Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan
The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For now.
That's how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually.
A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for how many additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan. Now, deployment of 21,000 more is a done deal, with a new total cap of 68,000 U.S. troops in that country.
But "escalation" isn't mere jargon. And it doesn't just refer to what's happening outside the United States.
"Escalation" is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at home to the idea of more military intervention abroad -- nothing too sudden, just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper -- nothing too abrupt or jarring, while thousands more soldiers and billions more dollars funnel into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "demonic suction tube," complete with massive violence, mayhem, terror and killing on a grander scale than ever.
As war policies unfold, the news accounts and dominant media discourse rarely disrupt the trajectory of events. From high places, the authorized extent of candor is a matter of timing.
Lots of recent spin from Washington has promoted the assumption that President Obama wants to stick with the current limit on deployments to Afghanistan. Soon after pushing supplemental war funds through Congress, he's hardly eager to proclaim that 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan may not be enough after all.
But no amount of spin can change the fact that the U.S. military situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. It would be astonishing if plans for add-on deployments weren't already far along at the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, the White House is reenacting a macabre ritual -- a repetition compulsion of the warfare state -- carefully timing and titrating each dose of public information to ease the process of escalation. The basic technique is far from new.
In the spring and early summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson decided to send 100,000 additional U.S. troops to Vietnam, more than doubling the number there. But at a July 28 news conference, he announced that he'd decided to send an additional 50,000 soldiers.
Why did President Johnson say 50,000 instead of 100,000? Because he was heeding the advice from something called a "Special National Security Estimate" -- a secret document, issued days earlier about the already-approved new deployment, urging that "in order to mitigate somewhat the crisis atmosphere that would result from this major U.S. action . . . announcements about it be made piecemeal with no more high-level emphasis than necessary."
Forty-four years later, something similar is underway with deployments of U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that no limit has been set. Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he sounded an open-ended note: "There is not a ceiling on troop levels in Afghanistan."
Mullen's comment was scarcely reported in U.S. media outlets. It has become old news without ever being news in the first place.
The war planners in Washington are bound to proceed carefully on the home front. News of further escalation will come "piecemeal" -- "with no more high-level emphasis than necessary."
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Thanks for writing this. Obama's failure to draw down in Iraq and his surge into Afghanistan have been the most disappointing aspects of his presidency so far. Last thing we need is another war president.
The war planners in Washington are bound to proceed carefully on the home front. News of further escalation will come "piecemeal" -- "with no more high-level emphasis than necessary."
Norman, thanks for sounding the alarm on this. Very few, if any, media are even mentioning what you point out is the Obama strategy...and yes, it failed before, under LBJ, even causing him not to run for office, because Americans would not tolerate such a plan...that Obama chooses to go this route when he was elected to GET US OUT of the wars Bush started is an appalling and deeply disturbing development that his apologists and sycophants cannot justify without appearing as irrational as though who tried to spin LBJ's escalation over 40 years ago.
As far as Afghanistan....
You are disappointed that Obama is keeping his word? He has consistently stated that he wants a "surge" in Afghanistan to finally defeat the Taliban, and to hopefully find 0BL. Plus, there is the Pakistani nukes to worry about.
Last thing we need is for people with selective memory...
True that, and the techniques themselves belie the lack of any valid justification for the conflict. Fortunately for the military machine, Americans have demonstrated time and again that they're all to willing to accept pure propaganda and fear mongering instead.
The Taliban hosted terrorists. It's quite simple.
Hmmm...didn't they try the same spin with the commies in North Vietnam?
Failed then...fails now.
You believe whatever you're told ...
You're right, God forbid we hunt down the people that murdered 3000 of us in 2001, and then try and stabilize the third world hellhole that they called home into something that won't threaten us or anyone else. What were we thinking?
What you call fear mongering, I call pragmatic self defense, kill them before they kill us.
If only it were that simple, but simple minds need only simple explanations.
And you have demonstrated that you have no fracking sense!
Did you forget 911 already? Or that pesky guy that keeps putting out tapes... You know... OSAMA BIN LADEN?
Obama has consistently held the position that he wanted to escalate Afghanistan, even before he got the nomination last year. You voted for him (i assume), therefore you indirectly gave your consent. It was not coerced from you at all.
Heck, his position on Afghanistan is part of the reason I supported him in the first place.
You assume much incorrectly, just as you assume what you're told about US involvement in central Asia is true without thinking much past the headlines you read, which was my point in the first place.
Great Post.
Starting in December of 2008, It registered to me, that Afghanistan was going downhill fast.
Back then, the Taliban insurgents embarked on a bold assualt destroying more than 150 vehicles carrying supplies bound for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan. It received very little news converage and buried in the back pages of major newspapers, but that action was significant.
I see similiarities between the Korean War (Proxy War) and the War in Afghanistan (non Proxy War), in character, i.e. - "the forgotten war", "just war"
Here's a chilling quote from then Senator LYNDON JOHNSON in 1950:
"For too long we have been more interested in making our books balanced, than in making our strength balanced against the military power of communism. Far more dollars are being lost in South Korea than all the dollars we save, if we have saved any at all. We will lose more dollars, and lose more lives, because our economy will fall, and our over confidence was unjustified, our empathy was wrong. The nation’s program for action now should be to call up the National Guard and active reserves. Accept volunteers from the reserve. Call up all reserves as necessity dictates. Organize all our units on a combat basis. Enact emergency legislation to care for our reservists and draftees. Enact emergency legislation for a full industrial mobilization. And put into immediate use the priority powers in the draft law."
http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=7966
Obama needs to heed the mistakes LBJ made...there can be no victory in escalation...the military jugheads who have given a full court press to Obama to do this are as wrong as those who advised Johnson to do the same in the 60s...
You must really work hard at being 1gn0rant...
Obama has held his Afghanistan position consistently since he was just a canidate. You can easily google to verify that. So, it isn't the military that is making this call, but our COMMANDER IN CHIEF.
I hope President Obama reads your work, Mr. Solomon. Afghanistan cannot be won militarily. We need to get out now. Andrew Bacevich, who knows something about these matters having served in the U.S. Army during Vietnam, says we stand a better chance in Afghanistan by redefining our strategy, such as negotiating with local leaders and monitoring the country closely rather than sending more troops.
We can't negotiate with local leaders when their families are held hostages by the Taliban. The Taliban thrive on fear and intimidation not sympathy.
Yes, you are right, as is Mr. Solomon...Obama is pursuing a very wrong strategy...he tried to convince his liberal base of the importance of an Afghan strategy, by claiming Bush took his eye off the real root of terrorism in the region...that may be true, but Afghanistan is NOT winnable military escalation...the Russians tried that in 1980, and we know how THAT turned out, as well as how it turned out for LBJ, as he had to slink off in disgrace.
This is a deadly accurate description of what is happening. Just this week the media were bemoaning the deaths of seven American soldiers "because we don't have enough troops on the ground to control Afghanistan".
The President is not fooling anybody with his acquiesence to our military overlords.
The President is not fooling anybody with his acquiesence to our military overlords.
He certainly isn't...just as with the economic debacle, Obama is either fine with this bad advice from the war mongers or being manipulated, as he is by Gheitner and Summers on bailout...he needs to get as far away from these dangerous people who are jeopardizing the very essence of why he was able to win in November...Americans did not vote for more war or for a continuation of the worst of Bush's economic cowtowing to the financial industry including blatantly corrupt and greedy banks.
FHTB, it's time to realize that Obama is responsible for these destructive policies and not being manipulated by his own appointees. He's been co-opted by the Bushies, just like Clinton before him.
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