Outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is continuing his farewell media blitz, attempting to tamp down the growing pressure on the Obama administration to end the war in Afghanistan. On Thursday, Gates told the media that a “rush to the exits” would jeopardize what he is referring to as “progress.”
Only to people who are clinging to this failed military strategy would ending the longest war in American history be considered a “rush to the exits.” After nearly ten years, $400 billion spent, thousands of American and Afghan lives lost, can we really afford to slow walk this? The (already dubious) national security rationale for staying in Afghanistan was dealt a final blow by the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The claims of progress, when casualties on both sides, IED attacks, and multiple amputations are on the rise, don’t hold up to scrutiny.
On Time magazine’s Battleland blog, an active duty colonel in Afghanistan rips apart the Pentagon’s claims of progress and their defenders in the media [emphasis mine]:
The mendacity is getting so egregious that I am fast losing the ability to remain quiet; these yarns of “significant progress” are being covered up by the blood and limbs of hundreds – HUNDREDS – of American uniformed service members each and every month, and you know that the rest of this summer is going to see the peak of that bloodshed.
The article by Michael O’Hanlon last week (i.e. Success worth paying for in Afghanistan) and the one in today’s WSJ by Kagan and Kagan (i.e., We Have the Momentum in Afghanistan) made me sick to my stomach – especially the latter. Have you seen it yet? It is the most breathless piece of yellow journalism I’ve seen in the entire OIF-OEF generation.
According to the Kagans, “If Mr. Obama announces the withdrawal of all surge forces from Afghanistan in 2012, the war will likely be lost. Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other global terrorist groups will almost certainly re-establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan. The Afghan state would likely collapse and the country would descend into ethnic civil war. The outcome of this withdrawal policy would be far worse than Nixon’s decision to accept defeat in Vietnam, for it would directly increase the threat to the American homeland. Apparently they forgot, “there’s a commie behind every bush,” “the Russians are coming!” and “if Vietnam falls, all of Asia falls to the Communists!” That logic was absurd in the 1960/70s, and its even more laughable today – or it would be laughable if it didn’t cost so damn many American lives to prop up the fantasy.
These people are actually arguing for increased involvement. In fact, they are saying that we should expect high casualties this summer (after which – without explanation – we’ll have beaten the TB in the south), then we’ll move the troops up to RC-East where there’s still a lot of fighting – and as a result, we’ll have another spike in the ‘fighting season’ of 2013, after which (according to the neat schedule the Kagans map out) we’ll be ready to hand over control of the country to GoIRA and the ANSF on schedule in 2014.
It’s sheer madness, and so far as I can tell, in the mainstream media and reputable publications, it is going almost entirely without challenge.
Let’s hope the Obama administration is strengthened by the support from Congress and the public and will refuse the paltry withdrawal proposed by Gates and others. Ending this pointless war wouldn’t be rushing; the end can’t come soon enough.
With the president’s decision on the July withdrawal only weeks away, we need to put as much pressure as possible on the administration for a significant withdrawal from Afghanistan and a clear end date for the war.
The House vote on the McGovern/Jones amendment last month sent a very strong message that Congress wants an end to the war. Now we need the Senate to step up.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Tom Udall (D-NM) are circulating a letter to the president supporting a meaningful withdrawal and a change of strategy in Afghanistan.
Here are the senators who have signed on so far:
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
If one or both of your senators are not on this list, call now at 1-800-427-8619 and tell them to sign the letter. The deadline could be as soon as tonight, so don’t wait!
A box of toy soldiers with personal messages ready to be mailed to Congress.
Within the next few weeks President Obama will have to make a decision about how significant the July withdrawal from Afghanistan will be. If he bends to the Pentagon’s will, he risks alienating millions of people who believed this would be a step toward ending the war, and could hurt his reelection prospects in 2012.
After hearing many discouraging leaks from Pentagon sources, there is finally some indication that the administration is considering a sizable withdrawal, though the details remain elusive:
President Obama’s national security team is contemplating troop reductions in Afghanistan that would be steeper than those discussed even a few weeks ago, with some officials arguing that such a change is justified by the rising cost of the war and the death of Osama bin Laden, which they called new “strategic considerations.”
