Bruce Fein: John Kerry's Afghan Dereliction of Duty

[unhappycamper]

John Kerry's Afghan Dereliction of Duty
Bruce Fein
Posted: October 25, 2010 09:35 AM

Senator John Kerry has convicted himself of constitutional dereliction over Afghanistan.

In 1970, the Vietnam vet accelerated disengagement with electrifying testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in 2010, as Chairman of that same Committee, Kerry has played idle spectator to the objectless, trillion dollar, 10-year-old war in Afghanistan that is making the United States less safe and less free. Detainees at Bagram prison are denied habeas corpus. According to a survey published by the New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow, 76% of inhabitants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan oppose U.S. predator drone strikes, 50% believe they kill mostly civilians, and 60% believe suicide bombings against the U.S. military are "often or sometimes justified." Afghanistan remains splintered by time-honored tribal and ethnic divisions. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent. The unpopular Karzai administration is up to its neck in electoral fraud, corruption, and nepotism. President Karzai's decree prohibiting private security contractors is paralyzing NGOs and the economy. Huge sums make their way through subcontracts to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Pakistan is more a saboteur than a friend to United States objectives in Afghanistan. President Obama's special emissary, Richard Holbrooke, is unable to define success beyond, "I'll know it when I see it."

Oversight hearings hold the potential for triggering a withdrawal of all United States troops stationed in Afghanistan, which would save American and Afghan lives, enhance national security, and discredit the canard that to desist from preemptive warring against radical Islam in Afghanistan is to invite fighting Islamic extremists on the streets of Washington, D.C. The latter myth is indistinguishable from the bogus "Domino Theory" concocted to justify the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall records the 58,178 American lives wasted in that ill-conceived military misadventure.

If Senator Kerry does nothing in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the Afghan War is both unwinnable and a war of choice, not of necessity, he will share in the moral and legal responsibility for the inevitable construction of an Afghanistan Veterans Memorial Wall. The hallowed dead will have died there to enable small-minded politicians to parade their false "toughness on international terrorism" credentials. Dante preached that, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, declare their neutrality." As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry, of all people, cannot wash his hands like Pontius Pilate of the senseless killings in Afghanistan.

Oversight is a constitutional duty of the legislative branch to discharge its informing function--especially during war when truth is invariably the first casualty and courageous men and women are dispatched abroad to risk that last full measure of devotion. During World War I, former President Theodore Roosevelt declared: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else." Further, Congress appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars for the Afghan war, and gave legal footing to the same in passing the Authorization to Use Military Force in the wake of 9/11.



unhappycamper comment: There is nothing, repeat - nothing that compels us to spend over $100 billion dollars a year in Afghanistan.

Also, I think there are 58,264 names on The Wall.