Rethink our War and Occupation of Afghanistan

Time for change

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Thu May-14-09 09:31 PM
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Rethink our War and Occupation of Afghanistan

The long history of militarism, imperialism, and genocide in the United States has caused untold tragedy and suffering to peoples throughout the world (I describe that history in some detail in this post). That means that too many Americans have not taken seriously their own Declaration of Independence as it applies to other peoples. There are too many Americans who, while believing that Americans or people of their own race are “created equal” and have an “unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, fail to see how that applies to other peoples.

I believe that it is imperative that this type of attitude and behavior cease. It is immoral, we cannot afford it, and, as James Galbraith explains in “The Predator State”, it is greatly imperiling our position in the world:

With the Iraq invasion, confidence in U.S. foreign policy further eroded, and so did the dollar. This has partly to do with distrust of American motives, partly with the perception that the global war on terror is a fraud. And it has partly to do with the understanding, which prevails everywhere outside the United States, that the solution to the threat of terror is political, diplomatic, and a matter of police work. It is not primarily military…

For all these reasons we ought to be seriously questioning our militaristic attitudes and behaviors – our war in Afghanistan being the most outstanding current example of that. In particular, we ought to consider some of the following issues:

Our initial excuse for invading Afghanistan – Osama bin Laden

Our first stated reason for invading Afghanistan was to capture the presumed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on our country. But evidence of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in those attacks was flimsy at best. Nevertheless, the Taliban agreed to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan – an American ally – to stand trial for charges of participation in 9/11. They agreed that if the court found sufficient evidence against bin Laden, he would then be extradited to the United States. But George Bush turned down all Taliban offers, saying “We know he’s guilty. Turn him over”. Bush later elaborated further on that, saying, “When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations”. And several years later the FBI admitted that there is no substantial proof of bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11.

Maher Osseiran explains the international legal implications of the circumstances under which we invaded Afghanistan:

The Bush administration, with premeditation, ignored its international obligations in deference to war. If the Bush administration had supplied the evidence to the world and specifically the Taliban who were requesting such evidence in exchange for bin Laden, the war might not have taken place and bin Laden would very likely be in custody. Not pursuing that route makes the Afghanistan war an illegal war under the UN Charter and The Geneva Convention; thereby, the majority of the Guantanamo detainees can no longer be classified as enemy combatants, but (rather) victims of war crimes.

Furthermore, even if bin Laden did mastermind the 9/11 attacks, how does that justify our continued war and occupation there? As former U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings says:

I keep asking the question, "Why are we in Afghanistan?" No one has a good answer. A few respond, "To get Osama." But everyone agrees that he is somewhere in Pakistan.

Joe Klein states the situation more bluntly:

The war in Afghanistan – the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win – has become an aimless absurdity. It began with a specific target. Afghanistan was where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lived, harbored by the Islamic extremist Taliban government. But the enemy escaped into Pakistan.

The rationale that we must prevent Afghanistan from becoming a “safe haven” for terrorists/al Qaeda

I’m no military expert, but nevertheless I’m incredulous whenever I hear it said that our occupation of Afghanistan is necessary in order to prevent al Qaeda from maintaining a “safe haven” in Afghanistan. Why on earth do they need a “safe haven”? What’s wrong with Florida for a safe haven, where some of the presumed terrorists learned how to fly? What are we planning on doing – invading the whole world so that they can’t establish a safe have anywhere? I like what Senator Hollings had to say about this:

Some answer (as to why we need to be in Afghanistan) to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for Al Qaida. I called the State Department after 9/11, and it reported Al Qaida in forty-five countries, including the United States, but not Iraq. Now we have spread Al Qaida to Iraq and determined to have Al Qaida grow in Afghanistan. What we can't understand is that we are creating terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan…

The editors of The Nation say the same thing in different words, pointing out that there are many options other than military intervention for maintaining our security:

Securing Afghanistan is not necessary to US security and may actually undermine our goal of defeating Al Qaeda…. American safety thus depends not on eliminating faraway safe havens for Al Qaeda but on common-sense counterterrorist and national security measures – extensive intelligence cooperation, expert police work, effective border control and the occasional surgical use of special forces.

John Kerry made a similar point in his questioning of Hillary Clinton during her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State:

I am deeply concerned that, at least thus far, our policy in Afghanistan has kind of been on automatic.…Our original goal was to go in there and take on Al Qaeda. It was to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. It was not to adopt the 51st state of the United States.

