President Joe Biden did something that his three predecessors failed to do during their nearly twenty years of presiding over America’s longest war. Biden leveled with the American people and told them that the war that they were fighting in Afghanistan was one which they were not going to win. That was Truth to Power, something that rarely comes from the mouth of someone in Power. He said that he was taking action to forthwith remove American troops, contractors and support personnel from Afghanistan.

It was time for a president to acknowledge to American and global citizens that if there had been a good time for the United States to extricate itself from Afghanistan, it would have been shortly after air strikes flattened key Al Qaeda positions in 2002-2003. Since then, any chance of “winning” the war had long since passed. No matter how many corners could be turned in the future, America and its allies were not going to win a war in Afghanistan.

Biden’s willingness to say that the United States was leaving Afghanistan; his courage to follow through on this pledge indicate how remarkable both he and his actions have been. This is particularly so in comparison to American presidents of the recent past.

Biden’s courage to take responsibility for a final resolution of this chapter of American conflict with Afghanistan is the headline. It should remain that way for weeks, months, even years to come. It is difficult to think of any action by any American president since the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson chose to fight for human and economic rights for minorities and poor white people in America that matched what Biden did.

However, as well received as Biden’s decision has been by most of the American people, there has not been a concurrent “trickle down” of support reaching many of the fine men and women in the American media.

No sooner had President Biden delivered his remarkable speech on August 16 than MSNBC cable journalists Nicolle Wallace and Brian Williams agreed that “95% of the American people will love the speech, and 95% of the press will hate it.” Kudos to them for being so spot on and brutally honest about their colleagues in the media.

The response of most of the media to the Biden speeches in many ways reflects the theater of the absurd. Prior to the speeches, if you could have gathered leading media commentators around in an informal gathering and asked them what they would suggest that the United States do about Afghanistan, it almost a sure bet that most would have said that the United States has to get out of Afghanistan. They might further add that the U.S. has to analyze the wars in which it has engaged since its last “victory” in 1945 in World War II and learn how to avoid going to wars which have “loser” written all over them. Finally, should the U.S. once again become involved in a war in which it has no way out other than formally or informally turning tail and leaving, it needs to rehearse Biden’s script on how to say “enough is enough.”

Members of the media seem to suffer from the same malady as other well-educated people who take their particular profession too seriously. Journalists lock themselves into the norms and standards of their profession and remove themselves from the grounding that comes from seeing oneself first as a human being and a reporter second.

No sooner had Biden delivered his seminal speech than they criticized the president with nit-picky questions and comments about the American extrication. There is legitimate grounding to many of their questions, particularly about the strategy and logistics of the final days in Kabul. However, the tone expressed by many of the journalists is snarky and absent of praise for the bold and thoughtful actions taken by Biden.

This is not to imply that no critical questions should be allowed in a press conference when journalists speak “Truth to Power” as clearly as Joe Biden did. Biden spoke the “Truth” about America’s presence in Afghanistan. He may have overlooked some of the smaller “truths” about the difficulties that American forces were facing in the final extrication.

For example, when he stated that there was no way for him and his advisors to know that the Taliban might be able to seize the capital city of Kabul and the area surrounding the Hamid Karzai Airport, that simply does not jibe with the on-the-ground reporting that we have seen and the video that accompanies it. When Biden was not straight about events that both the media and citizens could clearly see, then it undermined the credibility of his assertions about the wisdom of terminating the presence of American troops in Afghanistan immediately.

Media tends to consistently give itself a free pass. This is unfair for so many reasons. When vitriol is directed at Joe Biden as if he were Donald Trump, then the media’s checks and balances on Trump are undermined. The way for the media to enhance its credibility, and to gain more support from the American people, is for journalists to operate as human beings first and reporters second. We tend to admire politicians who speak to us as if they were across the table from us in our kitchen; the same holds true for journalists. The media is the lens through which we learn so much about what is going on in the world, our country, our regions and our localities. No need for grandstanding; just some low-drama honesty and truthfulness.

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It’s possible that Donald Trump can run away from his Charlottesville problems by trying to be commander-in-chief and uttering a policy about Afghanistan. What he cannot run away from, unless he receives some miraculous treatment for narcissistic tendencies, is the mental health baggage that he carries with him.

While it is true that all of us make decisions based on our psychological make-up, it would be thoroughly confusing and unworkable for us to base everyone’s judgment calls on their psychological make-up. An extension of this is that we cannot assess policy decisions on the psychological profiles of those who make them.

But when someone is as detached from reality as Donald Trump, it is essential that we put psychology first and policy assessments second. What took place in his mind to spur him to present to the country and the world a new program of adding 3,900 uncounted troops to Afghanistan? What makes him think that if he chooses a strategy that is remarkably similar to the one that he consistently disparaged and berated from Barack Obama, that he will have sudden success? It is timely that we remind ourselves that one definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Isn’t that what Trump is doing in Afghanistan?

He said,

We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies never know our plans or believe they can wait us out.

