Page 2 of 2 Fighting the 'good' war
By Jack A Smith
As Brzezinski bragged many years later, Washington's plan from the beginning
was to create conditions that would oblige the Soviet Union to become
militarily involved in Afghanistan's civil war, and suffer the same fate as the
US in Vietnam in the earlier 1970s. It worked. In time the Red Army found
itself sinking in the quagmire that earned Afghanistan the title "Graveyard of
Empires".
For the next several years following the arrival of Soviet troops, the White
House - now occupied by the rightist Ronald Reagan administration - continued
to build up the rebel forces, many of which had fought each other before the
1978 coup. In time they were joined by up to 40,000 jihadi recruits from over
40 countries in the Muslim world. During the mid-1980s, Reagan began to
cynically describe the warlords and fundamentalist armies as "freedom
fighters".
Moscow began to withdraw in 1987 and completed the project by early 1989. The
left-wing government held on until it was brutally crushed in 1992. The
subsequent four years of civil war between the various rebel forces - in which
up to 65,000 people were killed in Kabul - resulted in a Taliban victory in
1996. The earlier reforms were quickly abolished, particularly those freeing
women, and a draconian form of Islam was imposed throughout the country. The
Taliban - which is a national organization as opposed to international al-Qaeda
- was formed in 1994 by Mullah Omar and consisted of the most orthodox Afghan
jihadis. The name Taliban means "religious students".
The consequences of the Carter/Reagan intervention in Afghanistan made it
possible for 19 al-Qaeda operatives armed with box cutters to hijack four
airliners to attack symbols of US military and financial power in Washington
and New York in the late summer of 2001.
The political reasons behind 9/11 included opposition to America's support for
the suppression of the Palestinians; anger over the 1991-2003 US-UN sanctions
that caused over a million Muslim deaths in Iraq, half of them children;
Washington's manipulative intervention in Middle East since the end of World
War II; and the Pentagon's stationing of troops in Muslim countries,
particularly Saudi Arabia.
Even after the 9/11 tragedy, the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan need never
have occurred. It was a result of Bush's bizarre decision to define the attack
as a declaration of war against the United States instead of a gross criminal
act by a small non-state organization of perhaps up to 1,000 active adherents
only partially based in Afghanistan and largely composed of non-Afghans.
The rational alternative - worldwide police work, sanctions, homeland defense
and other stringent measures - would certainly have been more successful
against al-Qaeda, and far less costly for the United States, than eight years
of fruitless war. Bush spurned this alternative not because war was a
"necessity", as the Obama administration alleges, but to pursue
neo-conservative imperialist objectives for obtaining hegemony in the region
under Bush's banner of an endless "global war on terrorism".
Further, just before the invasion, Taliban leader Omar told the US he would
turn over Bin Laden to a third country if Washington didn't attack Afghanistan,
as Bush was about to do. Mullah Omar had one condition: he asked the White
House to provide evidence that the al-Qaeda leader was actually guilty. Bush's
response: "There's no need to negotiate ... There's no need to discuss
innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."
As the American attack started, CIA teams were already on the ground in
Afghanistan, once again paying off their old retainers, the warlords, with
thick packages of $100 bills to intensify the civil war against the Taliban in
concert with the invading Americans. At least $70 million was distributed in
the first months of the war, mostly to the Northern Alliance, the big loser for
power in Kabul in the 1990s.
Bush followed the Afghan adventure with a second war of choice in March 2003 -
the transparently unjust and illegal invasion of Iraq. It turned into a costly
stalemate but 120,000 US troops remain in the country, and the Iraqi people
continue to suffer mass privation and pain.
Afghanistan is not Washington's "good war", though it is now characterized in
that fashion not only by the Republican right wing but by Obama and many
Democrats who were critical of the "Bush" Iraq war. These are often the same
"peace" Democrats who supported their own party's unjust three-month
bombardment of Yugoslavia (Serbia) in 1999. Obama was viewed as a peace
candidate in the elections because he was critical of the Iraq war, though he
nonetheless always voted as a senator to fund both wars, and made it clear he
wanted to fight in Afghanistan.
Now that a Democratic president is directing the war, Bush's campaign against
Afghanistan for regime-change and long-term US occupation has become a new type
of "humanitarian intervention". This has gravely weakened the American anti-war
movement, which is largely based on Democratic voters, but may not be
permanent. Many Democrats of the Vietnam era eventually turned on president
Lyndon Johnson after two or three years to the extent that he could not run for
re-election. Then, again, that was during a decade-long period of mass
movements for social change in America, as opposed to the conservative reaction
that has basically continued for some 30 years.
In our view, as we wrote in 2001 just after the invasion: "If any brutal
right-wing regime deserved to be overthrown by its own people, the Taliban is
the perfect choice. But for the imperial superpower to arrogate the task to
itself, with its planes, missiles, self-interest and hypocrisy, bodes ill for
the long-suffering Afghan masses and the region in general. Indeed, this
projection of US military power deeper into strategically important Central
Asia brings Washington closer to its goal of hegemony over the neighboring
Islamic former Soviet republics, now discovered to be awash in oil and gas
reserves."
