The Center for American Progress has positioned itself as a "progressive" Washington think tank, especially suited to channel new thinking and expertise into the Obama administration. It therefore is deeply disappointing that CAP has issued a call for a ten-year war in Afghanistan, including an immediate military escalation, just as President Obama prepares to unveil his Afghanistan/Pakistan policies to the American public and NATO this week.
It is likely that Obama will follow most of CAP's strategic advice, assuming the think tank to be the progressive wing of what's possible within the Beltway.
That means a long counter-insurgency war ahead, with everything from massive incarcerations and detention to Predator strikes that amass increasing civilian casualties. CAP begins by calling on the president to meet the request of his commander in Afghanistan for another 15,000 troops in addition to the 17,000 Obama already has committed, which would bring the near-term US total to 70,000. To pay for these additional troops, CAP proposes redirecting $25 billion annually from combat in Iraq to Afghanistan. In addition, CAP favors up to $5 billion annually for diplomatic and economic assistance, also from a redirection of Iraq spending.
Even assuming the economic assistance reaches villages instead of corrupt middlemen, CAP's primary emphasis is a military one, sending larger numbers of American troops on a counterinsurgency mission in southern and eastern Afghanistan, as well as the outskirts of Kabul. Make no mistake, the American mission will be to fight, kill and capture, and, is intended to leave NATO allies in secondary training roles. The CAP proposal seems to flesh out the Obama strategy already described in a New York Times January 28 headline, "Aides Say Obama's Afghan Aims Elevate War Over Development." The CAP report calculates that in FY 2009, "the ration of funding for military forces versus non-military international engagement is 18 to 1."
There is no exit strategy contemplated in the CAP proposal, although the president apparently is been asking for one behind the scenes. Nor is there any projected cap on future escalation The CAP timeline, front-loaded with military force, is as fanciful about Afghanistan/Pakistan as the neo-conservatives were towards Iraq in the Nineties:
- in the next 18 months, a combat/counterinsurgency push to prevent Afghanistan from being a "safe haven for terrorist and extremist groups with a global reach"; prevent the destabilization of Pakistan by creating "a stable civilian government committed to working toward the elimination of terrorist safe havens" there.
- In three to five years, create a "viable Afghan economy", curb the poppy trade, promote democracy and human rights, and resolve regional tensions.
- In ten years, build an Afghan state that can defend itself, and "prepare for full military withdrawal."
As a practical matter, all that is certain is that there will be blood. When the problem is a nail, reach for the hammer. But military occupation, particularly a surge of US troops into the Pashtun region in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the surest way to inflame nationalist resistance and greater support for the Taliban. President Hamid Karzai said last December that "the coalition went around Afghan villages, burst into people's homes and has been committing extraditional killings in our country." A United Nations investigator made the same point in 2008, accusing the CIA and Special Forces "of conducting nighttime raids and killing civilians in Afghanistan with impunity." Pakistan's prime minister said the same years that "if America wants to see itself clean of terrorists, we also want that our villages and towns should not be bombed." As a January 2009 report by the Carnegie Endowment concluded, "the only meaningful way to halt the insurgency's momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban."
CAP takes no notice of the torture and detention without human rights protections at Kabul's Bagram prison, now undergoing massive expansion. Obama's team already says his anti-torture executive order does not cover the hundreds detained in Afghanistan, so it is likely that the American forces will launch a massive "preventive incarceration" campaign in the months ahead. CAP's silence on this matter is especially disturbing since the think tank expressed deep concern over the same policies in Iraq.
Many Americans are confused, but it is not necessary to have a West Point or Ivy League degree to understand the heart of the matter. Whether it is the street of LA or the alleys of Kabul, law-and-order always comes first along with promises of jobs and development "later", a later that gradually becomes never. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the levels of suffering are among the most extreme in the world, and from suffering, from having nothing to live for, comes the will to die for a cause.
United Nations recent development data places Afghanistan 173rd out of 178 countries; Pakistan is 136th. According to such estimates, about sixty percent of children in the Pashtun areas are "moderately" or "severely" stunted. In Afghanistan as a whole, such children will be spared miserable lives because the country has the highest infant mortality rate in the world. No more need be said.
As to the threat from al Qaeda, it is understandable that the president would define himself as an aggressive commander-in-chief. But he must wonder if our killing so many civilians and stunting so many children won't result in yet another generation dying to hate us. He must wonder if he is squandering the good will of the world, including the Muslim world, by sending more Americans to kill and die in a quagmire. He must recognize that he is putting his eight-year presidency on the line.
