Goodbye, fire-breathing Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and your Special Forces "mafia," who were supposed to crush Afghan resistance to western occupation.
McChrystal was fired after rude remarks he and his staff made about the White House were printed in the American magazine, Rolling Stone. President Barack Obama should have fired McChrystal when the loose-lipped general went public with demands that 40,000 more troops be sent to Afghanistan.
McChrystal was the second U.S. commander in a row in Afghanistan to be fired, an ominous sign that the war was going very badly. He will now likely enter the Republican ranks as a martyr and become a Fox TV critic of Barack Obama.
A more cerebral and political general, David Petraeus, quickly replaced McChrystal.
In Iraq, Gen. Petraeus managed to temporarily suppress resistance due to a mixture of deft bribery, good luck, and Iran's orders to Iraq's Shia Mahdi Army militia to temporarily end resistance. Washington hopes Petreaeus will do the same in Afghanistan, though the two countries are very different.
Last week, the usually cautious Petraeus vowed from Kabul to "win" the Afghan War, which has cost the U.S. nearly $300 billion to date and 1,000 dead Americans (figures for Afghan dead are carefully guarded). The problem: no one can define what winning really means.
Afghanistan has become America's longest-running conflict.
The escalating war now costs U.S. taxpayers $17 billion monthly. President Obama's Afghan "surge" of 30,000 more troops will add another $30 billion. Each time the U.S. reinforces, Afghan resistance grows stronger. The Soviets ran into the same problem in the 1980s.
The Afghan and Iraq wars -- total cost to date $1 trillion -- are being waged on borrowed money when the U.S. is drowning in $13.1 trillion in debt. History shows that more empires have been brought down by waging ruinously expensive wars on borrowed money than by foreign invasion. Look, for good example, at the swift collapse of the British Empire after 1945.
Today, America has become addicted to debt and war.
The U.S. Congress, which alone can declare and fund war, ducked responsibility and shamefully allowed Presidents Bush and Obama to usurp the power to make war.
Polls show a majority of Americans now oppose the imperial misadventure in Afghanistan. Yet most politicians, save a courageous few, fear opposing the war lest they be accused of "betraying American soldiers." Americans are so steeped in militaristic propaganda and jingoism that questioning the gargantuan defense budget and foreign wars can be politically suicidal.
Even so, dissent is breaking into the open.
Last week, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele let the cat out of the bag, admitting the Afghan War was not winnable. Steele also went on to absurdly claim that Obama had initiated the war in Afghanistan, ignoring George W. Bush's role in plunging the U.S. into this morass.
I recall Bush's mistake vividly, because right after 9/11, I wrote an op-ed column for the Los Angeles Times newspaper in which I warned that military action against al-Qaida be swift and limited, and that U.S. forces should get out of Afghanistan ASAP before they got sucked into a horribly confusing and likely endless conflict.
Not surprisingly, I was deluged by hate mail from legions of sofa samurais and armchair patriots who wanted to fight to the last professional American soldier in Afghanistan.
Back to Steele. Republicans, who seem to cherish war and torture, erupted in rage, all but accusing Steele of high treason. Many of Steele's most hawkish Republican critics had, like George Bush and Dick Cheney, dodged real military service during the Vietnam War.
Republicans (I used to be one) blasted McChrystal's sensible policy of trying to lessen Afghan civilian casualties from U.S. bombing and shelling. There is growing anti-western fury in Afghanistan and Pakistan over mounting civilian casualties that have become a primary recruiting tool for Taliban and its allies.
By clamoring for more aggressive attacks that endanger Afghan civilians and strengthen Taliban, and by advocating torture of detainees, Republicans again sadly demonstrate they have become the party of America's dim and ignorant.
President Obama claimed he was expanding the Afghan War to fight al-Qaida. Yet the Pentagon estimates there are no more than a handful of al-Qaida small-fry left in Afghanistan.
So why is the U.S. in Afghanistan? Obama owes Americans the truth.
After nine years of war, the immense military might of the U.S., its dragooned NATO allies, armies of mercenaries and hundreds of millions in bribes have been unable to defeat resistance to western occupation or create a popular, legitimate government in Kabul.
