When the wheels are coming off, it doesn't do much good to change the driver.
Though General Petraeus will take over as general in Afghanistan, the U.S. war effort will continue its carnage and futility.
Between the lines, some news accounts are implying as much. Hours before Gen. Stanley McChrystal's meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that "the firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts -- even in the military -- that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise."
It now does McChrystal little good that news media have trumpeted everything from his Spartan personal habits (scarcely eats or sleeps) to his physical stamina (runs a lot) to his steel-trap alloy of military smarts and scholarship (reads history). Any individual is expendable.
For months, the McChrystal star had been slipping. A few days before the Rolling Stone piece caused a sudden plunge from war-making grace, Time Magazine's conventional-wisdom weathervane Joe Klein was notably down on McChrystal's results: "Six months after Barack Obama announced his new Afghan strategy in a speech at West Point, the policy seems stymied."
Now, words like "stymied" and "stalemate" are often applied to the Afghanistan war. But that hardly means the U.S. military is anywhere near withdrawal.
Walter Cronkite used the word "stalemate" in his famous February 1968 declaration to CBS viewers that the Vietnam War couldn't be won. "We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Vietnam and Washington to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds," he said. And: "It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."
Yet the U.S. war on Vietnam continued for another five years, inflicting more unspeakable horrors on a vast scale.
Like thousands of other U.S. activists, I've been warning against escalation of the Afghanistan war for a long time. Opposition has grown, but today the situation isn't much different than what I described in an article on December 9, 2008: "Bedrock faith in the Pentagon's massive capacity for inflicting violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy experts. The echo chamber is echoing: the Afghanistan war is worth the cost that others will pay."
The latest events reflect unwritten rules for top military commanders: Escalating a terrible war is fine. Just don't say anything mean about your boss.
But the most profound aspects of Rolling Stone's article "The Runaway General" have little to do with the general. The takeaway is -- or should be -- that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is an insoluble disaster, while the military rationales that propel it are insatiable. "Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further," the article points out. And "counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war."
There was something plaintive and grimly pathetic about the last words of the New York Times editorial that arrived on desks just hours before the general's White House meeting with the commander in chief: "Whatever President Obama decides to do about General McChrystal, he needs to get hold of his Afghanistan policy right now."
Like their counterparts at media outlets across the United States, members of the Times editorial board are clinging to the counterinsurgency dream.
But none of such pro-war handwringing makes as much sense as a simple red-white-and-blue bumper sticker that says: "These colors don't run . . . the world."
Fierce controversy has focused on terminating a runaway general. But the crying need is to terminate a runaway war.
That's right Obama. You were convinced to waste American lives for no reason. How does it feel ?
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/pentagon_papers/index.html) to show the president was a liar. but now the right wing moderates that call themselves the left want the head of a general speaking out on a war they opposed until they took it over. just more from the "alt right", i.e., the progressives.
That ain't possible...
>>>> Posted: June 23, 2010 06:43 AM
Though General Petraeus will take over as general in Afghanistan, the U.S. war effort will continue its carnage and futility.
What would be your guess?
Would you believe 737, spread over 130 countries, according to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" -- and that's not counting another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories?
Chalmers Johnson, in his book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic" cites the "worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, to be 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires."
"I would follow that man to the very depths of hell. But, why the hell are we here?"
I have, for a very long time now, wondered, "where the hell ARE they?" Where are the protesters? Who are the people who are actually determined enough about the way in which their forefather's once-proud nation is going, to actually step up and do what they did and change it? Where's "hell no, we won't go?" Did it really turn out to be the case that you can sell a war for longer than any other war in American history, as long as you don't re-institute the draft?
So ... Rolling Stone made the story, put the boots on the ground but =not= in the Pentagon P.R. way, and, let's face it, WAS given access to a lot of things by the Regional Commander in Chief. The story was vetted; it was carefully prepared. McChrystal knew what he was doing and why. Undoubtedly, he knew it would cost him his command. But in doing so, he knew, it would raise scrutiny of the commands he'd been given.
And our nation (and world) rather desperately needs to make that scrutiny. A human life is not a fair price to pay, neither for an oil route nor for a cell-phone battery. The "9-1-1, 9-1-1" mantra don't fly.
For the US, a war is something abstract, far away, fought by professionals. For the people where the fighting is going on, it is everyday terror. They are the ones who live in fear for stray bullets and bombs, it is their electricity and water and food supplies that are unreliable. Their bridges and roads and buildings are being destroyed. And it are of course their civilians who die by accident.
For the average American citizen, war is just a bill to pay. Only when it gets too expensive, it's time to react...
You know as well as I do that someone promised to get us out of the war on the campaign trail.
I agree with your article and assertions.
On the side bar, Yes the DOJ needs to step in with the AG's help, period. Why the shift to agencies like the SEC to do all the groundwork like its a civil matter when it reeks of criminal violations, pure and simple?
Back to the war, why should our women and men, mothers and fathers with families die? What's the mission again?
Charley Miller - the UNAFFILIATED for Colorado's US Senate charleymiller2010.wordpress.com
Would that, in your imagination, be Barack, who in the real world campaigned on escalating in Afghanistan??
>>>> You know as well as I do that someone promised to get us out of the war on the campaign trail.
Absolutely. That it is at present NOT an SOP for the Justice Department to have the responsibility to continuosly combat any conflicts of interest in the agencies of our Government is astounding. This is called oversight and is fundamental to any political, social or commercial organization.