputes.’”
There are other downbeat rather than upbeat issues that Obama omits from his speech. Wasted US aid: Patrick Cockburn documents the “billions down the drain in useless US Afghan aid” (Counter Punch, Dec. 13, 2010). Mounting US debt: the costs of the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq (it’s not over) are undermining the American economy and helping to deepen the US national debt.
In another article, this one for The Independent (Dec 18, 2010), Cockburn provides the words for ending this post and implicitly indicating how misleading Obama’s speech is. Cockburn writes:
“Afghans are adept at concealing their real views. A government official was giving me a bland account of his ministry's activities. Bored, I asked if there was anything he would like to say to me unattributably. ‘Well’, he said, without changing his smooth tone of voice, ‘there is no chance of any progress here so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords.’ But it is to keep these same people in power that the US and Britain are now fighting a war.”
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Voices from Afghanistan demanding an immediate withdrawal of US troops
After my two paragraphs, I reproduce a very moving and powerful letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace It does not mince words. With illuminating clarity, the letter calls for a withdrawal of US and allied troops immediately. The costs of the occupation are just too great. The letter offers a profound antithesis to President Obama's upbeat message to America on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010, in which the President insists that the occupation in Afghanistan is succeeding and that the US will remain in Afghanistan until at least 2014 and perhaps "beyond."
The President did not allude to polls of Afghan opinions or, for that matter, to recent polls of American opinion. Nor did he refer to the ongoing devastation of the country by an escalated US airwar, US special forces, undisciplined Afghan police and soldiers, Afghan warlords, or to the mounting civilian casualties and displaced persons among the Afghan people, or to the increasing casualties among US troops. President Obama insisted that our core goal is to wipe out al Qaeda, and to do this safe havens for al Qaeda in Pakistan must be eliminated, one way or another. In the meantime, US generals are suggesting yet more US troops are necessary to reign in the Taliban, a category implicitly covering diverse Afghan insurgent groups, to overcome widespread corruption, as well as to stamping out al Qaeda once and for all, which is a pipe dream given the decentralized nature of the group and how, according to many experts, most of the violence in Afghanistan is waged by local, not international, groups.
We Want You Out: An Open Letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace
Friday 17 December 2010
by: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Voices for Creative Nonviolence representatives in Kabul are privileged to be meeting with representatives of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who campaign to promote nonviolence. As the Obama administration releases its December review of the US war in Afghanistan, the AYPV, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.
To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the "Taliban/Al-Qaeda" and regional countries:
We are intolerably angry.
All our senses are hurting.
Our women, our men and, yes, shame on you, our children, are grieving.
Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.
President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?
America's $250 million annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anemic mother.
We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.
Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly unequal. They do not listen, do not think, and, worst, they do not care.
We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.
We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.
We are not beasts.
We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.
Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, laborers, teachers, doctors … people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.
This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you.
Come arrest us all.
Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.
We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.
We refuse you.
Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.
Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for nonviolence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.
We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another's pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.
We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of nonviolent resistance.
How can we do any less?
14-year-old Abdulai's father was killed by the "Taliban" and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.
But he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that "something is very wrong with the world I'm caught up in"; "these elders of the world are not getting it."
How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?
How does it make anyone safer?
How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?
Your policies, skewed-ly "diagnosed" and "reviewed" in a cold, clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people; thus we endeavor to have a People's Afghanistan December Review, because that's what ordinary people can do.
We would try not to "throw" our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner's tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.
We want peace.
We want you out.
With singular sincerity,
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Afghans for Peace
Quote from Malalia Joya: My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government - world public opinion. -Malalai Joya
Excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on "International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan":
International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).
In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan
ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from October 29-November 13, 2010
Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about US-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago. More than half of Afghans interviewed said US and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.
Malalai Joya:
There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.
If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice. - Malalai Joya
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan
The President did not allude to polls of Afghan opinions or, for that matter, to recent polls of American opinion. Nor did he refer to the ongoing devastation of the country by an escalated US airwar, US special forces, undisciplined Afghan police and soldiers, Afghan warlords, or to the mounting civilian casualties and displaced persons among the Afghan people, or to the increasing casualties among US troops. President Obama insisted that our core goal is to wipe out al Qaeda, and to do this safe havens for al Qaeda in Pakistan must be eliminated, one way or another. In the meantime, US generals are suggesting yet more US troops are necessary to reign in the Taliban, a category implicitly covering diverse Afghan insurgent groups, to overcome widespread corruption, as well as to stamping out al Qaeda once and for all, which is a pipe dream given the decentralized nature of the group and how, according to many experts, most of the violence in Afghanistan is waged by local, not international, groups.