Afghanistan is now Obama's war. Speaking to a military audience recently, he
sounded rather like his predecessor when he declared that fighting the war was
necessary because "those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so
again". So far, Obama's troop buildup has inspired more attacks from the
Taliban and other oppositional forces in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the
situation can only get worse in proportion to the number of US troops sent to
the region.
What is Washington's actual mission in the AfPak war? In a statement on May 19,
General David Petraeus, who heads the US Central Command, declared that "The
mission is to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for
al-Qaeda and other transnational extremists."
This evidently is why Obama is widening the war in Afghanistan and western
Pakistan. But is this necessary? The White House acknowledges that there are at
most 100 members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan at this point, but indicates that
more have been driven across the border to Pakistan, without specifying how
many.
Is it up to 500 perhaps? Could it be high as 1,000 adherents to al-Qaeda and
other "transnational" extremists? For some reason, the Pentagon doesn't say,
though it certainly must have a good estimate. In Afghanistan there are many
thousands who are associated with the Taliban and similar groups, but these
organizations operate strictly within their own borders, as does the Pakistani
Taliban, and in no way have threatened to attack the United States.
Does it really require the killing of many hundreds of thousands of innocents
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, trillions of American dollars, and the
fixated attention of our entire society, to deny al-Qaeda a possible safe haven
where they can plot to attack the United States? Wouldn't it be better and far
less costly to rely upon international police work, high-technology
surveillance, tight homeland security, sanctions if absolutely needed, and
other means short of war, fair and foul, at Washington's disposal?
Can it plausibly be denied that this would have been the better alternative in
2001, given the disastrous failure of Bush's wars? In our opinion the answer is
of course not, and it's the better alternative in 2009 as well. What's to
prevent the Obama administration from accepting this non-military alternative
today, now that the neo-conservatives are out of power? Two reasons present
themselves: politics and international policy.
In terms of politics: Obama and the Democrats would rather wage these
self-defeating wars than to be accused by the know-nothings of "cutting and
running", of being "weak on defense" and of "lacking patriotism". They fear
these right-wing attacks will cost them elections in today's highly
conservative America, so instead of fighting back politically they bend the
knee further to militarism and war.
In terms of international policy: Since the end of World War II - and
particularly after the implosion of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp two
decades ago - the US has functioned as the world's dominating hegemon based on
its willingness to use overwhelming military strength to extend its economic
and political parameters throughout the world. A large number of Americans have
been duped into believing it's all being done to spread democracy and to keep
people safe from the terrorists.
What has this gotten America lately? The US is a declining superpower in deep
economic difficulties. The recession, foreclosures and unemployment are
crushing tens of millions of American families. Even without a recession,
economic inequality is rampant; government social services are primitive; the
civil infrastructure is becoming a shambles; the healthcare system remains a
wreck, although a relative improvement may be forthcoming; and our political
system, where the choices are confined to the right and center, needs an
overhaul.
Meanwhile, Washington's wasting a trillion dollars a year on past, present and
future wars "to save the world" (the $680 billion Pentagon budget Obama just
signed is only part of it).
Anti-war critic Andrew Bacevich, a fairly conservative former army officer and
currently a professor and author of several important books on the military and
US policy, wrote an article in Commonweal on August 15 that contained a couple
of paragraphs that fit in here:
If the United States today has a saving
mission, it is to save itself. Speaking in the midst of another unnecessary war
back in 1967, Martin Luther King got it exactly right: "Come home, America."
The prophet of that era urged his countrymen to take on "the triple evils of
racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.
Dr King's list of evils may need a bit of tweaking - in our own day, the sins
requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first
heal ourselves, King remains today the prophet we ignore at our peril. That
Barack Obama should fail to realize this qualifies as not only ironic but
inexplicable.
We profoundly agree with this quote except for
"inexplicable". Obama has a number of attractive qualities, but he is a
centrist in a political party of the center/center-right - an improvement over
the competing mass party of the right/neo-con-right/far-right, but hardly the
politician to lead the struggle Bacevich suggests. Just getting him to avoid
widening the unnecessary AfPak war any further, much less ending it, is
daunting enough.
A majority of the American people want an end to the war, including a large
majority of Democrat voters - and Obama says he is susceptible to public
pressure. The problem is that the Democrats, who constitute the base of the US
peace constituency, left the movement in droves after their party won the
elections. They don't want to publicly protest Obama's actions when he is under
continual Republican attack on everything but the war.
This could change as the war continues and casualties mount, but it will have
to be a major change with millions of people out in the streets demanding
peace. Until then, the informal coalition of Republicans who vigorously uphold
the war and "peace" Democrats who won't stand against it will provide the White
House with the public support it needs to continue the war indefinitely.
The US decision to support the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan in 1978
ultimately changed history in ways very costly to the peoples of the region and
the United States. We dread to imagine the unintended consequences that will
emerge from Obama's continuing display of American imperial hubris in the AfPak
war.
Jack A Smith is editor of the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter in New
York State and the former editor of the Guardian Newsweekly (US). He may be
reached at jacdon@earthlink.net
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