He must wonder too, as he approaches his meetings in Europe, why NATO is occupying countries so far from its base in the mainly-white Western world. It is hard to avoid the hint that the white man's burden is falling on the shoulders of our first African-American president. The only solution to the Afghanistan/Pakistan quagmires has to be a regional one, as argued forcefully by Tariq Ali in his recent book, as well as by Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid, but NATO is the stranger in the neighborhood. CAP recognizes this critical problem, as does Hillary Clinton who will meet the regional players at the Hague next week. The problem is that NATO, burdened with imperial assumptions, would like China, Russia, and the Central Asian Republics constituting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to be satellite parties to the Western occupation of Afghanistan/Pakistan. But the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, while having serious stakes in quelling instability in the region, calls on the US and NATO to go home.
Can the burden be sustained politically and economically for ten years more? Already Canada and the Netherlands have set timelines for withdrawing their forces, assigned now to the most violent regions of southern Afghanistan. Germany may be the next to balk. And with the American economy in shambles, can anyone envision a war whose costs will exceed one trillion dollars a decade from now? Only the neo-conservatives, if Iraq is any example, which makes it tragic that CAP has aligned itself with their strategy of the "long war."
I think that by confusing the issue of preventing terrorist attacks by sticking our noses in the belly of unfortunate countries, President Obama's patriotic instincts and concern about his reputation as a Commander-in Chief have influenced his unfortunate military choices. It is interesting that Vice-President Biden has become the General Powell of the Iraq war and challenged this line of thinking regarding Afghanistan. I wonder how this will play out behind the scenes among the Obama advisors.
A prolonged involvement in Afghanistan could well destroy Obama's ability to subsidize vital domestic issues as well as his presidency. Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Harper's leadership is in jeopardy now due in part to his support of Canada's perilous presence in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan may become Obama’s Vietnam. With lower probability, Iraq could become Obama’s Vietnam II.
Obama, of course, started neither war — both of which were lost by the Bush regime — but at some point, if Obama unwisely nurtures the plants, he will have bought the farm.
Anti-war activists and other Obama supporters must stay engaged.
You can now download for FREE the entire $25.95 book, "The Bush League of Nations: The Coalition of the Unwilling, the Bullied and the Bribed – the GOP’s War on Iraq and America," by James A. Swanson (2008, CreateSpace Publishing, 448 pages). http://www.bushleagueofnations.com .
I ask for nothing in return, except that you consider using my free book as a resource to help restore and build America. Perhaps, if you are so inclined, you will also pass along the good word. I'd appreciate that.
By the way, Tom Hayden has been one of my heroes for decades.
James A. Swanson, Los Altos, CA
[Activist, author, entrepreneur, senior executive, Peace Corps volunteer, MIT graduate, Stanford JD/MBA.]
"The Bush League of Nations"
http://www.bushleagueofnations.com" [for FREE download of entire $25.95 book]
If what Israel really wants is Greater Israel to the Euphrates, why not get the US to clean up everything in their way...and all around? Why not "advise" the US to control/destroy any country with Muslim populations?
The only way I can make sense of US policy and of the President's choices in policy advisers is to assume that the US is now a cover for an Israeli-dominated world.
I am beginning to wonder if President Obama has conned us...and I supported him. I sent a message to Senator Bob Casey, D. PA., this morning. I asked Senator Casey to only fund the transportation costs to bring our troops home now.
We cannot afford these two wars. You should tell your members of Congress to bring our troops home now.
I told you John Edwards was a better choice for president. He would have us out now.
Imagine how many homeless and jobless Americans you could feed and house with $ 25 billion dollars per year!
We must cut off the funding for the military now.
The Center for American Progress this year is pushing energy, health care, “restoring America's global leadership”, and “creating progressive [economic] growth.” There is nothing about eliminating nuclear weapons, ending poverty at home or ending the wars abroad. They claim to build on the ideals of Martin Luther King. King connected the war in Vietnam to the injustice of poverty at home and called for an end to the war. He concluded:
“If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war … The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.”
The time has come to “turn sharply” -- radical change, not progress, in the way that America functions is necessary in order to make the world better.
Canada, and other NATO allies, have set timelines on withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan precisely because the US has had no strategic plan for Afghanistan/Pakistan. Now that such a strategy is forthcoming, you may be pleasantly surprised by what NATO partners are willing to contribute to stabilizing this region and rooting out al'Qaeda.
The publication of the Pentagon Papers finally revealed some of the truth and brought about the beginning of the end.
Nixon and Kissinger realized that by "opening" China, they could make money by using cheap labor to compete with labor costs in the United States. That is the sucking sound you hear - you job being sucked out while the economy dies on a vine.
Commodore Perry opened Japan. It is like opening a Pandora's box.
Oil and natural gas and pipelines are the reason we are over there in Afghanistan, just as tin and rubber and possible oil were the reasons behind Vietnam. Also, it is necessary that no other nation control these resources or our "relative power" would decline.
There is a threat of terrorism and that must be taken seriously. It is the methods employed, however, that I disagree on. The cycle of violence is a law of nature it seems. I we had reconstructed Afghanistan before the Soviets arrived, or even afterward, we would have our democracy and our pipelines, too.
Why don't we believe in Democracy?