We Want You Out: An Open Letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace
Friday 17 December 2010
by: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Voices for Creative Nonviolence representatives in Kabul are privileged to be meeting with representatives of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who campaign to promote nonviolence. As the Obama administration releases its December review of the US war in Afghanistan, the AYPV, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.
To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the "Taliban/Al-Qaeda" and regional countries:
We are intolerably angry.
All our senses are hurting.
Our women, our men and, yes, shame on you, our children, are grieving.
Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.
President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?
America's $250 million annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anemic mother.
We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.
Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly unequal. They do not listen, do not think, and, worst, they do not care.
We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.
We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.
We are not beasts.
We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.
Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, laborers, teachers, doctors … people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.
This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you.
Come arrest us all.
Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.
We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.
We refuse you.
Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.
Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for nonviolence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.
We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another's pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.
We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of nonviolent resistance.
How can we do any less?
14-year-old Abdulai's father was killed by the "Taliban" and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.
But he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that "something is very wrong with the world I'm caught up in"; "these elders of the world are not getting it."
How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?
How does it make anyone safer?
How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?
Your policies, skewed-ly "diagnosed" and "reviewed" in a cold, clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people; thus we endeavor to have a People's Afghanistan December Review, because that's what ordinary people can do.
We would try not to "throw" our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner's tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.
We want peace.
We want you out.
With singular sincerity,
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Afghans for Peace
Quote from Malalia Joya: My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government - world public opinion. -Malalai Joya
Excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on "International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan":
International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).
In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan
ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from October 29-November 13, 2010
Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about US-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago. More than half of Afghans interviewed said US and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.
Malalai Joya:
There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.
If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice. - Malalai Joya
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan
Thursday, November 4, 2010
US diplomatic facilities expanded, no firm date for a drawdown of US troops
The following four articles provide indications that the US will continue to have an enlarged diplomatic presence in Afghanistan over coming years and and that the US military will remain in Afghanistan after the July, 2011 drawdown date first mentioned by President Obama in December of 2009. It was in December, we may recall, that President Obama announced an increase in troops to be deployed to Afghanistan. At that time, the President also referred to the possibility that some US troops would begin to be withdrawn, beginning in July 2011. However, he never specified how many troops might then be withdrawn or if any troops at all would be brought home. He emphasized that any such drawdown of troops depended on conditions in Afghanistan and what his generals recommended.
There are two points that strike one from the four articles to which I refer below. First, the US government shows every indication of having a diplomatic and military presence in Afghanistan for years to come. Second, Republicans and the President seem to be virtually on the same page when it comes to a drawdown date. President Obama has said that some troops may be withdrawn from Afghanistan beginning in July 2011, but not necessarily. Republicans say this is too ambiguous and they want a policy that excludes any date or timetable. They suggest that we should leave it up to the generals who are in command. That could be in July 2011, or many years after that.
The first article reports on the contruction of US diplomatic facilities. The other three articles report on Republican opposition to any date or timetable for the drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan.
First article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/03-5
Rahim Faiez reports in an article posted on Common Dreams.org that the "U.S. government will spend $511 million to expand its embassy in Kabul," according to the US ambassador Karl Eikenberry. The construction project is "a demonstration of America's long-term commitment to Afghanistan. Faiez writes: "The project stated earlier this year and currently employes about 500 Afghans. Once construction is under way, more than 1,500 Afghan workers will be employed." There are other building projects in the works. Over the last two years, the US government has signed two contracts to expand American diplomatic facilities in Kabul and consulates in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat provinces that total $790 million, according to Eikenberry.
Second article: http://antiwar.com/2010/11/3/republicans-vow-to-target-already-disavowed-afghan-drawdown-date
Jason Ditz reports for Anti-War.com that House Republicans "have promised [that] one of their first orders of business is to attack President Obama's policy of possibly drawing down the number of US troops in Afghanistan." Ditz points out that Obama would probably have no trouble with such a Republican initiative because he, the Secretary of State, and his generals have never committed the US government to a firm drawdown date.
Third article: http://antiwar.com/2010/06/24/obama-disavows-july-2011-afghan-drawdown-date
In an earlier report last June, Ditz reports that President Obama announced that there would be no "hasty exit" from Afghanistan, clarifying that "the July 2011 drawdown date he set himself in December" (2009) was a date when the withrawal of an unspecified size would begin only if conditions on the ground in Afghanistan were sufficiently stable, that is, there existed a stable and legitimate Afghan government and an Iraq army and policy force capable of maintaining security.
Fourth article - Just Foreign Policy, Nov. 3, 2010, adds further evidence (see below) that the Republicans, not only in the House but also in the Senate, will be pushing for legislation that explicitly rules out any date or timetable, however conditional it might be, for a drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan.
