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Edited on Wed Nov-25-09 11:36 PM by bigtree
I'VE read some interesting comments here regarding reports President Obama will increase the U.S. force in Afghanistan by as many as 30,000 troops. The most interesting are those who say they'll wait to see the president's plan before passing judgment on the wisdom of the reported escalation.
Fair enough. Reports are that the president has spent the time between the 'leaked' recommendation to add 40,000 more troops by his commander in Afghanistan, Gen. McCrystal, soliciting advice from the Pentagon and others in his administration on how to honor his generals' requests and stay true to the ideals he expressed during the campaign about the wisdom and efficacy of the use of force abroad. In that inquiry, the president has reportedly asked his generals to present him with a 'exit plan' which includes 'benchmarks' and 'off-ramps'.
Is it really possible that his generals and diplomats have presented him with a credible plan to end the occupation by inflating it?
"What is our purpose in Afghanistan?" the president asked eight months ago as he sold his first escalation of some 21,000 troops to defend and enable the defective election of the U.S.'s handpicked Afghan leader Karzai. "After so many years, they ask, why do our men and women still fight and die there? They deserve a straightforward answer," the president asserted."
He defined the stalemated military mission as his "clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future."
"That is the goal that must be achieved," he said. That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you."
Making his presentation, flanked on both sides by Sec. of State Clinton and Sec. of Defense Gates, the president presented a comprehensive set of goals and alongside a familiar and predictable reading of his principles of engagement:
" . . . enhance the military, governance, and economic capacity of Afghanistan and Pakistan . . . marshal international support . . . make indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs . . . recognize the fundamental connection between the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan . . . a new sense of shared responsibility - a standing, trilateral dialog among the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan . . . to advance security, opportunity, and justice."
To accomplish these 'goals' and initiatives, Pres. Obama called for a reciprocal contribution from "friends and allies to do their part" in providing troops and resources to complement America's growing commitment. Declaring that the mission in Afghanistan is "not simply an American problem," the president pointed to violent attacks around the world which he said were were "tied to al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan."
He promised to work with the United Nations to create a "Contact Group for Afghanistan" to strike closer partnerships with NATO allies, Central Asian states, Gulf nations, Iran, Russia, India and China.
Leading the way committing the humanitarian aid, economic development the president insisted is integral to the stability in the region. Mr. Obama highlighted an effort in Congress to provide "$1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years - resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan's democracy" - and money for economic "opportunity zones". He asserted that despite challenging times and "stretched resources . . . the American people must understand that this is a down payment on our own future."
As the backdrop for that international appeal, the president fell back on familiar alarmist rhetoric to try and compel those nations to rally behind America's grudging military mission; describing a "shared responsibility" to "project power" for "our own peace and security."
"So let me be clear: al Qaeda and its allies - the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks - are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland from its safe-haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban - or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged - that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can," he said.
President Obama echoed the recent statements of his generals and diplomats (as well as the key NATO allies) in their acknowledgments that military force will not be sufficient in achieving the stability and security the administration insists is critical to any end to our engagement in Afghanistan. "A campaign against extremism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone," he said.
"That is why my budget includes indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs. These investments relieve the burden on our troops. They contribute directly to security. They make the American people safer. And they save us an enormous amount of money in the long run - because it is far cheaper to train a policeman to secure their village or to help a farmer seed a crop, than it is to send our troops to fight tour after tour of duty with no transition to Afghan responsibility," the president said.
In a conciliatory effort which was presented in the weeks before the president's presentation with measured remarks from the Pentagon about negotiations with insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama expressed his opposition to an "uncompromising core of the Taliban", alongside of his outreach to "those who have taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price."
"These Afghans must have the option to choose a different course. That is why we will work with local leaders, the Afghan government, and international partners to have a reconciliation process in every province."
Eight months after that first escalation of troops, the president has signaled yet another surge of force. That expanded military effort threatens to generate support and resistance from the same militarized opposition the president says he intends to draw closer to his nation-building cause.