And James Galbraith makes the more general point about the futility of maintaining an empire through military means:

The United States is not capable of providing security to an empire, even a small one, against the determined fighting opposition of those who live there. This is not a limitation of American forces, but simply a fundamental fact about the limits of military power in the modern world.

The historic futility of trying to conquer Afghanistan

The United States has never been very successful in fighting guerilla wars against native populations in faraway places. We should have first learned that lesson at the beginning of the 20th Century in the Philippines. In the 1960s and 70s we should have learned that lesson in Vietnam. And most recently we should have learned it in Iraq. Do we need to learn it again in Afghanistan?

George McGovern, former U.S. Senator and Democratic nominee for President in 1972, in an open letter to newly elected President Obama, reminded him of the historic difficulties of attempts to conquer Afghanistan:

True, the United States is the world's greatest power – but so was the British Empire a century ago when it tried to pacify the warlords and tribes of Afghanistan, only to be forced out after excruciating losses. For that matter, the Soviet Union was also a superpower when it poured some 100,000 troops into Afghanistan in 1979. They limped home, broken and defeated, a decade later, having helped pave the way for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Civilian casualties

Every moral nation ought to consider the civilian casualties, sometimes referred to as “collateral damage”, that result from its invasion and occupation of foreign countries. In that respect, the escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been wearing thin on the Afghan population. From earlier this month:

Shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the Government", thousands of Afghan villagers hurled stones at police yesterday as they vented their fury at American air strikes that local officials claim killed 147 civilians…

The protest in Farah City is the latest sign of a strong Afghan reaction against US air attacks in which explosions inflict massive damage on mud-brick houses that provide little protection against bomb blasts…

In Afghanistan opinion polls show that support for the Taliban and for armed attacks on foreign forces rises sharply after events like the bombing in Farah. President Hamid Karzai frequently criticizes the US military for wantonly inflicting civilian casualties, attacks which his opponents say is an opportunistic effort to burnish his nationalist credentials.

I could not find a poll of Afghans taken during the Obama Presidency. But a poll of Afghans taken on January 12, 2009 showed that:

Civilian casualties in U.S. or NATO/ISAF air strikes are a key complaint. Seventy-seven percent of Afghans call such strikes unacceptable, saying the risk to civilians outweighs the value of these raids in fighting insurgents. And Western forces take more of the blame for such casualties, a public relations advantage for anti-government forces: Forty-one percent of Afghans chiefly blame U.S. or NATO/ISAF forces for poor targeting, vs. 28 percent who mainly blame the insurgents for concealing themselves among civilians.

Given the escalation of the killing during the Obama Presidency, it is unlikely that civilian Afghan approval of the occupation of their country has risen since that time. Other important findings in the above noted poll, tracking Afghan attitude changes from October 2005 to January 2009, found the following indicators going in the wrong direction:

Afghanistan going in wrong direction: 6% to 38%
Unfavorable view of United States: 14% to 52%
Support of U.S./NATO/ISAF forces in your area: 67% to 37%

The limits of military power

Each of the above considerations combines with the inherent limits of military power to make a powerful case for rethinking our Afghanistan war and occupation. The editors of The Nation had the following to say on this subject:

The United States and its NATO allies are losing the war in Afghanistan not because we have had too few military forces but because our military presence, along with the corruption of the Hamid Karzai government, has gradually turned the Afghan population against us, swelling the ranks of Taliban recruits. American airstrikes have repeatedly killed innocent civilians. Sending thousands of additional troops will not secure a democratic and stable Afghanistan, because the country is not only deeply divided but also fiercely resistant to outside forces. Indeed, more troops may only engender more anti-American resistance and cause groups in neighboring Pakistan to step up their support for the Taliban in order to stop what they see as a US effort to advance US and Indian interests in the region…

And lastly, Senator McGovern, whose 18 year Senate career is perhaps best well known for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, explained his opposition to the Afghanistan war and our “War on Terror” in more general terms:

I have believed for some time that military power is no solution to terrorism. The hatred of U.S. policies in the Middle East – our occupation of Iraq, our backing for repressive regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, our support of Israel – that drives the terrorist impulse against us would better be resolved by ending our military presence throughout the arc of conflict. This means a prudent, carefully directed withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere. We also need to close down the imposing U.S. military bases in this section of the globe, which do so little to expand our security and so much to stoke local resentment.