June 26, 2010
By Sandy Shanks
Given the rich history of the United States in combat, beginning with the Revolutionary War and extending to the present, it should be a given that after 8 1/2 years of war in Afghanistan one should be able assume that there is some progress. Such is not the case. On the contrary our efforts have become counter-productive.
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Given the rich history of the United States in
combat, beginning with the Revolutionary War and extending to the present, it
should be a given that after 8 1/2 years of war in Afghanistan one should be
able assume that there is some progress in this war-torn, impoverished nation
where the enemy has no air force, no armor, and virtually no technological
weapons, relying upon WWII-era weaponry with the exception of Stinger missiles
we gave the Mujahadeen (later becoming the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida)during the
Soviet-Afghan war. Such is not the case. On the contrary our efforts have become
counter-productive.
This is reminiscent of the Vietnam War, the
second longest war in our history. The war in Afghanistan recently became the
longest war in our history, a dubious distinction at best, especially when one
considers results.
In 1991, after seven decades, the Soviet Union
suddenly disintegrated and disappeared. Columnist Tom Engelhardt writes,
"Looking back, the most distinctive feature of the last years of the Soviet
Union may have been the way it continued to pour money into its military -- and
its military adventure in Afghanistan -- when it was already going bankrupt and
the society it had built was beginning to collapse around it. In the end, its
aging leaders made a devastating miscalculation. They mistook military
power for power on this planet. Armed to the teeth and possessing a
nuclear force capable of destroying the Earth many times over, the Soviets
nonetheless remained the vastly poorer, weaker, and far less technologically
innovative of the two superpowers [emphasis is mine]." He adds, "Gorbachev had
dubbed Afghanistan' the bleeding wound,'and when the
wounded Red Army finally limped home, it was to a country that would soon cease
to exist. For the Soviet Union, Afghanistan had literally proven 'the graveyard
of empires.' If, at the end, its military remained standing, the empire
didn't." Is there a similarity to any superpower you know today?
Here is a hint. Caught off guard by the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Washington's policymakers drew no meaningful lessons from
it while equally ignoring valuable lessons from the Vietnam defeat 16 years
earlier. Successive American administrations headed blindly down the very path
that had led the Soviets to ruin. Following 9/11, Bush administration officials
and military leaders adhered to the tenets of a disgraced theory called Pax
Americana, sending our forces around the globe to obscure frontiers and
building mega bases to support them. "In this way, far more than the Soviets,
the top officials of the Bush administration mistook military power for power, a
gargantuan misreading of the U.S. economic position in the world and of their
moment," Engelhardt. In describing the theory of Pax Americana, one
might want to remember the words of Thomas Henry Huxley. He defined tragedy as
"the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
But hope springs eternal. Weary of nearly a
decade of war at the beginning of the 21st Century the American public voted in
a new sheriff to take over the town, Barack Obama from Illinois, the Land of
Lincoln. Obama disavowed nearly every precept of the Bush administration,
including that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time, while adding ominously
during his campaign that Afghanistan was the "right war." Obama had no delusions
about military omnipotence, and he stressed "Change." Then a strange thing
happened on the foreign front. Nothing changed unless you count mere strategy.
Towards the end of 2009, he ordered 20,000 additional combat troops to
Afghanistan as troops in war-torn Iraq were drawing down. In essence, the U.S.
was only drawing down one war, in Iraq, to feed the flames of another.
Engelhardt states, "As in the Soviet Union before its collapse, the exaltation
and feeding of the military at the expense of the rest of society and the
economy had by now become the new normal; so much so that hardly a serious word
could be said -- lest you not 'support our troops' -- when it came to ending the
American way of war or downsizing the global mission or ponying up the funds demanded of
Congress to pursue war preparations and war-making."
And hope can be ethereal. Four months ago Gen. Stanley McChrystal stated, "We've got a
government in a box, ready to roll [into Marja]." It took longer than expected
to reach a more inconclusive outcome than expected in that town of about 80,000,
which last month McChrystal called "a bleeding ulcer." Hence the delay from
spring until autumn in tackling Kandahar, with its population of perhaps
800,000. He said, "[It is] more important we get it right than we get it fast."
Getting it right might include what to name the operation in Kandahar as the
military has suddenly grown reluctant to call the Kandahar offensive an
"offensive." The military wants to call it something else, but they are not sure
what yet. One suggestion from a savvy Marine corporal was
clusterf**k.