McCain hopes for fresh look at Afghan policySteve Holland, Reuters, Wed Nov 3, 2010 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A21K320101103
'Republican Senator John McCain said on Tuesday in the wake of big Republican victories in Congress that he hopes President Barack Obama will take a fresh look at U.S. war policy in Afghanistan. McCain won re-election to his Arizona Senate seat by a large margin, ensuring he will retain have a strong voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee as its ranking Republican member.
"In an interview, McCain told Reuters he was looking forward to a December review the Obama administration is preparing to give an update on the U.S. troop increase Obama ordered a year ago to try to repulse a strengthened Taliban.McCain, who is expected to visit Afghanistan soon, said he would like to see a change in Obama's decision to begin withdrawing some U.S. troops from Afghanistan next August."I can only speak for myself, but this date for withdrawal that the president announced without any military advice or counsel has caused us enormous problems in our operations in Afghanistan, because our enemies are encouraged and our friends are confused over there," he said.
[...]
There are two points that strike one from the four articles to which I refer below. First, the US government shows every indication of having a diplomatic and military presence in Afghanistan for years to come. Second, Republicans and the President seem to be virtually on the same page when it comes to a drawdown date. President Obama has said that some troops may be withdrawn from Afghanistan beginning in July 2011, but not necessarily. Republicans say this is too ambiguous and they want a policy that excludes any date or timetable. They suggest that we should leave it up to the generals who are in command. That could be in July 2011, or many years after that.
The first article reports on the contruction of US diplomatic facilities. The other three articles report on Republican opposition to any date or timetable for the drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan.
First article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/03-5
Rahim Faiez reports in an article posted on Common Dreams.org that the "U.S. government will spend $511 million to expand its embassy in Kabul," according to the US ambassador Karl Eikenberry. The construction project is "a demonstration of America's long-term commitment to Afghanistan. Faiez writes: "The project stated earlier this year and currently employes about 500 Afghans. Once construction is under way, more than 1,500 Afghan workers will be employed." There are other building projects in the works. Over the last two years, the US government has signed two contracts to expand American diplomatic facilities in Kabul and consulates in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat provinces that total $790 million, according to Eikenberry.
Second article: http://antiwar.com/2010/11/3/republicans-vow-to-target-already-disavowed-afghan-drawdown-date
Jason Ditz reports for Anti-War.com that House Republicans "have promised [that] one of their first orders of business is to attack President Obama's policy of possibly drawing down the number of US troops in Afghanistan." Ditz points out that Obama would probably have no trouble with such a Republican initiative because he, the Secretary of State, and his generals have never committed the US government to a firm drawdown date.
Third article: http://antiwar.com/2010/06/24/obama-disavows-july-2011-afghan-drawdown-date
In an earlier report last June, Ditz reports that President Obama announced that there would be no "hasty exit" from Afghanistan, clarifying that "the July 2011 drawdown date he set himself in December" (2009) was a date when the withrawal of an unspecified size would begin only if conditions on the ground in Afghanistan were sufficiently stable, that is, there existed a stable and legitimate Afghan government and an Iraq army and policy force capable of maintaining security.
Fourth article - Just Foreign Policy, Nov. 3, 2010, adds further evidence (see below) that the Republicans, not only in the House but also in the Senate, will be pushing for legislation that explicitly rules out any date or timetable, however conditional it might be, for a drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan.
McCain hopes for fresh look at Afghan policySteve Holland, Reuters, Wed Nov 3, 2010 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A21K320101103
'Republican Senator John McCain said on Tuesday in the wake of big Republican victories in Congress that he hopes President Barack Obama will take a fresh look at U.S. war policy in Afghanistan. McCain won re-election to his Arizona Senate seat by a large margin, ensuring he will retain have a strong voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee as its ranking Republican member.
"In an interview, McCain told Reuters he was looking forward to a December review the Obama administration is preparing to give an update on the U.S. troop increase Obama ordered a year ago to try to repulse a strengthened Taliban.McCain, who is expected to visit Afghanistan soon, said he would like to see a change in Obama's decision to begin withdrawing some U.S. troops from Afghanistan next August."I can only speak for myself, but this date for withdrawal that the president announced without any military advice or counsel has caused us enormous problems in our operations in Afghanistan, because our enemies are encouraged and our friends are confused over there," he said.
[...]
Monday, August 23, 2010
New US military facilities being built in Afghanistan anticipate a prolonged occupation
Just Foreign Policy (http://justforeignpolicy.org), is an up-to-date source for getting the highlights of numerous articles on Afghanistan and other countries. Among the many items on the website today, August 23, 2010, the following one is from a report by Walter Pincus. It provides information on the Pentagon's plans to build very expensive facilities in Afghanistan. According to the report, the facilities will not be completed before July of 2011, after President Obama's conditional deadline for commencing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. The obvious implication is that, if there is a withdrawal at all, the Pentagon decision-makers think that the US-led occupation of Afghanistan will continue for some time after next summer.