He thinks this is new, perhaps because in style it varies from what Barack Obama did. But in substance, it is precisely what George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor, and the man who initiated the sixteen-year-long quagmire in Afghanistan, did. The Bush-Cheney Administration went gung-ho into Afghanistan, wishing to spare no limitations on how it would try to rid the country of terrorists and to make it thoroughly inhospitable to terrorists in the future.

It may serve any United States president well to not just look back at the policies of Barack Obama or George W. Bush in trying to “conquer” Afghanistan. He won’t find success there and he won’t with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev whose late 1970s invasion into Afghanistan was a total fiasco. If you want victory in Afghanistan, then you might find some with Alexander the Great with his campaign from 330 – 323 BCE. That really wasn’t that good either,

The type of guerilla-style fighting that Alexander faced during the Afghan campaign was described centuries later by the chronicler Plutarch, who compared Afghan tribesmen to a hydra-headed monster: as soon as Alexander cut off one head, three more would grow back in its place.

In some ways, looking at Trump through the lens of his mental health issues rather than standard policy evaluations, reveals the irony in that he could have done what he previously espoused, and what no western country has done in millennia. He could have just pulled out.

Imagine if Barack Obama had tried to simply disengage from Afghanistan. It is what many Americans, including those in uniform, wanted him to do. But since Obama had never been in the military, and he was the one who called America’s presence in Iraq “a dumb war … a rash war,” his credentials were somewhat tainted for withdrawal (as opposed, for instance, to Dwight Eisenhower leading the U.S. out of Korea in 1953).

But with Trump’s psyche and his penchant for outright lying, there is no requirement that he follow reason or base decisions on evidence. That’s why he could have chosen in his August 21, 2017 speech to pull the United States out of Afghanistan. It simply would have been “Trumpian.”

But for whatever reason, he didn’t. And now we’ll all have to pay the price. Whether the military actually gave him the advice that he ascribed to them, they had better keep a close eye on him. The idea of Donald Trump using military resources is about as scary as it can get. We can never lose sight of who he is and what he brings to the table. First and foremost, it is an illness, and that is not the correct prescription for leadership.

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More than 10 years, six-thousand+ body bags, and hundreds of thousands of physically and psychologically wounded veterans too late, George W. Bush may finally be feeling a twinge of something resembling regret over the deaths and injuries caused by the Iraq War–the war he created based on a lie—and the war in Afghanistan. Last week [February 2014], Bush emerged from his self-portrait-in-bathtub-painting, post-Presidential hibernation to announce that his foundation plans to help veterans who are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD].

About 2.5 million U.S. service members served in the Bush-initiated Iraq and Afghanistan wars since 2001, according to the Department of Defense.  Nearly 7,000 U.S. military personnel were killed. More than 50,000 U.S. and coalition service members were wounded in more than a decade of war. More than 270,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are thought to suffer from PTSD. To date, the Veterans Affairs Department has awarded disability benefits to more than 150,000 PTSD patients.

In a speech delivered last week, Bush outlined his plans. According to the Dallas News, he noted that “the Bush Institute hopes to create a set of best practices that can be applied to business, non-profits and other groups that are working with veterans and their families…Bush is expected to focus on three areas: the civilian-military divide; the employment prospects for post-9/11 veterans; and the stigma surrounding post-traumatic stress.”

I think it needs to be said that among the “best practices” that ought to be deployed is the practice of not sending people into unnecessary wars, and that such a “best practice” would preclude the need to deal with hundreds of thousands of people experiencing the “stigma” of post-traumatic stress.

Later, in an interview on ABC News, Bush talked more about the new initiative. He didn’t actually apologize for the physical and emotional destruction his fake war created. I doubt that he’ll ever be big enough to do that. As a person born to privilege, propped up as a puppet of a politically cynical entourage, and never really held accountable for his behavior (including ducking out on his own, cushy military tour of duty), W is not prone to introspection or regret. But he did say that helping veterans was his “duty,” and he did seem to be pursuing a positive impulse—unlike much of what he did as President.  So, perhaps in the years since he left office, the boy president has finally matured enough to put some of his presidential swagger behind him, and get some perspective on the long-term effects of sending millions of soldiers into a cooked-up, bloody battle with no justification and no acceptable outcome—just years of extended suffering for its physically and emotionally scarred veterans and their families.

At least, I hope that’s what has happened. Unless this is all just convenient, empty, legacy-building baloney from a former President who never really understood–and wasn’t curious about–the world around him or the consequences of blindly following the dictates of Dick Cheney. Or maybe as he ages, Bush’s testosterone level is falling a bit…Or maybe what he really regrets is that his legacy is going to be that of an empty-headed dolt who did a shitload of harm. Or perhaps, as has been suggested to me, the Republican party is hoping to elevate Bush’s brother to presidential status and needs George to do something–anything–to clean up the family image he totaled.

