Wednesday, July 13, 2011

WHY WE ARE IN AFGHANISTAN AND WON'T LEAVE

July 13, 2011
I can’t seem to make sense of our policy in Afghanistan. Each month we read reports of the loss of our soldiers to treacherous IEDs. The men who do survive such attacks may come home as broken shells of their former selves, often with need for long-term medical care. But that is only one part (a hear-rending one) of the tragedy. The cost of fielding troops in that distant mountainous land is staggering--one million dollars per trooper. With our present (post-Obama) troop surge- we spend over 10 billion dollars a month or 120 billion dollars annually in far off Afghanistan. But the real costs are much greater. A recent, detailed study by the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University revealed that the war on terror (of which the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are part) has cost the US economy so far about 4 trillion dollars. Another trillion dollars is estimated for the long-term interest payments on the loans we took out to finance the wars. Oh yes, these “Bush” wars were “on the cuff” affairs. And by the way, while we were borrowing for these wars our leadership in the Bush White House also decided to cut taxes on the wealthy. Those polices, borrowing for the war on terror and cutting taxes at the same time, were the sinister plans of the Republicans to drive the Democrats against a rock and hard place and try to undo the 80 years of FDR progressive domestic spending that reactionary Republicans so loathed.

But back to our reasons for being in Afghanistan. Why are we there? President Obama’s stated reason is to neutralize al-Qaeda—an alleged threat to our security. But since it is well established (CIA and Pentagon reports) that there are perhaps one-hundred (100) al-Qaeda operatives in that nation. One finds that reason incredulous. Or one must conclude that he al-Qaeda (and the Pashtun Afghans who associate with them) must be supermen—if indeed they can be worth the cost of 1.2 billion dollars each to take down. Think of it. One-hundred-twenty thousand (120,000) modern American troops armed to the teeth, with the latest technical devices for dealing death and destruction chasing one-hundred towel-headed men in rags and sandals armed with home-made A-K47 rip-offs and a belt of cartridges. If the al-Qaeda and Taliban had some expertise in movie making they could produce some block-buster comedies out of that scenario. Sadly, it is not a comedy.

Does our government really expect our US citizenry to believe such nonsense? Apparently they do. But by making use the old rule of “follow the money” may help clarify the situation.

By the way: These annual costs for the Afghanistan war should be viewed in context. This fiscal year (14 trillion dollar national debt, a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit) the President has proposed a nearly 4 trillion dollar budget, but tax receipts are expected to be only less than 3 trillion dollars (for a cause of this short-fall think back to the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy of 2001 and 2003). To quiet his detractors Obama has proposed spending-cuts in many entitlement programs (health, education, etc) but has not dared cut the military and Pentagon budgets. They all got a 1.6% raise and there were no cuts. Furthermore, the promised reduction of troops in Afghanistan has been only a nominal drawdown-- some ten thousand are expected to depart but these are mostly support and training men and women. Thus in a situation where our revenues only cover 75% of our expeditiures and we are now spending about a third more than what we take in. Beside the horrible waste of life on both sides, we must ask ourselves, can we afford to blow away 120 billion dollars a year? I think not.

But back to Afghanistan and our costs there. When we ask, “who is profiting from this spending?” We find the bloated Pentagon (the real largest cost element of our annual Federal budget), and the military industrial companies with which the Pentagon has such a cozy relationship. I believe it was President Eisenhower who first used the term "military-industrial complex" and fingered it as a problem for our democracy. Today, the MIC are even bigger and more powerful. They are the US companies who make huge profits out of war-spending (we euphemistically call them “defense contractors”) and those in the banking and financial sector that finance and invest in these companies with close ties to the military, and the facilitator members of Congress and the Senate (mostly Republicans--though the Democrats are in there too).

Pepe Escobar the roving correspondent for the Asia Times has a theory. (Contact: pepeasia@yahoo.com ) He states “The notion that the US government would spend $10 billion a month just to chase a few "al-Qaeda types" in the Hindu Kush is nonsense. This is a war between a superpower and a fierce, nationalist, predominantly Pashtun movement - of which the Taliban are a major strand; regardless of their medieval ways, they are fighting a foreign occupation and doing what they can to undermine a puppet regime (Hamid Karzai's).”


Thus Washington is fighting a Pashtun nationalist insurgency. But why? According to Escobar, Afghanistan must be “neutralized” i.e. the Pashtun tribal elements must be either bribed, exterminated or beaten into submission so that we can keep our bases in an area we deem essential for our plan of world domination of natural resources. Yes! The Pentagon’s plan called “Full Spectrum Dominance” is designed to encircle our competitors in the east:Russia and China…and prevent them from getting resources that we and our client-states may want or need. That plan has of course led to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan-borderlands and now in Libya and who knows where else?”