It will remain to be seen whether the humanitarian aid, economic development assistance, and Afghan government reforms will out pace the counter-productive effects and consequences of the president's grudging military aggression against America's al-Qaeda nemesis as they posture to defend their opportunistic Afghan regime against the fundamentalist influence and control of the al-Qaeda-friendly wing of the Taliban which has no dominating presence or support in the country. Outside of the very valid and important concerns about the Taliban's disregard and abuses of human rights in the regions they control, there really is no pressing national security threat to the U.S. from the Taliban in Afghanistan.
There are certainly dangerous elements of that resistance who are enjoying 'safe haven' in Pakistan or along the Af/Pak border. In a remarkable statement of truth, Pres. Obama noted that, "Al-Qaeda and its allies have since killed thousands of people in many countries. Most of the blood on their hands is the blood of Muslims, who al-Qaeda has killed and maimed in far greater numbers than any other people."
However, al-Qaeda's main enterprise is to draw America and NATO even further into flailing around with our self-generating militarism; in order to draw even more of the population of Afghanistan and Pakistan into support and participation in violent acts against the U.S., our interests, and our allies. Our military occupation and its planned escalation will undoubtedly continue to contribute to all of that in a tragic way.
What the president is likely searching for is a definition of the mission there which separates our own need for justice in apprehending or eliminating the original 9-11 terrorists from the task of quelling the violent resistance to our presence and toward the regimes he's so intent on protecting. We will likely not be successful in eliminating every individual who says they're aligned with one of the terrorist rival groups, like al-Qaeda or elements of the Taliban, but we could hopefully foster an environment where these objectionable groups' main enterprise of recruiting the resisting and displaced population to their violent cause is stifled and replaced with our own lure of ungrudging mutual assistance and development. That looks to be the thrust of the president's diplomatic initiatives.
Yet, there's a demonstrated counterproductive effect in the region of the presence and operation of U.S. forces against the population. It is a documented fact that the primary effect of our 8-year plus military interference in Afghanistan has been a swelling of the ranks of those who have resigned themselves to violent resistance against our military advance on their homeland. The result of our interference has been an aligning of once disparate groups there with our nemesis, al-Qaeda, in support of that resistance.
Where, in that military mission that the president outlined, will we be able to acknowledge that, as Obama's own Pentagon leaders and advisers have said (ultimately), that our grudging military is no longer the solution, but the problem in Afghanistan? Where will President Obama draw that line? Even though I believe the president has importantly and significantly advanced the initiative of diplomacy and humanitarian efforts as central to the mission there, I believe his military mission as he defined it still threatens to obscure and overshadow those nation-building 'goals' that he says are integral to any long term stability in the region.
So, is it really possible that the president has a credible plan to end the occupation by further inflating it?
Our nation is not merely at war. Our government is warring, using its subjects as fodder for the machine which gives it the most relevance. Its war machine. Before 9-11 our nation spent a full 60% of our annual budget on 'Defense', the military. Now, although most of the off-budget in the form of emergency appropriations has ended, the percentage of the budget that we toil for is still so overwhelmingly weighted toward the perpetual militarism that countless future generations will suffer from the debt alone. We are as removed from our own centers of authority over this militarism as the suicide bombers are from whoever they regard as their leader. Our nation's defenders and those at the point of their weapons abroad are being cast against each other to effect a perpetual industry of aggression for the leaders to lord over.
We are blessed with the cynicism of Orwell to, at least, reassure us of our plight:
"The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word "war," therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.
Now we are on the verge of another campaign of persuading us to disbelieve our own eyes and ears regarding Afghanistan. We are apparently to be told that peace is at hand, if we just win one more battle, right after we train the Afghan army to continue the war we've so opportunistically perpetuated with our vengeful campaign against the remnants and ghosts of the 9-11 fugitive terror suspects.
October was the deadliest month in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001 with 74 US soldiers killed. As of Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009, at least 845 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.
We are the coal that fires the engines of authority that these 'leaders' assume from their positions of commanders in their contrived war. We have let ourselves become slaves to the instruments of our own institutions which have been corrupted to suit their warmongering hosts. But without our participation, there would be nothing left but a pack of megalomaniacs vying for attention, prostituting for whatever influence they could manage until they'd end us. Our acquiescence in all of this turns them on and off. We need to tell our leaders that we don't believe that more war will amount to the peace they describe.
"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth's centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O'Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
One-plus-one equals two, and two-plus-two equals four. Anything else is bullshit.
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