These new considerations, along with a desire to find new ways to press the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to get more of his forces to take the lead, are combining to create a counterweight to an approach favored by the departing secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, and top military commanders in the field. They want gradual cuts that would keep American forces at a much higher combat strength well into next year, senior administration officials said.
Unfortunately, we know that those who are clinging to a failed military strategy are not going to go away quietly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is dedicating his last month in the administration to a campaign advocating a slow withdrawal:
As his final act before leaving the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is working to build support for what he is calling a “modest” drawdown in Afghanistan, even though a war-weary Capitol Hill wants more.
Gates, who retires June 30, is hoping that his 12th and final trip to Afghanistan will help steer the Washington debate subtly away from the number of troops that will come home next month — a figure that is almost certain to disappoint the growing number of Washington critics of the war.
The hard work of Peace Action West supporters and other groups has had an impact. We have been hitting Congress hard with grassroots, media and lobbying pressure, and we saw the results in the strong House vote to require a plan to accelerate withdrawal from Afghanistan. The pressure was made even more significant by the fact that the Democratic leadership spoke out in favor of the amendment. Now we’re seeing even more unusual suspects speaking strongly for a quicker withdrawal, including defense-minded Appropriations Committee ranking member Norm Dicks.
Foreign Policy – Saying goodbye to a once-friendly land, now taken without a fight by the Taliban.
Armed men on motorcycles simply showed up at orangeade dusk, summoned the elders, and announced the new laws. A 10 percent tax on all earnings to feed the Taliban coffers. A lifestyle guided by the strictest interpretation of Shariah. All government collaborators will be punished as traitors.
There was no one at hand to fend off the offensive. There were no policemen in the villages, no Afghan or NATO soldiers nearby. The villagers themselves, sapped by two consecutive years of drought and a lifetime of recurring bloodshed, put up no resistance.
Some of these villages I know quite well. I have swapped jewelry and cooked rice in too much oil with their women. I have walked to town across the predawn desert on bazaar days with their men. I have drawn ballpoint flower tattoos on the grimy palms of their children. I have fallen asleep on their rooftops, watching the Big Dipper scoop out the mountains I could just skylight against the star-bejeweled sky.
During each of my visits over the last 13 months, my village friends and I would trade the latest stories and rumors about the steady advance of the insurgency across Balkh province. The Taliban have gained control of two of the province’s 14 districts. Three. Four. It was like watching the spread of a pandemic. We would drink murky green tea and click our tongues and shake our heads. Then we would part, promising to see each other soon.
We were, I now think, a little bit in denial.
On Sunday, I received a call from Oqa, a destitute hamlet of two-score clay homes prostrate in hungry supplication in the middle of the arid Northern Plains. I was supposed to drive up for farewell elevenses before leaving Afghanistan this week.
“The Taliban arrived last night,” the caller told me. “Don’t come, Anna.”
I rang a farmer I know in Karaghuzhlah, an oasis of apricot and almond groves that shimmers over the tufted camel’s hide of the desert. He had invited me to try the apricots. They are now in season.
“The Taliban have been here for two days,” the farmer said. “If you want apricots, I’ll send them to you in Mazar-e-Sharif.”
What about Zadyan, the intricate clay cylinder of its 12th-century minaret watching over teenage carpet weavers like some somber desert custodian? Or Khairabad, to which Oqa’s boys trek in winter with their camel caravans loaded with tumbleweed to sell for firewood?
On Sunday, a police official recited to me a grim roster. “As of 10:30 this morning, we no longer control the villages of Karaghuzhlah, Khairabad, Karshigak, Zadyan, Shingilabad, Joi Arab, Shahraq….” The list went on; the officer named about two dozen villages. Some of them quiver in diffraction only a few miles away from Mazar-e-Sharif, the provincial capital.
Four weeks after the Taliban announced the beginning of their annual spring offensive, the insurgents have quietly taken over most of Balkh.
I’m sure this won’t happen, at least in the US, anytime in the near future, but you have to admit there’s an awful lot of sense here:
The Global Commission on Drug Policy report calls for the legalisation of some drugs and an end to the criminalisation of drug users.
