The new war president
JUST A year after being
elected with massive hopes that he would end the wars launched during
the Bush era, president Barak Obama announced he is sending 30,000 more
troops to Afghanistan, on top of the 21,000 additional soldiers he
ordered there earlier in 2009. This will bring the total number of US
troops in Afghanistan to nearly 100,000. As popular filmmaker (and Obama
supporter) Michael Moore wrote on his website, "If you… announce that
you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan,
you are the new war president. Pure and simple".
Recent months have seen US
casualties in Afghanistan reach their highest point in the eight-year
war, with the Taliban gaining strength throughout the country. Morale
among US soldiers is deteriorating, reflected in what The New York Times
labelled a "near epidemic" of suicides among troops, with Army suicides
rising by 37% since 2006, including 16 in October.
The US has already wasted
$232 billion on the war, and thousands of lives have been lost in
eight-years. And for what? Afghanistan remains the fourth poorest
country in the world – and the second most corrupt (Transparency
International, 17 October 2009). UNICEF says: "Afghanistan today is
without a doubt the most dangerous place for a child to be born", with
one-in-four Afghan children dying before the age of five, most of
preventable diseases.
Thousands of ordinary Afghans
have been killed by US and NATO airstrikes and military operations,
generating massive anger among the Afghan population toward the foreign
occupiers. The recent elections, which the US hoped would provide a
façade of democratic legitimacy to the occupation and its puppet
government, were marred by massive fraud. The government of Hamid Karzai
is propped up by corrupt warlords, drug traffickers, and foreign troops
rather than any legitimacy among the Afghan people.
The Obama administration
claims the war is necessary to prevent the Taliban from returning to
power and providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda to operate. Yet his own
national security adviser, General James Jones, admitted there are less
than 100 Al Qaeda members operating in Afghanistan, and that Al Qaeda’s
attacks have been largely planned and coordinated from within Western
Europe (Associated Press, 7 October 2009).
Far from protecting ordinary
Americans and others around the world from the threat of terrorism,
escalating the war in Afghanistan will only further aggravate the
underlying problems at the root of terrorism. These include the anger at
the brutality of the US occupation, which has been responsible for
numerous bombings of wedding parties and innocent civilians in their
homes, as well as disgust with the injustice of the corrupt regime. This
comes on top of enormous outrage among the peoples of the Middle East
and South Asia at the invasion of Iraq, the torture of detainees at
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon’s unmanned drone attacks in
Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, US support for the
Israeli occupation of Palestine, etc.
In his escalation speech,
Obama also promised to begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan in
July 2011, presenting the surge as a means toward ending the war faster.
Yet days later, leading Obama administration officials went on the major
Sunday morning talk shows to emphasise that, as defence secretary Robert
Gates put it, "only a ‘handful’ of US troops will leave Afghanistan in
2011". Jones told CNN: "We have strategic interests in South Asia that
should not be measured in terms of finite times. We’re going to be in
the region for a long time". (New York Times, 6 December 2009)
The US ‘exit strategy’ is
based on training more Afghan soldiers and police to take over security
from US and NATO forces. However, thus far, this process has been a near
complete disaster, despite the claims of US officials. There are
numerous reports that it is common for Afghan soldiers to enlist in
basic training multiple times under different names and then leave as
soon as they are paid.
The real reason for the
continuation of the war is US fear of losing control of Central Asia and
the Middle East, especially the oil reserves, which are of vital
strategic significance for US imperialism. Already reeling from the
catastrophic invasion of Iraq, the US cannot afford to admit defeat in
Afghanistan. Obama’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan reflects his
accommodation to the interests of the US corporate and military elite,
despite the hopes of many who voted for him that he would be an
‘antiwar’ president.
In addition, Obama and
leading Democratic Party strategists fear the electoral consequences of
being labelled as ‘weak on defence’ by the Republicans – even though
this decision will further the growing disillusionment of the Democratic
base. Similar calculations drew Lyndon B Johnson’s administration into
the quagmire in Vietnam during the 1960s, at immense cost to the
Vietnamese people and to social programmes in the US.
To pay for any escalation,
Congress will have to approve supplemental funding, on top of the $65
billion already allotted for the war in Afghanistan for 2010. The
Congressional Research Service estimates that every additional US
soldier in Afghanistan will cost $1 million a year, potentially doubling
the $3.6 billion a month already being spent on the occupation (thehill.com,
14 October 2009).
This heightened war spending
comes as US workers and families suffer from skyrocketing unemployment,
and state and local governments face budget shortfalls, forcing cuts in
social services, tuition increases, etc. The Obama administration has
called for all domestic agencies to prepare to freeze or cut spending by
5% next year (AP, 13 November 2009). Military spending knows no such
limits, however. The Obama administration is "on track to spend more on
defence, in real dollars, than any other president has in one term of
office since World War II". (Government Executive)
The Republican spin machine
is already moving into top speed, calling for postponing health care
reform until war funding is approved, and demanding cuts in domestic
spending to pay for the war.
Yet, as Moore wrote in an
open letter to Obama: "Ask your neighbours in Chicago and the parents of
the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more
billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will
say, ‘No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need
homes. You go on ahead, Mr President, and send our wealth and our sons
and daughters overseas, ‘cause we don’t need them, either’." (MichaelMoore.com,
30 November 2009)
Obama’s troop surge will not
provide any solution to the problems in Afghanistan. It will only lead
to increased violence and drag the US further into a quagmire, with no
end in sight. The antiwar movement needs to reorganise itself to build
the strongest possible movement against this war. The growing opposition
to the war among ordinary Americans, not to mention people all over the
world, provides a huge opportunity if activists are prepared to seize
it. There is a call for national demonstrations on 20 March, the seventh
anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Ultimately, stopping the war in
Afghanistan and the continued crimes of US imperialism is going to
require a real challenge to the two-party system. The fact that the
Democrats now control the White House and Congress and yet are still
escalating the war, shows the bankruptcy of the two-party system.
Dan DiMaggio
