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A
lot of people who voted for Obama did so in
hopes that he would get the United States out of the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the first case, it was
widely understood that the U.S-led war and occupation was a costly
fiasco, and the sooner ended, the better. Yet there was less
understanding of the futility and waste of the war in Afghanistan, which the
politicians, including Obama, justified
on the grounds that the 9/11 terrorist attack on America had been organized from
there.
In
fact, Obama’s recipe for solving the Afghan
problem was to reduce the U.S. involvement in Iraq in order to increase the
deployment of U.S. forces to Afghanistan. But now both halves of the
new administration’s strategy are being demonstrated to be false.
The
number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has been increased,
and will soon total 68,000, but the White House still claims that the U.S. war effort is
“under-resourced.” The Taliban has spread its control to large portions
of two provinces in the north of the country, threatening NATO supply
lines there. Meanwhile, 51 U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan in August, the largest
monthly death total since the start of the war.
The
Obama administration says it will be
considering requests by military commanders for sending even more
troops to Afghanistan. The pattern of U.S. military investment in Afghanistan is beginning to look like
the escalation in Vietnam. And public
support for the Afghan war is decreasing as the military
investment is increasing. The polls now show less than 50 percent
support for the war.
At
the same time, the recent massive bombings in Iraq have shown that the U.S. client government has been
unable to stabilize the situation there. In fact, the Iraqi
foreign minister, Hoshyar Zeban,
whose ministry was one of the targets of the bombings, has said
that he suspects that elements in the Iraqi security forces
colluded with the bombers. There is even a report that the bombers
got through the checkpoints by bribing guards. So, the obvious
implication is that the security forces of the Iraqi government
continue to be both corrupt and infiltrated.
The
hatred of the U.S.-led foreign occupation is so massive, that it
pervades the institutions of the government established under U.S. patronage. Moreover,
the response of the people on the street to the bombings is to
blame the United States for the carnage.
It
is clear that the U.S. war on Iraq has plunged the country
into an abyss from which there is no recovery in sight. The bases
of a self-sustaining economy have been destroyed both by the
war damage and by U.S. policy.
The
New York Times reported Aug. 15: “As recently as the 1980s, Iraq was self-sufficient in
producing wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and sheep and poultry
products. Its industrial sector exported textiles and leather
goods, including purses and shoes, as well as steel and cement.
But wars, sanctions, poor management, international competition
and disinvestment have left each industry a shadow of its former
self.
“Slowly,
Iraq’s economy has become based
almost entirely on imports and a single commodity. ‘Ninety-five
percent of the government’s revenues come from oil,’ said Ghazi al-Kenan, an Iraqi economist. ‘And while they are
trying to attract investment in the private sector, Iraq finds itself in very
difficult circumstances—without sufficient electricity, machinery
and a drought.’”
Dependence
on oil exports has the effect of ruining productive industries
because it promotes imports and crates inflation. Paradoxically, the
influx of oil money ruins economies, the same way that the influx
of gold and silver from the Americans ruined the Spanish economy
and condemned the country to centuries of underdevelopment.
A
pro-U.S. government is hardly going to be stabilized in a
country ruined by the U.S.-led occupation. As long as the U.S. maintains its military
intervention and its overlordship, even if
its forces withdraw from most of the country, political and
military instability will continue.
In
the case of Afghanistan, the United States finds itself defending
a government that is corrupt to the marrow, and has very little
respect among the Afghan people. In that case, the U.S. intervened
in a civil war on the side of the Northern Alliance, which was
based on the Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara ethnic
groups. It needed a Pushtun leader
to give its allies the look of a national character. The present
Afghan president, Karzai, provided that.
But in pushing this alliance to power, the U.S. reinforced corrupt
local warlords and tribal strongmen whose salient difference from
the Talbian was their factiousness
and corruption.
The
Taliban were based mainly on the Pushtun
population, not just in Afghanistan but in the neighboring tribal
areas of Pakistan. That continues to be true.
In
the recent Afghan elections, which the Obama
administration touted as representing a new era of stability
of the Afghan government, only 40 percent of the population voted
in areas controlled by the government. In the southern Pushtun areas dominated by the
resurgent Taliban, it was only 10 percent.