As Bush talked about his plans, he choked up a bit, and a single tear coursed down his cheek in what he called a “slightly emotional” reaction. It didn’t make me like him, or respect him, or forgive him for all the damage he mindlessly and callously inflicted. It’s far too little, far too late. But it was a heckuva lot better than “Mission Accomplished.”

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What’s an “October surprise?” It’s any negative (or positive) news that breaks right before the November presidential election that has the capability to determine the outcome of the race.

Tom Engelhardt, writing in Truthdig on September 25, makes a convincing case that Obama is going to win a second term. But, he says, the threat of an October Surprise—another event like the storming of the American embassy in Libya—is keeping the president up at night. Romney is a weak candidate, but another incident of global unrest could have the power to turn the election against Obama. As Englehardt says, it’s no longer Obama vs. Romney, but “Obama versus the world.”

For the next 43 days, that’s the real contest. It could prove to be the greatest show on Earth, filled as it is with a stellar cast of Islamist extremists, Taliban militants, Afghan allies intent on blowing away their mentors, endangered American diplomats, an Israeli prime minister on the red-line express, sober central European bankers, and a perturbed Chinese leadership, among so many others.

In such a potentially tumultuous situation, the president and his people are committed to a perilous high-wire act without a net.  It involves bringing to bear all the power and savvy left to the last superpower on Earth to prevent some part of the world from spinning embarrassingly out of control . . .

I’m not sure Obama has the power to control world events, but he can work to tamp down emotions. On September 25, in an effort to soothe tensions between the U.S. and the Middle Ease, Obama spoke at the UN.

Englehardt, offering a compelling analysis of why the world is in such upheaval, says we are witnessing the political arrangements of the Cold War finally coming unglued. The unraveling of Syria is one example. The Arab Spring is another. The Bush wars on Arab nations and the U.S. financial sector running amuck played a big role in unifying much of the Arab world against the Unites States. The Arab Spring was launched against an American Cold War system of U.S. armed regional autocrats like Egypt’s Mubarak. A whole oppressive system was “sprung loose,” and it’s not clear what ‘s going to replace it. Meanwhile, the Arab world, suffering from PTSD, is erupting in violent demonstrations and killings.

Obama’s problem is more than the Middle East. The entire world is at the boiling point. There’s Israeli policy on Iran and Netanyahu’s threats to start a war. The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. The Eurozone is threatening to fall apart and who knows what that means for the U.S. and the rest of the world. China is slipping into recession along with economic powerhouses India and Brazil. Climate change is threatening the planet, and extreme droughts are driving food prices up worldwide. Anything could flare up between now and November 6^th. If something does happen, Romney will run with it. Taking advantage of a gullible electorate, he will twist whatever happened to reflect badly on Obama, putting his reelection in jeopardy.

If Obama avoids an October Surprise, he will most likely be reelected. The larger question is how will he handle these daunting problems once he is back in office?

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It may be too strong an adage to say the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same things with the expectation of different results. One question with U.S. foreign policy is whether its presence in Afghanistan is essentially the same as it was in Vietnam.

There may well have been justifications for going into both Vietnam and Afghanistan. In the case of Vietnam, there was a fear of the spread of communism. In 1950 when North Korea unexpectedly and viciously invaded South Korea, the U.S. convinced the United Nations to take immediate action because the aggression was blatant. This was just a year after the Soviet Union had developed and tested its first atomic bomb. China loomed above North Korea as the world’s largest nation. Also, in 1949, it had changed dramatically, when the communists drove the nationalists off the mainland and onto the island of Formosa.

The U.S. was concerned about losing any territory to the communists and had a fear of the so-called “domino the,ory,” in which, after one country was defeated, its neighbor would fall like a domino. Country after country would fall, like a row of dominos until there was a natural or human barrier to stop the falling.

In the case of Korea, there was a natural barrier with the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean. But when communism was making headway in Vietnam, the row of dominos included Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, and possibly India and Pakistan.

France had held Vietnam as a colony prior to World War II and tried to regain control after the war. It also tried to stop the hemorrhaging of communism in Southeast Asia. However, by 1954, it was clear that their efforts were fruitless, and they withdrew.

We’ve recently heard more about the theory of “American exceptionalism.” It’s the idea is that the United States is capable of doing things that other countries can’t. It’s true in some regards, but not all. When it came to Vietnam, the U.S. may have fought with more commitment, better strategy, and more skill from its armed forces, but the result was essentially the same as the French. American exceptionalism failed.

Now we are in Afghanistan. Our motives were initially sound, trying to track down Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, perpetrators of the horrific nine eleven attack. The U.S. actually was successful at first, nearly caught bin Laden, and inflicted considerable damage on al Qaeda and its partners in the Taliban. But then President George Bush and his neo-con friends did the inexplicable. They essentially gave up on Afghanistan and redirected their focus and forces to Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with nine eleven. One of the costs of the American incursion into Iraq was that valuable time was lost in Afghanistan and the United States was not accomplishing its goals.

