November 30, 2009--Stop the Madness
On Tuesday evening Barack Obama will make his way to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York to finally tell us in detail what he plans for Afghanistan.
Reports in the press indicate that he will lay out his objectives, including how to assess progress; set benchmarks for the corrupt Afghan government to meet in order to justify our commitment; call for at least 30,000 additional troops; and, according to this morning’s New York Times, establish a “time frame” for when we will begin to wind down our involvement. (Article linked below.)
Though polls show there is waning public support for this approach, though many in the media from both the left and right are critical of what appears to be his thinking, as commander in chief he has the power to do all of this and to demonstrate that he is willing to spend much of his remaining political capital making an unpopular decision.
I am sure he is feeling good about himself, that after all the charges of being too willing to compromise and spending so much time dithering, he will at last be acting boldly and decisively.
And, I would add, disastrously.
Even the untutored know the tortured history of Afghanistan, which is more an amalgamation of contesting tribes than an ancient nation with clear geographic and culture borders. It was a creation of the British and Russian Empires during the 100 year Great Game that took place in Central Asia between about 1813 and 1907 as the two powers contested for control of that region. And we as well as the president know that ancient and current Afghanistan has successfully resisted conquerors and potential occupiers ever since. First among others we should know this from our own history of meddling in the region—we helped the Mujahideen in Afghanistan defeat the Russians during the Cold War and then watched as they morphed into the Taliban, which we are now intent on defeating.
The Russians deployed many more troops there than even Bush and now Obama have been willing to commit, killed at least 1.0 million Afghans; but then, in spite of this—perhaps because of it--were ignominiously defeated. And partly as a result what remained of the Soviet Empire collapsed of its own weight.
So for Barack Obama to boast the other day during his press conference with the prime minister of India—and a macho boast it was—that he “will finish the job” flies in the face of at least 100 years of history and ignores both the nature of the problem and our capacity to deal with it militarily. Yes, we will hear tonight about how our objectives there are limited--we will not hear a word about the War On Terror—that the larger goal is to train the Afghan security forces and military so that they can control and defend their own country; and that we will focus as much on development aid as on building up our forces.
Don’t believe a word of it.
It will not be because Barack Obama will be intentionally lying to us (though I am certain we will hear a lot of geopolitical spin, including how he would not be committing more young men and women to fight and die in the region if he did not think conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan threaten our security), we should not believe a word of what he says because it will ignore this history and does not deal with how it feels for a proud people to be defeated and occupied. Because surely that is what we and our allies have been doing—occupying, we claim for their own good, what we call Afghanistan.
I have been a fervent supporter of Barack Obama’s since the day he announced his run for the presidency; I have sat on the sidelines hoping for the best while watching as he and his administration bailed out Wall Street while not compelling the very institutions they saved with our money to forego unconscionable bonuses for themselves while refusing to help struggling businesses and homeowners; I have tried to rationalize his seeming inactivity as Congress grappled with how to get the votes needed to pass even a tepid version of health care reform, rationalizing that something is better than nothing; I have driven the interstates looking for all the shovel-ready projects to get started so that jobs could be created and seen very little action; but to watch the Vietnamizing or Afghanistan is more than I can sit still for. Than any of us should sit still for.
Is it too late to mobilize hundreds of thousands to march on West Point tomorrow evening? Can we organize to descend on that village of 7,138 and put our bodies on the line as Obama is about to put more bodies on the line to be broken in Afghanistan? We marched on Washington in the hundreds of thousands during the Vietnam War, but where are we now as we are about to embark of a version of the same failed policy?
Perhaps the irony that Obama will deliver his speech in the very same shelter of the army corps of cadets where George W. Bush in 2002 traveled to lay out his Doctrine which called for and justified preemptive wars, perhaps this politically tone-deaf choice of venue by Obama with its crushing policy parallels, will rouse us to action. Because if we and/or the Congress do not stop the madness it will consume us.
Reports in the press indicate that he will lay out his objectives, including how to assess progress; set benchmarks for the corrupt Afghan government to meet in order to justify our commitment; call for at least 30,000 additional troops; and, according to this morning’s New York Times, establish a “time frame” for when we will begin to wind down our involvement. (Article linked below.)
Though polls show there is waning public support for this approach, though many in the media from both the left and right are critical of what appears to be his thinking, as commander in chief he has the power to do all of this and to demonstrate that he is willing to spend much of his remaining political capital making an unpopular decision.
I am sure he is feeling good about himself, that after all the charges of being too willing to compromise and spending so much time dithering, he will at last be acting boldly and decisively.
And, I would add, disastrously.
Even the untutored know the tortured history of Afghanistan, which is more an amalgamation of contesting tribes than an ancient nation with clear geographic and culture borders. It was a creation of the British and Russian Empires during the 100 year Great Game that took place in Central Asia between about 1813 and 1907 as the two powers contested for control of that region. And we as well as the president know that ancient and current Afghanistan has successfully resisted conquerors and potential occupiers ever since. First among others we should know this from our own history of meddling in the region—we helped the Mujahideen in Afghanistan defeat the Russians during the Cold War and then watched as they morphed into the Taliban, which we are now intent on defeating.
The Russians deployed many more troops there than even Bush and now Obama have been willing to commit, killed at least 1.0 million Afghans; but then, in spite of this—perhaps because of it--were ignominiously defeated. And partly as a result what remained of the Soviet Empire collapsed of its own weight.
So for Barack Obama to boast the other day during his press conference with the prime minister of India—and a macho boast it was—that he “will finish the job” flies in the face of at least 100 years of history and ignores both the nature of the problem and our capacity to deal with it militarily. Yes, we will hear tonight about how our objectives there are limited--we will not hear a word about the War On Terror—that the larger goal is to train the Afghan security forces and military so that they can control and defend their own country; and that we will focus as much on development aid as on building up our forces.
Don’t believe a word of it.
It will not be because Barack Obama will be intentionally lying to us (though I am certain we will hear a lot of geopolitical spin, including how he would not be committing more young men and women to fight and die in the region if he did not think conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan threaten our security), we should not believe a word of what he says because it will ignore this history and does not deal with how it feels for a proud people to be defeated and occupied. Because surely that is what we and our allies have been doing—occupying, we claim for their own good, what we call Afghanistan.
I have been a fervent supporter of Barack Obama’s since the day he announced his run for the presidency; I have sat on the sidelines hoping for the best while watching as he and his administration bailed out Wall Street while not compelling the very institutions they saved with our money to forego unconscionable bonuses for themselves while refusing to help struggling businesses and homeowners; I have tried to rationalize his seeming inactivity as Congress grappled with how to get the votes needed to pass even a tepid version of health care reform, rationalizing that something is better than nothing; I have driven the interstates looking for all the shovel-ready projects to get started so that jobs could be created and seen very little action; but to watch the Vietnamizing or Afghanistan is more than I can sit still for. Than any of us should sit still for.
Is it too late to mobilize hundreds of thousands to march on West Point tomorrow evening? Can we organize to descend on that village of 7,138 and put our bodies on the line as Obama is about to put more bodies on the line to be broken in Afghanistan? We marched on Washington in the hundreds of thousands during the Vietnam War, but where are we now as we are about to embark of a version of the same failed policy?
Perhaps the irony that Obama will deliver his speech in the very same shelter of the army corps of cadets where George W. Bush in 2002 traveled to lay out his Doctrine which called for and justified preemptive wars, perhaps this politically tone-deaf choice of venue by Obama with its crushing policy parallels, will rouse us to action. Because if we and/or the Congress do not stop the madness it will consume us.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:12 AM
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