According to Escobar, that is only the strategic reason. There is tactical and proximate reason as well. This is what Escobar calls “Pipelinestan”. This reason for war in Afghanistan is heard very little of in the timid and controlled US and Murdock press. And when it is discussed, it is described as the west’s attempts at “democratizing” the east. According to Escobar Pipelinestan is his term for the Trans-Afghan Pipeline, a gas line proposed early in the Clinton Administration and which is still on the “planning table” books. The gas line would connect Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan and would permit a flow of natural gas from landlocked and isolated Central Asia to global markets in the west, bypassing both Russia and Iran and siphoning off gas reserves from areas which China might have considered in its own sphere of influence.

Escobar states: “Washington has badly wanted TAP since the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration was negotiating with the Taliban; the talks broke down because of transit fees, even before 9/11, when the Bush administration decided to change the rhetoric (an offer) from "a carpet of gold" to "a carpet of bombs".”

But to accomplish “Pipelinestan” the US needs a totally pacified Afghanistan and the acquiescence of a Pakistan which must give up using Afghanistan as a vassal state in its confrontation with India. Escobar sees the US and Pakistan’s relationship as two nations both bent on nullifying Pashtun nationalism. This correspondence of goals may explain why the Pakistani Army and the Pentagon enjoy such a close working relationship. (Which is only now showing some signs of strain and diversion after the US’s killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.) Both Washington and Pakistan see Pashtun nationalism as a thorn in their sides.

The way Escobar sees it: “The 2,500-kilometer-long, porous, disputed border with Afghanistan is at the core of Pakistan's interference in its neighbour's affairs.

Washington is getting desperate because it knows the Pakistani military will always support the Taliban as much as they support other hardcore Islamist groups fighting India. Washington also knows Pakistan's Afghan policy implies containing India's influence in Afghanistan at all costs.

Just ask General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's army chief - and a Pentagon darling to boot; he always says his army is India-centric, and, therefore, entitled to "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.

It's mind-boggling that 10 years and $5.4 trillion dollars later, the situation is exactly the same. Washington still badly wants "its" pipeline - which will in fact be a winning game mostly for commodity traders, global finance majors and Western energy giants.

From the standpoint of these elites, the ideal endgame scenario is global" (that the US will continue to be) "Robocop NATO - helped by hundreds of thousands of mercenaries - "protecting" TAP (or TAPI) while taking a 24/7 peek on what's going on in neighbours Russia and China.”

Escobar adds: “Sharp wits in India have described Washington's tortuous moves in Afghanistan as "surge, bribe and run". But Escobar redefines it as rather "surge, bribe and stay". He adds that "This whole saga might have been accomplished without a superpower bankrupting itself, and without immense, atrocious, sustained loss of life, but hey - nobody's perfect.”


On another front: Iraq where we see a very similar endgame playing out. The last news reports I read seem to suggest that the Iraq troop pull-out, scheduled for the end of this year, forged in a formal agreement by the Bush presidency, is now considered to be on shaky ground under Obama(the "peace president" who was elected on his stated objection of initiating the Iraq fiasco). It seems that the military types close to the Obamians in Washington are angling for some way to keep their massive bases and a sizable troop deployment there permanently! The number they bandy about seems to be about 10,000 battle ready troops. Their stay would be long term. PS 10,000 times a million dollars/troop/year = ten thousand million or ten billion annually! Ten billion dollars that will come out of our tax payer’s pockets, and will not be available for our schools, our infrastructure, our broadband, our transit, our nation’s health, or the development of energy industries for the 21st century.




If Washington’s real goal is a pacified Afghanistan for the benefit of the oil and gas cartels and for a strategy of global domination…..that should have been brought into the open and debated. It never was. This is supposed to be a DEMOCRACY. The people should have a say in major decisions of war and peace. But what appears to be the case now is that our government has been usurped by the powerful corporations who simply make up the story they want. It seems they have no interest in bettering our nation but want only to use this geographic location as a base of supply, a good place for corporate headquarters, as a source of cheap manpower, and a staging ground for their business activities, and those of the world’s other giant corporations, its global media, and elite clients---and perhaps for its plan of world domination. But as citizens of such a nation we do not get the benefits which accure to their success, such as decent health care, a working and up-to-date infrastructure, clean water and safe food, education and others). Do we want that kind of nation? Let’s ask ourselves, “What’s in it for us?”

Get the picture?