President Barack Obama largely fulfilled his promise for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq, albeit at a slower pace than many wanted. However, for reasons that baffled progressives, he escalated the American presence in Afghanistan long after the war had become unwinnable. Even with remarkable hi-tech equipment and dedicated troops, the best that could be said of progress was that it was at a stalemate.

It was on his watch that Osama bin Laden was tracked down and killed. But in retrospect, that had little to do with Afghanistan. Bin Laden had been hiding out in Pakistan for more than five years. American intelligence found him, though there was some doubt if they had it right. Obama did give the green light for the capture or kill operation, and due to remarkable work by Navy Seal Team Six, bin Laden was found and “neutralized.”

While the number of American combat troops in Afghanistan is being reduced, a new projected end point is 2024. The question remains, what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan? Has the U.S. not learned the lessons of Iraq and of Vietnam as well?

Part of the American experience in Afghanistan has involved horrible atrocities. As Scott Camil reports in a special opinion piece to CNN, similar acts of brutality and inhumanity occurred in Vietnam. Is that the nature of war, particularly one in which “victory” is only a possibility and difficult to define?

There is a multitude of differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan, beginning with the terrain. But both involve corrupt governments, questionable soldiers for the “host countries” and a lack of support from many American civilians.

As journalist Dan Rather said in his recent book,  Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News:

I wish I could say that Afghanistan is better. Perhaps we might have learned in Vietnam how difficult if not impossible it is to remake a society. Now that we are in our second decade in Afghanistan, however, the familiar echoes of Vietnam are sounding louder and more haunting. We are fighting massive government corruption, trying to revamp the Afghan legal system, trying to teach literacy, trying to improve the status of women, trying to oversee free elections. We are once again hearing about the need to win the hearts and minds of the people. Afghanistan and Vietnam are different. The only thing that is the same is the mistakes we made in both situations. How quickly we forget.

Barack Obama is considered intelligent and cautious. It appears that in the case of Afghanistan, caution is trumping intelligence. He certainly is knowledgeable about what Vietnam did to the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. As always, he may know far more than any observers. But there is still tremendous doubt that staying longer in Afghanistan will render any more success than it did in Vietnam. It will be interesting to see how he handles this issue, both as president, and in his future memoirs.

The post Viet-ghanistan? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If it was possible to assemble all American presidents who have ever presided over a war, it’s conceivable that none of them would acknowledge that, on his watch, America has ever lost a war.

We do know that Washington won the Revolutionary War, although technically that was prior to him becoming president.  Madison would declare that America won the War of 1812, and with the help of future president Andrew Jackson he did.  President James K. Polk would be correct in stating that the U.S. won the Mexican-American War, because the U.S. annexed considerable territory, but many Mexicans, Texans, and even New Mexicans say, to this day, that 170 years later the war is not over, and the Mexicans shall yet prevail.

What is rarely clear is whether America has lost a war – too many conflicts have ended in ambiguity.  What is always clear is that no president wants to be regarded as the first to have lost a war.  Just as history is often rewritten by the victors, or the persons who think that they were the victors, contemporary events follow the same pattern.  No matter how doubtful it might that the U.S. won a war, the chief executive will call it a “victory with honor.”

President Barack Obama is currently facing that problem with Afghanistan.  While brave American men and women are fighting against the Taliban and other adversaries of the U.S., the Americans cannot gain the popular support of the Afghani people.  Inadvertent events consistently occur that undermine the good will that American is trying to generate.  It might be accidental bombings of civilians in villages; it might be burning copies of the Koran, it might be a staff sergeant suffering from PTSD who guns down seventeen innocent civilians in a village.  American leaders duly apologize and say that it will never happen again.  However, it does.

The devastation brought to innocent Afghanis has resulted in increased opposition to the war by the American public.  A recent New York Times / CBS News poll indicated that 69% of Americans think that the U.S. should not be involved in the war in Afghanistan, up from 53 % in November 2011.

President Obama has given indirect indications that the U.S. may exit Afghanistan sooner than previously pronounced.  What he has not done is to say that the U.S. is not winning the war, and that the best alternative is to exit.  His strategy is essentially the same as that of all previous American presidents who were in office during other wars.

Abraham Lincoln presided over the Union’s victory over the Confederacy, but with 600,000 soldiers killed and resentments about the conflict bitter to this day, it certainly was not a clear-cut victory.

During the administration of President William McKinley, the Spanish-American War was fought, although the question might be raised, For what?”  The war was ignited by the “yellow journalism” of William Randolph Heart, and while the U.S. gained territory, it did so in a somewhat questionable way.

World War I under Woodrow Wilson was tragic, but also necessary.  Only one member of Congress voted against the declaration of war. World War II was devastating on two fronts; again only one member of Congress voted against the Declaration.  Journalist / writer Tom Brokaw called those who fought in and supported those in World War II “the greatest generation.”