But
Karzai is claiming victory over his
Tajik rival Abdullah based on what Abdullah
claims are falsified results from the Pushtun
areas. Thus it appears likely that the government that the U.S. is committed to defend will
not only be seen as corrupt and ineffectual but based electorally on fictitious support in an area
in fact dominated by the Taliban.
In
its Aug. 22 issue, The New York Times described the situation in
the Pushtun south as follows: “Troops
alone are not enough to reassure Afghans. Something is missing
that has left even the recently appointed district governor
feeling dismayed. ‘I don’t get any support from the government,’
said the governor, Massoud Ahmad Rassouli Balouch.
“Governor
Massoud has no body of advisers to help run
the area, no doctors to provide health care, no teachers, no professionals to do much of anything. About
all he says he does have are police officers who steal and a small
group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for ‘vacation.’
“It
all raises serious questions about what the American mission is
in southern Afghanistan—to secure the area, or to administer
it—and about how long Afghans will tolerate foreign troops if they
do not begin to see real benefits from their own government soon.
American commanders say there is a narrow window to win over local
people from the guerrillas.
“Securing
the region is overwhelming enough. The Marines have just enough
forces to clear out small pockets like Khan Neshin.
And despite the Americans’ presence, Afghan officials said 290
people voted here last week at what is the only polling place in a
region the size of Connecticut. Some officers were stunned even
that many voted, given the reports of widespread intimidation.
The
local governor, according to this report, estimated that about two
thirds of the people in the region support the Taliban. “Governor Massoud said he personally admired the Marines
here, from the Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, but
he said many people ‘just don’t want them here.’”
In Afghanistan, like Iraq, the wars engaged in and
promoted by the U.S. have ruined the local
economy, so that now it is estimated that 35 percent of the GNP
comes from illegally produced and marketed opium. Moreover, the
boundaries of this quagmire are indeterminate. It includes at
least the western border land of Pakistan. And the fault lines go
through Central Asia, where they touch on the spheres of
major powers suspicious of U.S. military involvement in the
region, China and Russia, as well as Iran.
The
U.S. has so far maintained a
modus vivendi with Russia and its central Asian
satellites and with Iran. But it is not certain
these understandings will continue.
In
regard to Pakistan, the U.S. commanders continue to
express doubts about its commitment to fight the Taliban, despite
the escalation of its military effort against Taliban forces in the
Swat valley and in the border areas. The U.S. drone attacks
against Taliban leaders in Pakistan have scored military successes
but at the expense of fanning a prairie fire of hatred of the
United States among the people of its dubious ally. If the Afghans
hate their country being made a camping ground for U.S. troops, the Pakistanis are
no less hostile to seeing their country being made into a shooting
gallery for the U.S. military.
In
the Aug. 1 Huffington Post,
Robert Greenwald commented: “As we pay our tax bills, it seems an
appropriate time to urge everyone to Rethink Afghanistan, a war that
currently costs over $2 billion a month but hasn’t made us any
safer. Everyone has a friend or relative who just lost a job. Do
we really want to spend over $1 trillion on another war? Everyone
knows someone who has lost their home. Do we really want to spend
our tax dollars on a war that could last a decade or more?”
In
fact, with a few missteps and maybe a little bad luck, the war in Afghanistan could lead to a much
larger conflict whose costs would
be incalculable. So, it is no surprise that criticism
of the Obama
administration’s determination to continue to throw good money
after bad in Afghanistan is increasing along with the unfavorable
poll results. But no more on the Afghan war issue than on real
health-care reform is the Obama government
going to make any real changes.
It
is only if masses of Americans speak out and demonstrate and
demand an end to U.S. intervention that the
costs of the present war and the dangers of an expanding one can
be avoided. We have reached a critical juncture. It is vital that
opposition to the U.S. wars become active. The opportunity to do
this will come about in the antiwar demonstrations scheduled for
October—which culminate in local marches and rallies on Oct. 17 around
the demand to “Bring the Troops Home Now!”
The
call for nationwide U.S. demonstrations on Oct. 17
came out of the July national antiwar conference in Pittsburgh that was sponsored by the
National Assembly. So far, over 100 organizations, including all the
major national antiwar coalitions, have endorsed Oct. 17
demonstrations, and over a dozen cities have announced activities on
that date.
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