‘Winding Down’ the War vs. ‘Losing Afghanistan’

By Tom Hayden
Beaver County Peace Links via HuffPost

May 16, 2012 - As a candidate opposing the Iraq War, Barack Obama improved his hawkish credentials by promising to track down Osama bin Laden, expand drone attacks, and escalate the American troop numbers in Afghanistan. Three years later, bin Laden is dead, the drones inflame Pakistan opinion and complicate a peace settlement, and 33,000 American troops are scheduled to pull out by the end of 2012 with "steady withdrawals" to continue after. Sixty-eight thousand U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan by this year’s end, with the deadline for withdrawing most of them by December 2014.

By the numbers, Afghanistan has already directly cost taxpayers $528.8 billion, and the Obama request for Afghanistan this fiscal year is $107 billion. That does not include the hidden, indirect costs — accrual such as long-term Social Security, disability, and medical care for veterans, etc. — partly spurred by an order last year from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, which will add hundreds of billions, if not trillions to the ultimate financial impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The president’s internal political calculation in 2008 was that he could never pull out of Afghanistan without killing Al Qaeda’s top leadership and building a firewall against a Taliban return to power. While perhaps correct politically, this has led to an Afghan quagmire shaken by severe contradictions.

• Hamid Karzai remains an unpopular, unreliable president whose term ends in 2014, the year of the troop withdrawal deadline. He seeks $3.5-6 billion each of the next two years to build up the Afghan armed forces, plus a Western commitment to funding for at least another decade, an impossible expectation.
• According to Pentagon evaluations, those troops are unable to function independently, though insurgent infiltrators are skilled at shooting NATO allies. (Twenty percent of NATO fatalities have occurred this year, according to The New York Times).
• Foreign aid to Afghanistan equals its entire gross national product and, according to the World Bank, "cannot be sustained."
• "Intractable Graft by Elite Afghans" makes reform out of reach.

Earlier this year, the Taliban indicated through intermediaries a willingness to hold dialogue with the West, in Qatar, but demanded the release of several detainees now in Guantanamo, possibly in exchange for an American POW, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Those discussions are in trouble, partly because of Republican opposition to releasing U.S.-held Taliban combatants. As a result, the Obama administration’s hope for progress in negotiations has hit the skids.

(more…)

By Harry Targ
Beaver County Peace Links

On May Day, 2012 President Obama made a secret trip to Afghanistan and spoke to the nation and the troops on the ground about past, present, and future policy. What the speech revealed was a replication of a ten-year fantasy narrative about why we went to war on Afghanistan, what our goals were, and what the future holds in the region for the United States and, most importantly, the Afghan people.

The President announced he was signing an agreement between the two countries which will define “a new kind of relationship” in which Afghans will assume primary responsibility for their security and “we build an equal partnership between two sovereign states.” The future of this relationship will be bright as “the war ends, and a new chapter begins.”

The announcement sounded eerily like the policy of “Vietnamization” which President Nixon put in place in 1969; handing over ground action to the South Vietnamese government while the United States escalated the bombing of targets in North and South Vietnam and invaded neighboring Cambodia. The South Vietnamese government and military were incapable of assuming “primary responsibility” and in the end were overthrown by powerful forces in the countryside.

The President explained that President Bush correctly launched a war on Afghanistan in October, 2001 because the country allowed terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden an al Qaeda “safe-haven” for terrorist planning and attacks, ultimately leading to the tragedy of 9/11. While Bin Laden escaped to Pakistan, the U.S. continued fighting the Taliban who have “waged a brutal insurgency.”

Subsequently, he claimed, using the dehumanized language of violence –prone discourse, the U.S. military has “taken out over 20 of their top leaders” including bin Laden himself. But the war continues. While the United States downsizes its troop commitments policy will include:

• a transition of the war to our Afghan military allies. Importantly Obama proclaimed that at the NATO summit this month in Chicago, “our coalition will set a goal for Afghan forces to be in the lead for combat operations across the country next year.” However, “international troops will continue to train, advise and assist Afghans, and fight alongside them when needed.”
• training of Afghan Security Forces, leading to an Afghan force of 352,000 troops which NATO will support to create “a strong and sustainable long-term Afghan force.”
• increasing US/NATO/Afghan cooperation “including shared commitments to combat terrorism and strengthen democratic institutions.” President Obama declared that these commitments, in the short run involving counter-terrorism and continued training, do not include the building of permanent U.S. bases.
• pursuing a negotiated peace with the Taliban if they break with al Qaeda, renounce violence and “abide by Afghan laws.”
• working towards stability in South Asia, including partnering with neighboring Pakistan. The President assured viewers that “America has no designs beyond an end to al Qaeda safe-havens, and respect for Afghan sovereignty.” In short, the central goal of United States policy is to destroy al Qaeda, in the short run to stabilize Afghanistan, and “to finish the job we started in Afghanistan…”

The speech reflects the classic pattern of U.S. military globalization coupled with tortured ahistorical fantasy narratives that have characterized policy since the end of World War II.