The Korean War from 1950-53 was brutal and frustrating.  It ended where it began; with North Korea and South Korea separated at the 38^th parallel.  The U.S. could have ramped up its forces, but China could have sent more reinforcements to help the North.  It was generally deemed as wise to agree on an extended armistice.  Many men and women fought in the conflict, but with the primary achievement being their bravery and fortitude; not a military victory with territory gained or an aggressive force defeated.  All the same, Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, who were commanders in chief during the war, could not come to call the conflict a draw; they saw it is a successful American stand against communism.

The Vietnam War actually had its roots in World War II. as France tried to maintain its colonial power over most of Southeast Asia.  As the United States tried to accomplish what the French failed to do, the conflict became one of trying once and for all to end communist aggression.  Years of fighting settled little, and by 1975 the United States had decided (1) that the threat of communism was not as great as it has previously thought, and (2) even if it was, the U.S. had very little chance of achieving a clear victory over the amorphous entity known as the communist world.

One war that brought an element of peace and stability was the American involvement in Kosovo and other Balkan states.  Under President Clinton, the U.S. used air power to essentially end ethnic conflict in a very troubled part of the world.

As we entered the 21^st Century, the success of U.S. military engagement soured, but that did not keep presidents Bush and Obama from declaring victory, whether justified or not.  Iraq was clearly a misbegotten war which caused enormous physical and emotional trauma to Iraqis and Americans.  Saddam Hussein was removed from power, but conflict and brutality remain in one of the countries that once was called the ‘cradle of civilization.”

American incursion into Afghanistan following 911 made sense, as forces sought to track down Osama bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda.  However, President Bush, under the influence of his neo-con friends, chose to focus more on Iraq, which had nothing to do with 911, rather than Afghanistan, which at that time was as close to a headquarters that bin Laden and al Qaeda had.  He essentially forfeited both wars, and President Obama has extended the conflict in Afghanistan well beyond what would have been reasonable and at the expense of thousands of Afghani, Pakistani, American, and other NATO troops.

What remains constant through all the wars that America has fought is the unwillingness of either our Presidents and, in many cases, the populace to acknowledge failure.  Like his 43 predecessors, President Obama does not want to be the first president to acknowledge that it was on his watch that the United States lost a war. However, there always is the strategy that has been considered more than once when the U.S. was in a similar position: Declare victory and leave.  President Obama may be moving in that direction.  He could do American GIs, the American people, and Afghani civilians a big boost by uttering those words now.

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The war in Iraq is officially over. But did anyone notice, really? The last troops [except for the ones that are staying and the 5,000 mercenaries—oops, I mean contractors] are on their way home. President Obama welcomed them and thanked them. And that’s it?

Of course, there was no dancing in the streets, no victory parades, no flashy photos of sailors kissing nurses in Times Square. Why would there be? No one is proud of what the U.S. did in—or should we say “to”—Iraq. No valid mission has been accomplished. There’s no victory and nothing to celebrate. It’s just, sort of, over. Poof.

At least when the last U.S. combat troops finally left Viet Nam in 1975, the long overdue, ignominious ending was a media event: For those of us old enough to remember, it’s hard to forget the images of desperate Vietnamese citizens rushing the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and clinging to the skids of helicopters airlifting out the last few Americans. Those scenes were ugly and uncomfortable—a fitting visual punctuation to the ugly war they symbolized.

What a contrast with our last days in Iraq. Surely, given the absence of coverage and analysis of the U.S. exit from Iraq and the deafening silence in Congress, Dick Cheney and the neo-cons who ginned up this so-called war must be chortling and high-fiving, realizing that they got away with one of the biggest military con games in American history.

In the run-up to this bogus “war,” there was at least some debate and analysis. [An outspoken, courageous Illinois State Senator Barack Obama—remember that guy?—was an early critic, and his skepticism launched his ascent toward the Presidency.] But most of what opposition there was [to their credit, 23 U.S. Senators voted against the invasion] became overwhelmed by a sustained propaganda campaign to whip up support for a war that had been looking for an excuse since neo-conservatives hatched “The Project for A New American Century” plan in 1998. Those of us who protested [as I did, on a bridge in central Florida, where I was one of about 20 peace activists in a crowd of at least 400 war supporters] were told that we were unpatriotic. It wasn’t a very productive debate, but at least we were confronting the issue.

Now, at the other end of this thing, media coverage and meaningful analysis are hard to find.

When the invasion of Iraq began, CNN and every other American media outlet couldn’t wait to get on board a troop transport, ride along in a tank and breathlessly document the operation. Admittedly, there wasn’t much critical thinking going on then, either—just a mostly blind acceptance of the Bush Administration’s [false] assertion that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” and that Iraq was a player in the September 11 attacks.

In the intervening years, as 4,483 Americans were killed and thousands more wounded and disabled, fighting for…what, again?…the facts emerged and public opinion—and attention—turned away from the invasion/occupation. Maybe it was just too painful to watch. Or, perhaps voters, politicians and policymakers just lost the energy to keep debating the demerits of a military action that was so clearly wrong from the start, yet so difficult to disengage from.