The panel includes former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former leaders of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, and the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.
The US and Mexican governments have rejected the findings as misguided.
The Global Commission’s 24-page report argues that anti-drug policy has failed by fuelling organised crime, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and causing thousands of deaths.
It cites UN estimates that opiate use increased 35% worldwide from 1998 to 2008, cocaine by 27%, and cannabis by 8.5%.
No doubts the jump in usage is coincident to the increase in worldwide wealth gained from American companies outsourcing American jobs to countries that pay less than American wages, thus bringing to those countries the uniquely American problem of work-related stress disorders.
I’m very much on the fence about this. Some drugs, opiates in particular, have a track record that is, well, less than ideal for introduction into society legally. Most are on prescription as having medical uses, and it seems to me that this might be the way to go for these classes of drugs: expand the prescriptive framework. Allow doctors to prescribe them more often for uses that people are already abusing them for, but with strict monitoring and follow up. Hell, we administer Prozac and Ritalin as if they were candy to any yahoo who can persuade a psychologist that his boredom or sheer idiocy is symptomatic of some disorder that sees sixteen squirrels running around his brain.
To coin a scenario.
Yes, there will be blindspots and oversights and people will slip thru the cracks but it almost certainly has to be better than having near-100% illegality. The current situation is untenable. Too, it creates shortages of medications that people actually need (try getting a box of Sudafed someday.)
On the other hand lie drugs that are clearly over-protected, that have a more benign history, that rightly could and maybe should take their places alongside such mood-altering substances as alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and sugar.
Indeed, that last may be triggering an awful lot of excuses people have for medicating. Overmedicating with sugar leads to obesity, depression, and sleep disorders, among other effects.
If all these are going to be basically un- and at least under-regulated, then other substances like marijuana deserve “a day in court”: serious study for legalization, and if not, then full decriminalization.
Too, from an economic standpoint, lifting the war on drugs would improve Third World economies enormously, not least from simply avoiding destruction of valuable farmland and the price that crime and criminals take out of a native population. Imagine Mexican farmers growing pot without worrying which drug cartel is in charge and what happens if another muscles in. Or perhaps the price of marijuana will drop enough that they plant a food crop instead.
It sure as hell would make our borders more secure, too.
Wars on nebulosities, like poverty or drugs or terrorism, inevitably butt up against a simple truth: where is the finish line?
In the case of poverty, the finish line was arbitrarily drawn by the haters at five years, and you’d better have your act together by then. That maybe the only war that we can control, because people in poverty don’t want to be in poverty and will work with us to beat their own poverty back if given the opportunity.
People who supply drugs or terror are antithetical to the goals of those “wars”: they want the war to lose. And if they can make us spend the energy and resources to beat them, even if we succeed, another crop will rise up to take its place. It is neverending war, by definition.
In the case of terror, the answer is simple. As Peter Gabriel once famously observed, you only achieve true security and peace by respecting the rights of others. There will still be terror attacks, true. For a while. Until the strength of a peaceful nation shows not in retaliation but in resilience. Once terrorists realize they can’t do enough harm to topple us, they’ll leave it be.
The case of the war on drugs, I think, is best won by admitting there really wasn’t a war to begin with, that it was a marketing plan cooked up by people who were shocked that other people were having fun. Once we get over that hurdle and start to look into the causes of the use of drugs, we will have taken a large step in the direction of civilization.
Joshua Foust at Registan recaps a New Yorker article concerning Khost Province. The story is simple, it is more of the same with little change in results.
reading Anderson’s piece it’s also clear that the war itself hasn’t changed in Khost province, either. This should be a scandal, but it isn’t. For years, people had lifted up Khost as an example of progress, but the reality is, outside of the city itself the war there hasn’t changed. Part of that is because the operational guys think there is some checklist they have to tick off to say they’re doing a good job—which to me indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of what COIN is and how you go about actually connecting people to their government…
what’s so remarkable looking back on Khost over the last four years isn’t the few points of success, or of hope. It is of the grinding stagnation there
This is despite the changes in tactics, the wholesale public adaptation of COIN and the power of SURGING, this is despite the rapid increase in the ranks of the Afghan Army and National Police — not much has changed in a key province, and what gains are made will go away as Peak Foreign Forces has already passed and the US will begin pulling out combat units without replacing them in the next few months.