(more…)

NEW MOMENT, NEW MOVEMENT:

Ideas about Antiwar, Antimilitarist Strategies for the Years Ahead

Written by War Times
07 April 2012

As the global and U.S. political landscape shifts, a new round of strategic discussion is taking place in many sectors of the antiwar movement. Below are the key assessment points and questions used by War Times to kick off our collective’s effort to (1) take stock of the current volatile moment and (2) look for effective paths forward. The third part of this discussion paper is a short essay on antimilitarist strategies by War Timer Lynn Koh that expresses some of what we felt were the most useful ideas coming out of our deliberations. We are sharing this material in hopes of pushing forward a much-needed dialogue not only among activists who are focused mainly on antiwar and international solidarity efforts, but also with grassroots organizers whose work is mainly in other movements but who see the importance of making opposition to war, empire and militarism an integral part of a revitalized U.S. progressive movement. –Max Elbaum, Francesca Fiorentini, Rebecca Gordon, Hany Khalil and Lynn Koh for War Times

1. Taking stock of the big picture: What can we expect on the war/peace/militarism front in the post-Iraq War, new-U.S.-military-doctrine, continuing-Great-Recession years ahead?

The U.S. is an empire in decline. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, intended to be the first steps in securing a whole new level of U.S. global hegemony (and right-wing rule at home) instead over-stretched Washington militarily, financially and politically and accelerated the empire’s downward trend. In the wake of these wars and the 2008 financial-then-economic crisis, the U.S. elite is adjusting its strategies to maximize U.S. clout in the period ahead.

The elite is united on the maintenance of U.S. military superiority over all rivals (combined) and the willingness to employ force and threats of force as a key part of its global arsenal. But it is badly divided over how adventurous to be in waging war (especially regarding deployment of ground combat troops) and how unilateral to be. The new military doctrine initiated by Obama, which stresses "rebalancing" toward Asia and use of drones and special operations over deployment of ground troops represents the "realist" strategy for the next stage. The Neocon faction, now out of power, wants much more aggressive use of force particularly in the Middle East; and their crusade is bolstered by the fact that a significant swatch of the white population has embraced a racist ‘clash of civilizations’ zealotry which sees white Christian-Jewish civilization pitted against a whole range of dangerous anti-American, anti-Western Civilization, anti-Israel "others" ranging from Al-Qaeda to Obama.

Under these circumstances, "low level" wars, expansion of military bases and threats against other countries (in Africa and Latin America as well as in the Asia/the Pacific region and the Middle East) will likely be constant features of the decades ahead. And there will be a near-constant danger of larger scale wars pushed by the far right as well. The kind of push is taking place right now with the right’s crusade for an attack on Iran.

Simultaneously, the military-industrial complex and the militarist approaches to human relations it advocates will buttress regressive policies and structures on all fronts of social struggle. Military spending and militarist hostility to "enemies" drain resources from social programs; bolster the elite’s austerity-for-the-masses program; distort the economy generally; foster racist, anti-immigrant and sexist views and practices; are key excuses to curtail civil liberties, and are a major force in continuing dependence on fossil fuels and threatening environmental disaster. In other words, militarism as both an institutional reality and set of ideas is an obstacle not only to peaceful relations among nations and peoples but to all social progress.

Questions: What do things look like on the war/peace/militarism front over the next 5-10 years? What impact will the 2012 election campaign, and its potential outcomes, have on what lies ahead? Readings:

Bob Wing, The Arab Spring and the Changing Dynamics of Global Struggle

Max Elbaum, Fighting for Peace Against an Empire in Decline

Tom Hayden, End to Long War Doctrine?

(more…)

A Protest of NATO From NATO Countries

By Tom Hayden
Beaver County Peace Links via HuffPost

Peace movements in every country are raising their voices against the war in Afghanistan in advance of the May 18-20 NATO summit in Chicago. Some will converge on Chicago, while others will march in NATO capitols. Around two-thirds of the public in NATO countries now opposes the war, and most of their governments are anxious to withdraw if a face-saving path can be found.

The Obama administration and its allies are scrambling to showcase an announcement of progress before the Chicago summit gathering, which thousands of journalists are planning to cover. The administration already has relocated the G-8 summit on the world fiscal crisis, originally planned at the same time, to the secure seclusion of Camp David.