Sure, now that it’s “over” [and even that is debatable], we’d all rather close our eyes, walk away, focus on something easier—like the latest celebrity wedding—and dismiss what happened in Iraq as a thing of the past.

But it’s not. The war-mongering, xenophobia, American exceptionalism and profiteering that led us into an unjustified invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no direct threat to the U.S. lives on. Just listen to the Republican candidates for president. Incredibly, just as the U.S. is getting out of Iraq, they seem to be shifting their attention to Iran, duking it out in the “debates” to see who can rattle the sabers loudest. [Ron Paul stands alone as the one candidate with a sane view of war in general, and U.S. policy in the Middle East in specific.] Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been spouting increasingly warlike rhetoric, and their contention that Iran poses a threat because it might be developing a nuclear weapon sounds alarmingly similar to what we heard about Iraq 10 years ago. And, of course, there’s the issue of Abu Ghraib and torture, elements of our sojourn in Iraq that have fallen off the media radar screen–except for some frightening pronouncements by Republican candidates who assert that “waterboarding isn’t torture,” and that they’d use “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the future.

If there was ever a time to pause and reflect on the meaning of Iraq, this is it.

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Access to the oil plays a role in the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. But there are additional strategic reasons for the U.S. wanting to control that part of the world.  A recent interview with long time anti-war activist Rick Rozoff offers a compelling argument that the U.S. intends a permanent military occupation of Afghanistan. You can read the entire interview at Dandelionsalad.

Why is the US in Afghanistan?

I’ll give you my personal estimate and I think it’s the one that became apparent with the initial thrust into Afghanistan almost ten years ago, which occurred less than three months after the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the summer of 2001. My supposition is – not withstanding the hunt for Osama bin Laden and whatever else was presented as the casus belli for the invasion of Afghanistan and its continuation for ten years – that, in essence, the US and its Western allies wanted to plant themselves firmly at the point of confluence where Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and other nations might be able to cooperate in building a multipolar alternative to the US-dominated unipolar world by being in Afghanistan and its environs. . . .

How would you characterize the entire campaign by NATO and the US in Afghanistan? As a complete failure, or were there any gains?

There was an article recently by the US Department of Defense, the Pentagon’s, press agency, American Forces Press Service, that just happened to mention in passing that the Shindand Air Base in Herat Province has tripled in size recently to become the second largest military air base in Afghanistan next to that at Bagram.

Last year, the US and its NATO allies stepped up the extension of air bases in Afghanistan – in Kandahar, in Mazar e Sharif, in Jalalabad in addition to Bagram and Shindand – they are going to have air bases that control the entire region, a good deal of the Greater Middle East, if you will, in addition to continuing troop transits.

They’ve also set up the Northern Distribution Network. It’s an extensive network of air, rail and truck transportation, which now includes 13 of 15 former Soviet Republics, all except Moldova and Ukraine currently.

Men and materiel are being moved in and out, and this is an amazing network, when you look at it, including just recently the first air flight from the US over the North Pole and then over Kazakhstan into Afghanistan. So, in terms of building up a military network around the world – and we also have to remember there are troops from over 50 countries serving under NATO in Afghanistan, which is the largest amount of countries offering troops for one military command in one nation in world history. We also have to recall that Afghanistan has become a training ground, if you will, to place US-NATO allies and partners in real-life combat situations, to integrate the militaries of at least 50 countries under, basically, US command, using English as their common language. I’m arguing that Afghanistan is a laboratory for integrating the militaries of these various countries.

Photo credit: U.S. Department of Defense

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The war against Afghanistan continues to be portrayed by President Obama, and other government officials—with the help of a compliant and complicit media—as a war against terrorism. But the decades long CIA and U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan has always been about serving the interests of capital and finance. Although a poor country, Afghanistan has tremendous economic and geopolitical value for the United States. As the short history that follows shows, the U.S government has consistently supported reactionary forces in Afghanistan in service of U.S. corporate interests.

In 1978, a progressive revolution takes place in Afghanistan

For thousands of years, Afghanistan had been a repressive feudal society when, in the mid-1960s, revolutionaries in Afghanistan formed the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Their intent was to overthrow the feudal landlords who had kept over 90% of the population in indentured servitude. In 1973, the PDP managed to depose the king, however, its governance was inept, and unpopular. In 1978, the people of Afghanistan staged a huge demonstration in front of the Presidential Palace and took down the first PDP government. The army intervened on the side of the demonstrators and invited Noor Mohammed Taraki, a journalist, to head up another Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces. The people had spoken.

The Taraki government legalized labor unions, set up a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public sanitation. It organized farmer cooperatives and lowered food prices. It provided public education for girls and promoted the emancipation of women from tribal bondage. It stopped the cultivation of opium poppy, and abolished all debts owed by farmers, some of which were generations old. Finally, it began a major land reform program in which land was redistributed to former serfs.