Stalemates are a strategic success for local insurgents. They will be there much longer than the trans-continentally deployed foreigners whose home societies are embracing counter-productive austerity.
Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal argues that large initial withdrawal proponents should not argue that the costs of the occupation and counter-insurgency are too high for the strategic stagnation that the US and ISAF are seeing:
If all else fails civilian advisors could even play the trump card that nation building in the Hindu Kush is simply not in the national security interest of the United States, particularly now that bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is clearly on the run in Pakistan.
The point here is that the cost of the war is the least effective argument against the war, particularly since the President has said that the fight in Afghanistan is in the vital interest of the United States. Arguing about the money raises the idea that if we could afford to stay in Afghanistan for the long haul we should.
I disagree. Strategy should be based upon gaining greater benefits than costs. Costs are political, financial, geo-strategic, opportunity and real. We are in a political environment where the American political elite is seeking austerity and savings. Dropping $100 billion into Afghanistan, a country most Americans still can not easily find on a map, is contra-indicated when the end result is stagnation. Arguments that the straetgy is a failure as local partnerships have not materialized as the Karzai inner circle is acting in their own interests instead of as passive puppets without agency, that there is limited security gains in large scale counter-insurgency operations, that counter-terrorism operations and their associated limited footprints can produce significant pressure against the few remaining far enemy/distant strike terrorists and dropping American mass political support for the policy are all arguments that the costs are too high for any security gains that could conceivable be achieved.
Stagnation is failure for a counter-insurgent force, especially when the COIN operation is in an area of objectively tertiary interests for the United States.
In addition to the countless moral and financial reasons for ending the war in Afghanistan, smart politicians are recognizing the political reasons for taking a stand against the war. The strong showing in the House last week for the McGovern/Jones amendment shows that some of them are waking up to the intensity of antiwar sentiment in this country.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a pro-peace leader in the House, took to The American Prospect today to lay out the case for President Obama and Democrats to campaign on ending the war:
The planned withdrawal in July will be an important test of the administration’s commitment to winding down the war. The same poll showed that 73 percent of Americans think the U.S. should withdraw a “substantial number” of troops in July. Tellingly, only 39 percent believe this will happen. President Obama can reinforce the beliefs of voters who feel the government ignores their position, or he can give voters a reason to hope, and to vote, next year.
Some pundits think Afghanistan will be obscured by the economy and won’t play a big role in the 2012 election. I doubt it. Americans are connecting the dots between federal spending priorities and the pain they feel at home.
In 2012, key Democratic voters may find themselves lacking money to heat their homes through the winter, struggling to put their kids through college without Pell grants, or running out of unemployment benefits with no new job on the horizon. Meanwhile, more than 100 billion of their tax dollars — as much as $2 billion per al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan, by the administration’s own estimates — are going to a war they feel is not worth the cost. Tell me how that’s not a big political issue.
This is a far cry from the vision that got people pounding the pavement for Democrats in 2008. Party strategist Peter Fenn points out that a Democratic base demoralized by an unaffordable and seemingly never-ending war could pose a major turnout problem in 2012.
Memorial Day is a national holiday dedicated to remembering Americans killed in wartime. This year, unfortunately, we remember war dead who didn't have to die, and unless Congress and the president act, we'll remember more needless deaths next year. As of today, 1,516 Americans have died in the Afghanistan War, a conflict that the American people oppose and the continuation of which makes no sense.
Hidden from the front pages of newspapers and other media who can't be bothered to devote significant coverage to the longest war in U.S. history, these dead troops had names and lives before our national policies forced them to give them up.
For example, 23-year-old Army Pvt. Thomas C. Allers from Plainwell, Michigan, was remembered as a "great kid, very sweet," who enjoyed fishing with his parents. He died this week alongside Staff Sgt. Kristofferson B. Lorenzo, 33, of Chula Vista, California; Pfc. William S. Blevins, 21, of Sardinia, Ohio; and Pvt. Andrew M. Krippner, 20, of Garland, Texas.