To support a peace petition by citizens of NATO countries, please sign here.

The administration faces a growing reality of quagmire, possibly even deeper chaos, in Afghanistan. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say the U.S. "should not be involved", a jump of 16 percent from last year. The percentages tend to be even higher in NATO countries.

A March 7 New York Times headline, "Intractable Afghan Graft Hampering U.S. Strategy", summarizes the terminal ineptitude of the Karzai regime. According to NATO data, only one of the Afghan army’s 158 battalions is able to fight on their own, up from zero last year. (New York Times, March 16, 2012) Meanwhile those same Afghan soldiers and police are "killing their colleagues among the international military force here at an alarming rate", according to another New York Times report. (March 28, 2012) One result of the deepening quagmire has been a collapse of U.S. military morale and discipline, as seen in widely-publicized cases of American soldiers burning Qurans, urinating on dead bodies, and a shooting spree against innocent Afghan villagers. The suicide rate in the American armed forces is at a historic high.

(more…)

CNN Poll: Afghan War Support Hits New Low

Beaver County Peace Links via CNN Political Unit

(CNN, April 2) - Support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low with the majority of Americans saying the U.S. should withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan before the 2014 deadline set by the Obama administration, according to a new poll.

The CNN/ORC International survey released Friday indicated only 25% of Americans favored the war in the Asian country. A majority of Republicans voiced opposition to it, for the first time since the war began in 2001.

Just 37% of the general public said things are going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan, while only 34% said America is winning the war. The approval likely contributed to the 55% of those surveyed who said the U.S. should remove all of its troops from the country before 2014.

Twenty-two percent expressed support for the 2014 timetable and an additional 22% said the U.S. should keep some troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Leaders at the Pentagon have recently responded to low poll numbers by stressing the importance of fighting the war on the ground.

"We cannot fight wars by polls," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday. "If we do that we’re in deep trouble. We have to operate based on what we believe is the best strategy to achieve the mission that we are embarked on. And the mission here is to safeguard our country by ensuring that the Taliban and al Qaeda never again find a safe haven in Afghanistan."

The poll, conducted for CNN by ORC International, surveyed 1,014 American adults by telephone between March 24 and March 25 with a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

– CNN’s Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

Blown Away: How the U.S.

Fanned the Flames in Afghanistan

By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse
Beaver County Blue via Tomdispatch.com

Feb. 28, 2012 - Is it all over but the (anti-American) shouting — and the killing? Are the exits finally coming into view?

Sometimes, in a moment, the fog lifts, the clouds shift, and you can finally see the landscape ahead with startling clarity. In Afghanistan, Washington may be reaching that moment in a state of panic, horror, and confusion.  Even as an anxious U.S. commander withdrew American and NATO advisors from Afghan ministries around Kabul last weekend — approximately 300, military spokesman James Williams tells TomDispatch — the ability of American soldiers to remain on giant fortified bases eating pizza and fried chicken into the distant future is not in doubt.

No set of Taliban guerrillas, suicide bombers, or armed Afghan “allies” turning their guns on their American “brothers” can alter that — not as long as Washington is ready to bring the necessary supplies into semi-blockaded Afghanistan at staggering cost.  But sometimes that’s the least of the matter, not the essence of it.  So if you’re in a mood to mark your calendars, late February 2012 may be the moment when the end game for America’s second Afghan War, launched in October 2001, was initially glimpsed.

Amid the reportage about the recent explosion of Afghan anger over the torching of Korans in a burn pit at Bagram Air Base, there was a tiny news item that caught the spirit of the moment.  As anti-American protests (and the deaths of protestors) mounted across Afghanistan, the German military made a sudden decision to immediately abandon a 50-man outpost in the north of the country.

True, they had planned to leave it a few weeks later, but consider the move a tiny sign of the increasing itchiness of Washington’s NATO allies.  The French have shown a similar inclination to leave town since, earlier this year, four of their troops were blown away (and 16 wounded) by an Afghan army soldier, as three others had been shot down several weeks before by another Afghan in uniform.  Both the French and the Germans have also withdrawn their civilian advisors from Afghan government institutions in the wake of the latest unrest.

Now, it’s clear enough: the Europeans are ready to go.  And that shouldn’t be surprising.  After all, we’re talking about NATO — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — whose soldiers found themselves in distant Afghanistan in the first place only because, since World War II, with the singular exception of French President Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, European leaders have had a terrible time saying “no” to Washington.  They still can’t quite do so, but in these last months it’s clear which way their feet are pointed.

(more…)

Iranian missiles for taking out aircraft carriers and other targets

Is GOP Rhetoric Setting the

Stage for an Israeli Attack?