Obviously, the old reactionary elite in Afghanistan was not happy. Feudal landlords opposed the confiscation and redistribution of their land, and fundamentalist tribesmen and mullahs opposed the progressive ideas of gender equality and the secular education of women and children, which undercut their authority and power.

The U. S. undermines progressive economic and social reforms of the Taraki government

As soon as the Taraki government came to power in 1978, the CIA, assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military, intervened in Afghanistan on the side of the protesting feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, fundamentalist mullahs, and opium traffickers. The Carter administration, through the CIA, provided huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government, a government that was not only providing a better life for the majority of Afghans, but was also friendly with the Soviet Union.

In 1979, a top official within the Taraki government, covert CIA operative Hafizulla Amin, seized state power in a U.S. backed armed coup and executed Taraki. He halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters. But he didn’t last long. On December 26, 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, killed Amin and installed genuine PDP leader, Babrak Karmal. The very next day, on December 27, 1979, massive Soviet ground forces invaded Afghanistan from the north.

The CIA, the Mujahideen, and Osama bin Laden

The Soviet invasion allowed the CIA to turn a reactionary tribal resistance against economic and social reform into a U.S. proxy war with Soviet Russia, which threatened U.S. corporate access to resources, labor and markets around the world. The CIA and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, recruited, supplied, and trained nearly 100,000 radical Muslims, or mujahideen, from over forty Muslim countries. Among those was Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden.

After a long and unsuccessful war, the Soviets left Afghanistan in February 1989. The PDP Marxist government held on for another three years but was finally taken over by the U.S. backed mujahideen.

But, after taking power, the tribal mujahideen fought among themselves, terrorized civilian populations, looted, had mass executions, closed schools, raped thousands of women and girls, and destroyed much of Kabul. Needing an independent source of income, they forced farmers to grow opium poppy. To gain leverage with the mujahideen, the Pakistani ISI, with tacit approval from the CIA, set up hundreds of heroin labs across Afghanistan. As a result of U.S./Pakistani policy, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland became the biggest producer of heroin in the World.

The U.S. funds and supports the Taliban

From the U.S. government/corporate perspective, Afghanistan was rescued from progressive, anti-capitalist reform and takeover by the Soviet Union, but the mujahideen were not easy to control. By 1995, the CIA and the ISI had begin to support and fund an extremist, fundamentalist sect of Sunni Islam, called the Taliban, which successfully fought its way to power, and took over most of the country.

The Taliban stopped the raping and poppy growing. All men were required to have untrimmed beards and women had to wear the burqa. Women were, once again, outlawed from social life, deprived of most forms of medical care, barred from all levels of education, and work outside the home. Those who were deemed “immoral” were stoned to death or buried alive.

Afghanistan = Pipelineistan

After the discovery of natural gas and oil in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in the early 1990s, U.S. companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these vast new reserves. But there was a major problem. How were they going to transport the oil and gas from the landlocked region?

U.S.government/corporate policy, designed to lock out Russia, China and Iran from the oil and natural gas in this region, called for the construction of a natural gas pipeline, which would run through Afghanistan. Since the mid 1990s, U.S. and European oil companies have been pushing this goal.

The U.S. government supported the Taliban because it thought it would impose the necessary order and stability to allow the new pipeline to be built. As soon as George W. Bush was elected president, Unocal and BP-Amoco pushed to resume discussions with the Taliban, with Secretary of State Richard Armitage, ex- Unocal lobbyist, taking the lead. As late as August 2001, meetings were held in Pakistan to discuss the pipeline.

But, while those negotiations were underway, the US was secretly making plans to invade Afghanistan. The Bush administration and its oil sponsors were losing patience with the Taliban, and wanted to get the Central Asian gas pipeline going as soon as possible.

September 11^th provided Washington with a reason to invade Afghanistan and establish a pro American, puppet government. By December 2001, the Taliban had been overthrown, and the U.S. installed Hamid Karzai as President of Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, also a former employee of Unocal, had been involved in early negotiations for the pipeline. As soon as Karzai was in power, the heroin business, once again, boomed. (see Mike Davis’s excellent article “Heroin Deaths Rise: Afghanistan War To Blame”)

Oil and mineral profits

President Obama was not truthful when he explained on June 22, 2011, that the continued, although slightly reduced, U.S military presence is in Afghanistan is needed to make the United States safe from terrorism. The truth is that he is just another U.S. president participating in the decades long government effort to make Afghanistan safe for global capital and finance. The truth is that our young men and women are being sent to die to secure the territory through which the oil and gas pipelines will have to pass. This, to ensure Russia, China and Iran are denied access to the last of the global oil and gas supplies on the planet. No matter what President Obama is saying about troop withdrawal, the recent discovery of at least $1 trillion in mineral deposits in Afghanistan will insure that the United States never really leaves the country.

Of course President Obama says the war is about preventing another terrorist attack. How can he tell the American people they have lost treasure and loved ones, and will continue to do so, to defend natural gas pipelines and oil and mineral profits?