Obama has also hedged his bets, as Tom Engelhart reminds us in the following quote from his book, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's:
"In his address [at West Point], Obama offered July 2011 as the date to begin withdrawing the first U.S. troops from Afghanistan. ('After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.') However, according to the Washington-insider 'Nelson Report,' a White House on-background press briefing made if far clearer that the president was talking about a 'conditions based withdrawal' that would depend 'on objective conditions on the ground,' on whether the Afghans had met the necessary 'benchmarks. When asked about 'scaling back' the American war effort, General McChrystal suggested a more conservative timeline - 'sometime before 2013.' Secretary of Defense Robert Gates referred vagule to the 'thinning out' of U.S. forces" (pp. 186-187).
From Just Foreign Policy, August 23, 2010:
Air base expansion plans reflect long-term investment in AfghanistanWalter Pincus, Washington Post, Monday, August 23, 2010; A06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/22/AR2010082201670.html
Three $100 million air base expansions in southern and northern Afghanistan illustrate Pentagon plans to continue building multimillion-dollar facilities in that country to support increased U.S. military operations well into the future.
Despite growing public unhappiness with the Afghan war - and President Obama's pledge that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 - many of the installations being built in Afghanistan have extended time horizons. None of the three projects in southern and northern Afghanistan is expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011. All of them are for use by U.S. forces rather than by their Afghan counterparts.
Overall, requests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before Congress. The House has approved the money, as has the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full Senate has yet to vote on the measure.
In addition, the United States has already allocated about $5.3 billion to construct facilities for the Afghan army and the national police, with most of the "enduring facilities . . . scheduled for construction over the next three to four years," according to a Pentagon news release this month.
For example, a $30 million contract was recently awarded to build a regional military training center in Mazar-e Sharif, according to Col. Mike Wehr, engineer director of the combined NATO training mission. That facility, too, will not be completed until late 2011, and then it will be used to train Afghans in various military specialties, including engineering."We're only about 25 percent complete in our construction [for Afghan security forces], and there is quite a bit more to go over the next three years," Wehr told a defense bloggers roundtable last week. One goal of the NATO transition program is to have Afghans ready to maintain these facilities by 2013, Wehr added.
The three bases being expanded for U.S. use after 2011 reflect the expectation of continued combat operations, but they are just part of a broader expansion of U.S. facilities across the country.[...]
Obama has also hedged his bets, as Tom Engelhart reminds us in the following quote from his book, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's:
"In his address [at West Point], Obama offered July 2011 as the date to begin withdrawing the first U.S. troops from Afghanistan. ('After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.') However, according to the Washington-insider 'Nelson Report,' a White House on-background press briefing made if far clearer that the president was talking about a 'conditions based withdrawal' that would depend 'on objective conditions on the ground,' on whether the Afghans had met the necessary 'benchmarks. When asked about 'scaling back' the American war effort, General McChrystal suggested a more conservative timeline - 'sometime before 2013.' Secretary of Defense Robert Gates referred vagule to the 'thinning out' of U.S. forces" (pp. 186-187).
From Just Foreign Policy, August 23, 2010:
Air base expansion plans reflect long-term investment in AfghanistanWalter Pincus, Washington Post, Monday, August 23, 2010; A06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/22/AR2010082201670.html
Three $100 million air base expansions in southern and northern Afghanistan illustrate Pentagon plans to continue building multimillion-dollar facilities in that country to support increased U.S. military operations well into the future.
Despite growing public unhappiness with the Afghan war - and President Obama's pledge that he will begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 - many of the installations being built in Afghanistan have extended time horizons. None of the three projects in southern and northern Afghanistan is expected to be completed until the latter half of 2011. All of them are for use by U.S. forces rather than by their Afghan counterparts.
Overall, requests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before Congress. The House has approved the money, as has the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full Senate has yet to vote on the measure.
In addition, the United States has already allocated about $5.3 billion to construct facilities for the Afghan army and the national police, with most of the "enduring facilities . . . scheduled for construction over the next three to four years," according to a Pentagon news release this month.
For example, a $30 million contract was recently awarded to build a regional military training center in Mazar-e Sharif, according to Col. Mike Wehr, engineer director of the combined NATO training mission. That facility, too, will not be completed until late 2011, and then it will be used to train Afghans in various military specialties, including engineering."We're only about 25 percent complete in our construction [for Afghan security forces], and there is quite a bit more to go over the next three years," Wehr told a defense bloggers roundtable last week. One goal of the NATO transition program is to have Afghans ready to maintain these facilities by 2013, Wehr added.
The three bases being expanded for U.S. use after 2011 reflect the expectation of continued combat operations, but they are just part of a broader expansion of U.S. facilities across the country.[...]
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