No, its not going well in Afghanistan. Two recent press reports tell of troubling circumstances in that turbulent and mountainous land, and foretell problems for our young inexperienced and uncertain President.
Reuters, (February 1, 2012) revealed the contents of a "secret" study composed by the US military at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, about a month ago. The report, prepared for NATO commanders, countered the official story-line which states according to our President and his smiling, optimistic military advisers that the Taliban are "on the run everywhere in Afghanistan". This document states instead that the Taliban are strong, motivated, united and not going anywhere. The source of the information is taken from own US military, those stationed in the war zone in Afghanistan, and is based on four thousand interviews with captured Taliban and detainees. It concludes that the Taliban are certainly not on the run. Instead they are characterized as confident, optimistic and ready to take control again once the US led forces leave. I lived through a lot of US wars (sorry to say), WWII, Korean , Vietnam, etc., etc., etc., in each instance, I learned the truth only long after the fact. In times of war one becomes very circumspect, experience teaches us that the military and our political leaders often lie, or at very least were prone to twisting the truth to meet their own political needs and purposes of the moment. The old saw stating: "Truth is the first casualty of war", is incomplete. "Truth is the first and continuing casualty of war" is more accurate. At the present time, our leaders have a political motivation to paint a rosy picture--it's an election year.
Thus based on this in-house military analysis, after eleven years of devastating war, half a trillion dollars spent on direct war costs, the loss of nearly two-thousand American troops to date, the demise of countless Afghan fighters of various hues and stripes, and the killing of uncounted, innocent Afghan women and children, we are set back to square one. We are back to where we were when George Bush led the charge into the dry, cold and dusty mountains of Afghanistan, known as the graveyard of empires. When Bush left, Obama, who campaigned as an anti-war candidate, but, upon election became fearful of that role, and took to waving the saber. He promised to get us out of Iraq ("the wrong war") and back into Afghanistan (the supposed "right war" and cradle of al Qaida) with a surge of new forces. Today, al Qaida is essentially extinct in Afghanistan, and thus our nearly one-hundred thousand troops with perhaps a 1000:1 ratio of good-guys vs Taliban had to have some reason for being there, so imperceptibly and stealthily our objective of cleansing al Qaida has morphed over the last decade, so today, we find our forces hunting and killing Taliban (as perhaps the target du jour), a group which had no bone to pick with us--before we invaded their mountainous lair.
So our Afghan war-goals are not going as planned. We are not winning, and yet there is both strong economic and political imperatives to end this tragic episode and get out. But no-one, especially a weakened, election-year president, wants to be the one to blow the "retreat" on the nation's bugle and be blamed for a "lost" war. Thus, we are stuck continuing to fight a war we are losing, which bleeds our wealth and blood. A war we borrow 40 cents on the dollar to pay for. So what has our President done? He has turned in desperation to a robotized air-war against the Afghans which targets supposed enemies, yet in the process kills and maims innocents. Why are the Taliban strong, united, and unbowed as the Bagram report indicates? The Americans with their drones and tendency to indiscriminate use of firepower continue to make the enemy look like local heroes.
Today, February 5, 2012, Scott Shane wrote in the N Y Times that British and Pakistani journalists members of the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalists have completed a study published in the Times of London which charges that US drone strikes--seemingly in imitation of some of the most vicious terrorist bombers--have begun to use a double whammy or booby trap kill by striking an initial target with a Reaper or Predator drone, then remain lurking in the area to fire rockets at those (innocents) who come to the aid of the injured, dead and dying. In addition, to such atrocities, local witnesses state that the drones often fire on mourners gathering for subsequent funeral processions! They are reported to have fired at any group of men who may appear armed (even if they are only carrying farming implements). Such indiscriminate use of firepower make it impossible for the Afghans to distinguish between who is more vicious, the Taliban insurgents or the Americans supported by the CIA who control the drones. Apparently, from the results of the Bagram Air Base secret-study, they have decided. Perhaps they have concluded that both are equally evil, and would rather go with the home-grown evil rather than the foreign one. With the administration's stupid and counter-productive drone attacks as our only strategy, we have lost the hearts and minds of the Afghans (can you blame them?) and with that loss--we can not win. What we are doing now with our high-tech drone attacks is simply senseless killing--often, too often, of innocents and children. Such killing must stop!
According to Scott Shane's report in the N Y Times, Obama himself has approved of over 260 drone air-strikes on Afghan targets in the last three-plus years. That is on-average a drone strike about every four days. According to journalists and observers on the ground, these strikes have killed many, many Taliban (which our young, insecure, military-dominated and uncertain President often brags about), but he says little about the fact that his CIA has killed between 300 to 500 innocent civilians. That is roughly one, or two, (or more) civilians for each strike. Sadly sixty (60) of those civilians were children! President Obama (and the stooges that play at killing at the joy-stick-controls of the drones) will have the lives of these sixty kids on his conscience..or should have. Perhaps one day the World Court of Justice will revoke his unearned Peace Prize and finally be constrained by his continued inexplicably inhumane actions in Afghanistan to charge him with war crimes.
But let's look at a tragedy closer to home. Recall the encomiums and heart-felt press reports concerning the tragic, violent shooting death of lovely nine-year old Christina Green. She was killed by a deranged Arizona gunman on a maniacal rampage who killed five others and grievously wounded former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Little nine-year-old Christina was a young American, but was no different, no more innocent, no more full of youthful potential, and deserving of life than any one of those sixty Afghan kids who were unintended targets of CIA drones. The loss of her life was widely reported, but there is hardly a sentence written in the press about the sixty Afghan kids. Ironically, Obama honored the memory of that lovely little girl and the anguish of her parents in his State of the Union address. But the death of those sixty kids was just as much a valid part of the State of the Union address as young martyred Christina's was, but President Obama was silent and dumb on the sixty kids of similar age and innocence who died by American-made technology and hardware in Afghanistan just as violently and tragically. We too remain dumb and uniformed. And few in the major press or media made mention of it. Is the reason that this is some special hierarchy of innocent children...I think not.
What are Obama's objectives for this nation? Has he thought of anything beyond reelection? Is he attempting to out-macho Bush, so as to impress the Republicans? One must ask of him, who is in control of his CIA? And finally, who of us would agree with the apparent weird and irrational cost-benefit analyses formulated within the White House, that somehow permits our CIA to set up booby-trap drone strikes which kills innocents and children in Afghanistan? What is wrong with us?
Get the picture?
rjk
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