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Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon said it about the soldiers they commanded in Vietnam. The two presidents did not want any fallen soldier in Southeast Asia to die in vain.

Over the past decade of American involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a variety of other Muslim countries, Presidents Bush and Obama have similarly said that every fallen soldier was valiantly serving his or her nation and had not died in vain.

It may not be politically correct to ask it, but when does a soldier die in vain? I will not pretend to have a definitive answer but some situations are rather clear.

1. If a soldier dies following the conclusion of a war, that certainly is in vain. It has happened repeatedly in American history, perhaps most egregiously following the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

2. It could be argued that if a soldier dies due to friendly fire, it would be in vain. We must keep in mind that frequently there are uncertainties in alleged cases of friendly fire.

But the focus of the assertion that “we do not want those who have fought so valiantly to have died in vain” is that the United States should not bring a war to an expeditious end because it would devalue the sacrifice of the soldiers who, to use Lincoln’s term in the Gettysburg Address, “gave the last full measure of devotion.” Lincoln went on to say, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

Lincoln gave his speech as two regions of the United States struggled to define what America meant. Our experiment with democracy had unfinished business, namely whether it was the states or the federal government who had primary powers in this unique system of federalism.

When the Civil War came to an end, it meant that the fighting ended, but the issues were not settled. They continue to this very day.

Did the more than 600,000 soldiers who died in America’s Civil War die in vain? Some would argue that all deaths in war are in vain because there are better ways to settle disputes. In the case of the Civil War, it’s doubtful that any leader could have done more than Abraham Lincoln to search for peaceful ways to avoid the bloodshed. When the first shots were fired at Ft. Sumter, SC on April 12, 1861, the rules of engagement had been set and they included bloodshed.

While many opposed the war as it was being fought, the prevailing views on each side were that it should be fought to a fitting conclusion. Only when the Confederate armies were either defeated or surrounded, did General Robert E. Lee sue for surrender. Did those who fought for the Union and the Confederacy die in vain? The prevailing sentiment on each side was that every soldier who died did so in support of an important cause in which he believed.

To justify the deaths of the Civil War, we have to conclude two things. First, the outcome with the union remaining intact was a worthwhile resolution. Second, as a nation, we had learned lessons that would prevent us from repeating the mistakes that lead to and perpetuated the war. With varying degrees of certainty, most people would probably agree with these conclusions.

The current question is whether U.S. soldiers in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq are dying in vain. It is helpful to look at the two questions we posed regarding the American Civil War and adapt them to Afghanistan.

First, is the outcome of war likely to be what the United States wants? This is difficult to answer, because of the lack of clarity of the American mission. However, few people assert that even if American soldiers remain until 2014, the Taliban will not be a political force in Afghanistan and that pockets of al Qaeda will not remain.

Second, will we have learned to not repeat the mistakes that plunged us into a prolonged war in Afghanistan? The answer to that lies in the future history of our country.

What we do know is that in Vietnam more than 58,000 American men and women died, presumably to keep territory from falling into the hands of the Communists. Two years after the last American soldier left, all of Vietnam was under Communist rule. So the mission of preventing the spread of Communism into South Vietnam did not succeed.

The second question would be did we learn lessons that would protect us from repeating our mistakes? Regrettably, it seems that American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan would provide evidence that we did not learn that lesson. We appear to be fighting for causes that we cannot win. The problem is, as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon experienced in Vietnam, no American president wants to be the first to preside over a war that the United States loses.

Here are two possible solutions to the problem. First, let’s acknowledge that we lost the war in Vietnam. By any reasonable standard of measurement, we did. If we accept that, however painful it might be, then President Obama need not worry about being the first president to lose a war.

If President Obama were to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq as quickly as possible, then we could better answer the questions about whether American soldiers had died in vain.

First, we could say that the 58,000 American soldiers who died in Vietnam did not do so in vain. They fought valiantly, but provided us with evidence that the United States cannot win every war that it enters. As for those who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, the same can be true. The Vietnam lesson has not been thoroughly learned, but perhaps the similarity of the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam is a necessary reminder for us to learn the lesson to not fight wars that we cannot win. If we learn that lesson now, then those who have fought and died for their country did so for a reason, though not necessarily the reason that they thought had been put in harm’s way. They died so that we could finally learn the lesson to neither enter nor remain in wars that are fruitless.

It can be argued that every soldier who dies in Afghanistan and Iraq from here on out may die in vain because he or she should not have been there. Once the time to have learned the lesson passes, then there is no purpose in the death of soldiers.

These are questions that must be addressed by President Barack Obama, by the United States Congress which has the power to cut off the funding for the wars, and by the American people who can tell their leaders that they will no longer accept America at war under unwinnable circumstances.

It is certainly my hope, and I think that of many others, that no soldier has died in vain. But anyone who might die as a result of any delay in getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan ASAP, may die in vain. It’s a terrible thing to say, and perhaps not true. However, it is something to talk about.

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