By Tom Hayden
Beaver County Peace Links via TomHayden.com

Feb. 7, 2012 - Israel now estimates that Iran’s nuclear program is nine months away from “being able to withstand an Israeli attack,” which happens to be the same timeline as the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, a well-connected U.S. Pentagon adviser believes that Israel might give the White House only an hour or two warning before attacking Iran, “just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.”

These troubling assertions were contained in a recent and authoritative article in The New York Times Magazine about a potential Israel-Iran confrontation. Written by the magazine’s Israeli correspondent Ronen Bergman, who has access to top Israeli leadership, the story reports that Israel believes three key conditions for starting a war may have been met.

First, that Israel can cause serious damage to Iran’s sites and “withstand the inevitable counterattack.” Second, that there is tacit support from the “international community,” particularly the United States, for carrying out an attack. And third, all other possibilities of containing the threat have been exhausted, and it will soon be too late to prevent.

Standing in the way, according to the article, is President Barack Obama, whom the Israelis suspect “has abandoned any aggressive strategy that would ensure the prevention of a nuclear Iran and is merely playing a game of words to appease them.” The same conclusion has been suggested elsewhere.

(more…)

OCCUPY THIS: WAR AND JOBS

By Tom Hayden
Beaver County Peace Links via TomHayden.com

Unemployment in 1933: 24.9%
Unemployment in 1937: 14.3%
Unemployment in 1938: 19%
Unemployment in 1942: 5%

These statistics from the Historical Statistics of the United States clearly show that the New Deal dramatically lessened joblessness from Roosevelt’s election in 1932 until his second term; then began to climb when FDR retreated to a more conservative path; then finally ended because of war spending in World War 2.

Sensing the return of a structure crisis, Roosevelt proposed an “economic bill of rights” in his 1944 State of the Union address. Roosevelt died and his proposed domestic agenda was subordinated to seventy years of Cold War military spending.[see the fine history by Obama adviser Cass Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights, FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever, 2004.]

Needless to say, spending on spies and electronic battlefields in the Long War on Terrorism will not resolve our unemployment crisis, and sending hundreds of thousands of Americans into ground wars is not an option.

Civilian economic development – investment in green jobs, infrastructure, education, health care, tax credits for job creation – is the only path to a full employment economy. #

Iraq: 100 Days of Solidarity

By Medea Benjamin
Beaver County Peace Links via Code Pink

Sept 28, 2011 - This week marks the beginning of what is supposed to be the final 100 days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But if U.S. troops are to leave Iraq at the end of this year as promised — repeatedly — it will take grassroots pressure to counter the growing "occupy-Iraq-forever" chorus in Washington.

Despite the fact that there is a Bush-era agreement with the Iraqi government to leave, despite the fact that the majority of Iraqis and Americans don’t support a continued U.S. presence, and despite the fact that Congress is supposedly in an all-out austerity mode, strong forces — including generals, war profiteers and hawks in both parties — are pushing President Obama to violate the agreement negotiated by his predecessor and keep a significant number of troops in Iraq past the December 31, 2011 deadline.

It’s true there has already been a major withdrawal of U.S. troops, from a high of 170,000 in 2007 to about 45,000 troops today (with most of the troops being sent over to occupy Afghanistan instead). That number, however, doesn’t tell the whole picture. As the New York Times notes, "Even as the military reduces its troop strength in Iraq, the C.I.A. will continue to have a major presence in the country, as will security contractors working for the State Department," the latter to defend a U.S. embassy that’s bigger than the Vatican.

(more…)

On Oct 6 in DC, Let’s Make

a National Clamor for Peace

By Robert Naiman
Beaver County Peace Links via JustForeignPolicy.org

On October 7, 2011, the United States will have been at war for ten years.

Let’s mark the occasion by making a national clamor for peace so loud that Congress, the president, and big media will have to pay attention.

October 7 happens to fall on a Friday this year. If you get to choose, Friday is not necessarily the most strategic day to make a national clamor for peace, because 1) Congress will likely not be in session 2) Friday is, in general, a crummy day to try to get media attention and 3) even if these two things weren’t true or relevant, Friday is not a great day to try to hold public attention. People’s thoughts are turning to the weekend, and then the weekend erases the chalkboard.

Moreover, the press has to cover the anniversary of the war, but these stories are going to be largely written and produced before Friday. The default media narrative will be: America has lost interest in the wars, because of the economy and unemployment, because "the wars are already winding down," or some other story that journalists or editors will make up. We have to beat this default media narrative. To beat it, we need to get in front of it.

So let’s mark the occasion on Thursday, October 6. Let’s have a national, "ecumenical" day of action for peace: to end the wars and cut the military budget.

(more…)