These men didn't have to die. They died because our politicians sent them to Afghanistan over the continued objections of their countrymen. Their comrades will continue to die until those politicians bring them home.
In a bitter moment of irony this week, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly failed to agree to amendments that would have reined in the brutal, futile war on the same day U.S. troops were suffering their worst losses in Afghanistan since Bin Laden's death. But, as Robert Naiman points out, even though McGovern/Jones amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act failed, the vote margin was so narrow (204-215) that it sent a strong signal to the president that Congress' patience with the constantly deteriorating and resource-hungry war was running out. As U.S. Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) put it, "[W]hen somebody comes up with the right amendment, it's going to pass."
The American people's patience ran out long ago, however. For months, poll after poll has shown rock-solid opposition to the Afghanistan War. Since last December, for example, Pew Research Center's polling has consistently shown that at least a plurality (hovering around 50 percent) want to "remove troops ASAP." With Osama Bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda driven from the country, it's time Congress and the president listened.
Today, we remember Americans killed during the Afghanistan War. Below are the names of the troops who died in that conflict just since last Memorial Day. Congress and the president need to act to end this war immediately so that next year's list is drastically shorter. Please take a moment to sign our petition to bring the troops home.
Memorial Day is a national holiday dedicated to remembering Americans killed in wartime. This year, unfortunately, we remember war dead who didn’t have to die, and unless Congress and the president act, we’ll remember more needless deaths next year. As of today, 1,516 Americans have died in the Afghanistan War, a conflict that the American people oppose and the continuation of which makes no sense.
Hidden from the front pages of newspapers and other media who can’t be bothered to devote significant coverage to the longest war in U.S. history, these dead troops had names and lives before our national policies forced them to give them up.
For example, 23-year-old Army Pvt. Thomas C. Allers from Plainwell, Michigan, was remembered as a “great kid, very sweet,” who enjoyed fishing with his parents. He died this week alongside Staff Sgt. Kristofferson B. Lorenzo, 33, of Chula Vista, California; Pfc. William S. Blevins, 21, of Sardinia, Ohio; and Pvt. Andrew M. Krippner, 20, of Garland, Texas.
These men didn’t have to die. They died because our politicians sent them to Afghanistan over the continued objections of their countrymen. Their comrades will continue to die until those politicians bring them home.
In a bitter moment of irony this week, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly failed to agree to amendments that would have reined in the brutal, futile war on the same day U.S. troops were suffering their worst losses in Afghanistan since Bin Laden’s death. But, as Robert Naiman points out, even though McGovern/Jones amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act failed, the vote margin was so narrow (204-215) that it sent a strong signal to the president that Congress’ patience with the constantly deteriorating and resource-hungry war was running out. As U.S. Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) put it, “[W]hen somebody comes up with the right amendment, it’s going to pass.”
The American people’s patience ran out long ago, however. For months, poll after poll has shown rock-solid opposition to the Afghanistan War. Since last December, for example, Pew Research Center’s polling has consistently shown that at least a plurality (hovering around 50 percent) want to “remove troops ASAP.” With Osama Bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda driven from the country, it’s time Congress and the president listened.
Today, we remember Americans killed during the Afghanistan War. Below are the names of the troops who died in that conflict just since last Memorial Day. Congress and the president need to act to end this war immediately so that next year’s list is drastically shorter. Please take a moment to sign our petition to bring the troops home.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has forcefully condemned the killing of 14 civilians in the south-west of the country in a suspected Nato air strike.
Mr Karzai said his government had repeatedly asked the US to stop raids which end up killing Afghan civilians and this was his “last warning”.
A Nato spokesman said a team had been sent to Helmand province to investigate the attack carried out on Saturday.
Afghan officials say all those killed were women and children.
The strike took place in Nawzad district after a US Marines base came under attack.
The air strike, targeted at insurgents, struck two civilian homes, killing two women and 12 children, reports say.
“The president called this incident a great mistake and the murdering of Afghanistan’s children and women, and on behalf of the Afghan people gives his last warning to the US troops and US officials in this regard,” his office said.
The White House said it shared Mr Karzai’s concerns and took them “very seriously”
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