At a high level, decisive meeting in
the autumn of 2009 members of that meet included President BarackObama,
Vice-President JoeBiden, Gen. David Petraeus (CentCom Commander) and Adm. Mike
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At that meeting Gen. Petraeus
assured the President that the Afghan National Army (ANA) will know the drill
and will be dialed in on Afghan national security objectives once NATO forces
begin to leave in 18 months (July 2011). The 18 months was a direct Presidential
order. Despite Petraeus's and Mullen's assurances, Time Magazine
reported recently "... that NATO trainers say 90 percent of
Afghan enlisted recruits cannot read a rifle instruction manual, ANA officers
routinely steal enlistees' salaries, soldiers sell off their own
American-supplied boots, blankets and guns at the bazaar - sometimes to the
Taliban, and recruits tend to go AWOL after their first leave, while one-quarter
of those who stay in service are blitzed on hashish or heroin," according to an
ANA survey. That was only the beginning of the problems for Gen.
Petraeus.
In his article entitled,
"Afghanistan: The News Is Bad," Jim Lobe of IPS reported, "While U.S. officials insist they are making progress in reversing
the momentum built up by the Taliban insurgency over the last several years, the
latest news from Afghanistan suggests the opposite may be closer to the
truth. Even senior military officials are
conceding privately that their much-touted new counterinsurgency strategy of
'clear, hold and build' in contested areas of the Pashtun southern and eastern
parts of the country are not working out as planned despite the 'surge' of some
20,000 additional U.S. troops over the past six months." Note:
Another 10,000 are slated to arrive by the end of
August.
In the meantime casualties among the
130,000 U.S. and other NATO troops mount.June has become the deadliest month
for NATO troops in Afghanistan.
None other than SecDef Robert
Gates showed his frustration recently. "The one thing none of
the (alliance's) publics...including the American public, will tolerate is the
perception of stalemate in which we're losing young men," he said in London on
the eve of a key NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels at which Afghanistan
topped the agenda and Gates himself is expected to prod his interlocutors to
fulfill pledges to provide more troops. He added desperately, "All of us, for our publics, are going to have to show by the end
of the year that our strategy is on the track, making some
headway."
Last November Obama set July 2011 as the date
after which Washington would begin to withdraw U.S. troops from
Afghanistan. He recently has added a caveat.He said his administration will
conduct a major review of U.S. strategy and whether it is working at the end of
this year. "Begin" is a clever word, and readers have a right to be skeptical.
If, in July 2011, Obama withdraws 500 troops, that is a beginning, is it not?
Unlike Iraq, there is no date for the withdrawal of all combat troops from
Afghanistan. Additionally, there is this little
tidbit.Special Operations forces are slated
to receive a brand spanking new headquarters in northern Afghanistan to the tune
of $100M. It is scheduled to be completed in one year. Do the math. It is pretty
simple.
Gareth Porter (IPS), writing on June 12th,
reported, "Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal confronts the spectre
of a collapse of U.S. political support for the war in Afghanistan in coming
months comparable to the one that occurred in the Iraq War in late 2006." On
Thursday, June 10th, McChrystal admitted that the planned
offensive in Kandahar City and surrounding districts is being delayed until
September at the earliest, because it does not have the support of the Kandahar
population and leadership. Porter continues, "... it is now
clear that McChrystal has understood for weeks that the most basic premise of
the operation turned out to be false." In Brussels for a NATO conference,
the general stated, "When you go to protect people, the
people have to want you to protect them." McChrystal did not have to spell out
the corollary to that statement. The people of Kandahar do not want the
protection of foreign troops.
As the reader knows, not unlike Petraeus,that was only the beginning of
McChrystal's problems, or, as Ray McGovern suggests, McChrystal wanted to be
fired, removed from an unenviable position.
To make matters worse, the American puppet, President Hamid Karzai, is
not cooperating. He wants to reconcile with the Taliban leadership, a strategy
Washington strongly opposes. Lobe writes, "Karzai's bid for
reconciliation stems from his conviction, according to a number of accounts,
that U.S. strategy is unlikely to succeed in weakening - let alone defeating -
the Taliban and that his hold on power will ultimately rely on reaching an
accommodation with them."
On June 15th, while being grilled by the Senate Armed Services Committee
General David Petraeus fainted.
Just when the reader begins to think matters could not get any worse,
guess what, matters got worse. The U.S. Treasury is paying the Afghan
Taliban. Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers, revealed an
impossible-to-believe Congressional investigative report stating, "Private
security contractors protecting the convoys that supply U.S. military bases in
Afghanistan are paying millions of dollars a week in 'passage bribes' to the
Taliban and other insurgent groups to travel along Afghan roads." Youssef
continues with the stunning report, "The payments, which are reimbursed by the
U.S. government, help fund the very enemy the U.S. is attempting to defeat and
renew questions about the U.S. dependence on private contractors, who
outnumber American troops in Afghanistan, 130,000 to 93,000 [emphasis is
mine]."