Drug production, which was halted by when Taliban was in power, has reached new heights. The U.S. now rules the world's leading drug exporter of heroin. America's leading allies in Afghanistan are also kingpins of the heroin trade.
As the United States feted its independence from a foreign oppressor on 4 July, its professional soldiers were using every sort of weapon in Afghanistan, from heavy bombers to tanks, armored vehicles, strike fighters, helicopter and AC-130 gunships, fleets of killer drones, heavy artillery, cluster bombs and an arsenal of high tech gear.
In spite of this might, bands of outnumbered Pashtun tribesmen and farmers, armed only with small arms, determination, and limitless courage have fought the West's war machine to a standstill and now have it on the strategic defensive.
This brutal David and Goliath conflict brings no honor upon the Western powers waging it. They are widely seen abroad as pursuing yet another pitiless colonial war for resource domination and strategic geography against a small, backward people
Interestingly, the Americans and their allies accused Taliban of "terrorism" and "cowardice." In my view, as an old soldier and war correspondent, using heavy bombers to attack tribal levies or employing gunships and drones against tribal compounds is cowardly. To Afghans, honorable warriors fight man to man in the field.
It reminds me of the ditty by the Victorian writer Hillair Belloc morally justifying mowing down natives during the British Empire's colonial wars because "we have the Maxim guns, and they have not."
Most Afghans yearn for peace after 30 years of war. But efforts by the Karzai government, Taliban, and Pakistan to forge a peace are being thwarted by Washington, some of its NATO allies, Afghanistan's Communists, and now the Indian-dominated Tajik Northern Alliance.
India is waging an undeclared struggle to wrest Afghanistan away from Pakistani influence, using the Northern Alliance, a small army of intelligence agents, and $1 billion in bribes to date. Meanwhile, rebellion seethes in Indian-held Kashmir.
It's a huge and growing mess. Simplistic thinking in Washington does not begin to understand the complexity or subplots in this lethal farrago.
The heretical Mr. Steele was speaking truth when he said this ugly, pointless war is unwinnable. But Washington's imperial impulses continue. Too many political careers in the U.S., Canada and Europe hang on this war.
So, too, does the fate of the obsolete NATO alliance that may well meet its Waterloo in the hills of Afghanistan.
No wonder Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires.
Follow Eric Margolis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@ericmargolis
Coincidence? I don't think so. Wars are always about profits and heroin is even more profitable than bombs.
shalom
Dr.k.
Your analysis is right on the mark and I'm sorry that I only noticed your article today, July 27th. However, the force of your words have become even more pertinent since the WikiLeaks.
The US should leave Afghanistan since it has become a rebellion against our presence there.
And I agree with your comments about Indian policy. It's Kashmir that is the big issue if the world would take some notice and its non-resolution is serially manufacturing terrorists all over South Asia.
But the US is blind and cannot and will not see that we are being viewed more and more as a colonial, imperial power...
After all colonialism was a career in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It is a profitable business today for the military-industrial-oil complex of the neo-colonialism of the US version.
We have to make a difference between the national liberation movements (the west brands them as terrorists) and the blind and brutal terrorism of hard core individuals who do suicide bombing etc out of vengeance, retaliation and victimisation of their communities and relatives.
In the 1980s, President Reagan described the Talibans as the finest gentlemen and compared them to American freedom fighters, the same talibans when they fight against American designs and occupation of their country, are branded as hard core terrorists.
The west creates far too many slums (organised state terrorism )around the world. Naturally the slums attract tens of thousands of mosquitoes. You can not eliminate the mosquitoes (insurgents and terrorists) unless you remove the slums.
The US pretends to bring peace to the subcontinent by helping to solve the Kashmir dispute ( similarly, in the Middle East to help stop Iranian type Revolution of 1979 spreading to the American cronies, in the Middle East to help set up a Palestinian State).
USA will allow Pakistan and India to act up to a point. But if India or Pakistan, for that matter breaks the rules, they are going to be punished ( as Iraq was punished after the Iran-Iraq war). History has many instances of this, in Egypt, in Vietnam, in Iran, in Iraq, in Nicaragua, in Haiti, in Panama, in Chile, in Philippines, in Domincan Republic, in Algeria and the list is rather long.
