Disputes are raging within the Obama administration over how to
continue the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. A new leak tells us that
Washington’s ambassador in Kabul, former four-star general Karl
Eikenberry, has cautioned against adding more troops while President
Hamid Karzai keeps disappointing American policymakers. This is the
extent of the current debate within the warfare state.
During a top-level meeting November 11 in the White House, the
Washington Post reports, President Obama “was given a series of
options laid out by military planners with differing numbers of new
U.S. deployments, ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 troops. None of the
scenarios calls for scaling back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or
delaying the dispatch of additional troops.”
No doubt there are real tactical differences between Eikenberry and
the U.S./NATO commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, the
ultra-spun brainy spartan who wants to boost the current U.S. troop
level of 68,000 to well over 100,000 in the war-afflicted country.
But those policy disputes exist well within the context of a
permanent war psychology.
What’s desperately needed is a clear breakaway from that psychology,
which routinely offers “kinder, gentler” forms of endless and
horrific war. But predictably, in the days and weeks ahead, some
progressives -- from the grassroots to Capitol Hill -- will gravitate
toward Eikenberry’s stance.
Fine-tuning the U.S. war in Afghanistan is no substitute for
acknowledging -- with words and with policy -- that there will be no
military solution. Adjusting the dose and mix of military
intervention is a prescription to do more harm on a massive scale.
A recent spate of media stories has focused on soldiers, veterans and
family members struggling with PTSD and other heartbreaking
consequences of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the key
messages is that the government must do a better job of caring for
battle-scarred veterans.
To the great extent that such stories don’t question continuation of
the warfare, they’re part of the stampede. As long as the only
options put forward have to do with finding better ways to cope with
ongoing war, the men and women in the military are framed as people
who are most admirable as participants in their own suffering (and,
implicitly, as people who are willing to inflict suffering on
others).
The suffering of Afghan people, meanwhile, gets short shrift in the
USA’s media and political discourse. While we hear -- though not
enough -- about traumas that continue to plague Americans many months
or years after being in war zones, we hear almost nothing about the
traumas that the U.S. military visits upon people living in the
occupied country.
After 30 years of war, Afghans do not need more ingenious war efforts
by the latest batch of best and brightest in Washington.
Thundering along Pennsylvania Avenue, the stampede for war is hard to
resist. It’s a stampede that few members of Congress have been
willing to directly challenge. So, the “serious” policy arguments,
from the White House to Capitol Hill, have remained bullish on war --
and eager to find better ways to wage it.
The November 12 edition of the Post reported that Ambassador
Eikenberry “has expressed frustration with the relative paucity of
funds set aside for spending on development and reconstruction this
year in Afghanistan, a country wrecked by three decades of war.” The
newspaper added: “Earlier this summer, he asked for $2.5 billion in
nonmilitary spending for 2010, a 60 percent increase over what Obama
had requested from Congress, but the request has languished even as
the administration has debated spending billions of dollars on new
troops.”
The Obama administration is spending upwards of 90 percent of all
U.S. funds in Afghanistan on military operations -- and what
Eikenberry is seeking would add up to mere drops in the bucket
compared to what Afghanistan really needs for “development and
reconstruction.” Nor is the U.S. government in any moral or
logistical position to effectively supply such aid.
Right now, the paltry aid from Washington is largely disbursed in
Afghanistan as an adjunct to the Pentagon’s military operations --
and it is widely recognized as such. That’s why the resulting
projects are so often blown up or burned down by insurgents.
In war-ravaged Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the
world, effective aid is possible. While woefully underfunded, the
National Solidarity Program and the Aga Khan Foundation are prime
examples of successes -- if the goals are genuine humanitarian aid
and development rather than providing “hearts and minds” photo-ops
and leverage for the occupiers’ military campaigns.
The current dispute over how to continue the war in Afghanistan
should not be mistaken for an argument over basic assumptions. And
what’s wrong with U.S. intervention in Afghanistan is fundamental.
_____________________
Norman Solomon is co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare
campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. He is the author
of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep
Spinning Us to Death.” For more information, go to:
www.normansolomon.com