According to the report, nearly every company listed in the report is
associated with senior Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, the
minister of defense, a provincial governor and a senior Afghan army
official.
Youssef provides one example from the report. "One of those companies,
Host Nation Trucking, transports about 70 percent of all goods to U.S. troops
stationed at 200 bases and combat outposts throughout Afghanistan, running 6,000
to 8,000 delivery missions a month. The $2.16 billion contract called on HNT
truckers to provide their own security, but didn't call for any oversight into
how HNT and other companies did that. The investigation found that HNT has
contracted with seven other companies to carry the cargo, but only one of those
actually owns trucks. The others hire local Afghans, whose trucks sometimes bear
the U.S. flag. The truckers pay as much as $1,500 a truck to 'nearly every
Afghan governor, police chief and local military unit whose territory the
company passed,' en route to a U.S. base, according to the 79-page
report."
Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., chairman of the House subcommittee on
National Security and Foreign Affairs,said he was unable to determine how much
was spent on such payments, but he said it could reach millions a
week.
More and more one might be willing to accept the corporal's suggestion
mentioned above. More and more one might be willing to accept McGovern's
assertion mentioned above.
Then it happened. In a Rolling Stone article written by Michael Hastings,
McChrystal and his aides managed to disparage President Obama, Vice-President
Biden, special envoy Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Karl
Eikenberry, and National Security Advisor James Jones. Obviously, the
handwriting was on the wall. On Wednesday, June 23rd, Obama accepted
McChrystal's resignation. On that date, the undaunted Gen. Petraeus may have
fainted again. After accepting McChrystal's resignation, Obama appointed
Petraeus as commander in Afghanistan. Thus, Petraeus will be wearing two hats,
CentCom and commander, Afghan NATO forces. The latter could well be an albatross
that could weigh down and drown a good soldier's career. Presidents expect
results from military commanders, and defeat is not welcomed on an officer's
resume, but many wonder what the hell is Petraeus supposed to
do?
I truly wish this was not the case. Following a defeat in Vietnam,
dubious results in Iraq, the last thing America needs is still another military
defeat. However, realism raises its ugly head. Tragedy is the slaying of a
beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact
Sadly, due to the decisions of a President in our
recent past followed by the decisions of our current President, the United
States is no longer a triumphant sole superpower any more. Indeed, President
Bush was reviled by citizens of our allies as the No. 1 Terrorist. Engelhardt
concludes, "Its global power is visibly waning, its
ability to win wars distinctly in question, its economic viability open to
doubt. It has been transformed from a
can-do into a can't-do nation, a fact only highlighted by the ongoing BP
catastrophe and 'rescue' in the Gulf of Mexico. Its airports are less shiny and more
Third World-like every year."
This is of enormous concern. Our infrastructure
is crumbling beneath our eyes. Many of our bridges, highways, dams, levees,
sewer and water systems, etc. have exceeded or soon will exceed their life
expectancies, and there is no money on the local, state, and federal level to
deal with the problem. There is little money for our future generations, our
children, and our children's children as cuts to education have reached
Draconian levels and they will be saddled with a National Debt that is off the
scale. There is only money for war in a losing cause in a country most Americans
cannot find on a map and could care less about as domestic problems overwhelm
them.
Kudos to the Military/Industrial Complex and
self-serving politicians who have exceeded far beyond Eisenhower's fears. In
November the American people will speak.
Authors Bio:I am the author of two novels, "The Bode Testament" and "Impeachment." I am also a columnist who keeps a wary eye on other columnists and the failures of the MSM (mainstream media).
I was born in Minnesota, and, to this day, I love the Vikings and the Twins. I am currently retired and reside with my wife of 45 years in Southern California. I am a former educator and a Marine officer [ret.].
I am a self-described amateur historian, the love of the topic going back to my sophomore days in high school. I am probably the only high schooler in the U.S. to read the 1600-page "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." I also consider myself somewhat of a specialist on the Middle East. The vast bulk of my articles concern the topic.
Not unlike many I was devastated by the attacks on 9/11. So devastated, in fact, that I was determined to fight back, following in the fine tradition of the Marine Corps. But how? What could a 58-year old retired Marine officer do in terms of fighting back. The answer was quite simple. Using the writing skills I learned while writing two books, I chose as my weapon what can euphemistically be called the pen, actually a word processor.
I was determined to become a columnist to offer my sage advice while recalling recent history that I know for a fact that Americans had long since forgotten. I am here to remind them.
Fortunately, achieving the goal of becoming a columnist did not take too long. I became a columnist for a Midwest newspaper in Nov. 2001. As an added bonus, all of my articles were placed on the Internet. I have been a columnist ever since, meaning for nine years.