Anyone who is not going to accept American orders is going to pay for it; that is the implication of the message from many scholars including Margolis.
This is the way the US runs its power system. But as long as India and Pakistan, more or less obey American orders, there is no reason for the US to antagonize them. This is the American imperial management.
The biggest threat to the US is a nuclear attack. The most likely place to obtain a nuke is from Pakistan with has a proven history of proliferation. The US cannot directly attack Pakistan because it is a nation of 200million and it would be a big mess. Also, there is a high chance of Pakistan and India going to war which could quickly escalate into a nuclear confrontation.
By remaining in Afghanistan, the US is in a strategic location that allows it to keep tabs on numerous countries... China, Pakistan, Iran, India, Russia, etc. Now if the US isn't there just think what would happen. Taliban would return, Pakistan would start trouble in Indian-Kashmir and keep the madrassas training future jihadis. For these reasons and more, the US has to remain there.
The central problems to the US are Saudi Arabia (where the ideology originates) and Pakistan (where the jihadis are trained). Afghanistan is a small piece of the puzzle, but a crucial piece.
He termed the US drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan killing scores of innocent people as "unacceptable". Foreign troops fighting in South Asia is also "unacceptable". Very strongly, he feels that it is a great failure on the part of India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh to stop this slaughter and butchery.
No one understands the US deception as much as Jaswant Singh. Eric Margolis has confirmed and reinforced this deception beautifully.
These are genuinely well thought out and scholarly observation on the part of Jaswant Singh. Because every power system in the world: India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel, Europe, gained from 9/11, because 9/11 gave the opportunity to crush internal dissent of lesser powers.
In the case of India and Pakistan Kashmir, Wariztan and Buluchisthan, in the case of China Uighurs, in the case of Russia Chechnya, in the case of Israel Palestine and the list is long. But ruling cliques take this temporary successes into possible permanent successes under the illusion of American war on terror. Verily, they will come to regret later.
Eric Margolis implies that it is in the global interest of the US to fuel the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan rather than helping to solve. More disputes mean more profits to military-oil-industrial complex of the US
Internal dissent in Kashmir wasn't "crushed" after 9/11. The violence started in 1989 and was fueled by pakistan. In the past few years things have gotten better but it is the curse of saudi islam that radicalizes people. There have been elections and overall Kashmir would be better off staying with India, a rising power.
India is not a puppet of the US, it has enough resources to remain independent and I dare say that US and India need each other strategically. The sanctions were barely noticeable in 1998 and going into the future US will not jeapordize its relationship with the only stable democracy in South Asia.
They only make sense in the context of encircling and ultimately attacking Iran.
It is the last missing piece of the US strategic puzzle.
They are:
1. The installation of oil pipelines with which to control Eurasian oil (mission singularly unaccomplished here).
2. The control of the drug trade from which so many profit so handsomely (mission very much accomplished here, to the point that the Russian government is openly complaining about the cheap heroin flooding their country).
3. The control of Afghanistan's vast mineral wealth (mission bungled severely, in light of the fact that, as reported at:
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/06/29/Karzai_Japan_gets_priority_in_Afghan_mining/,
Karzai is giving Japan "...priority to explore and extract untapped mineral resources...")
So this means that every single US and NATO soldier who has been died or maimed for life in this meatgrinder has had this happen not to defend the security of their respective countries, but to extract wealth for private corporations from Afghanistan.
All the families and friends who mourn their dead, and grieve for those who have been maimed for life need to understand just why their loved ones have had this happen to them.
whatreallyhappened.com
Good man, Mr. Margolis.
Not surprisingly, I was deluged by hate mail from legions of sofa samurais and armchair patriots who wanted to fight to the last professional American soldier in Afghanistan."
lol brilliant writing! Great column Mr. Margolis.
All you Keynesians should love it.
It's the government directing massive amounts of money to stimulate the economy: the military industrial complex. That's tens of thousands of jobs, billions in stimulus. It's a never-ending New Deal. It just happens to be spent on things most "Progressives" don't like. The economic impacts, though, doesn't care: it's still lots of money our government has to borrow, paying people to create and run things: stimulus.