Obama Announces Afghanistan Escalation
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 1:09PM It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car.
Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments. His flip-flopping acceptance of the military coup in Honduras has squandered the trust of Latin America. His Wall Street bailout leaves the poor, the unemployed, minorities and college students on their own. And now comes the Afghanistan-Pakistan decision to escalate the stalemate, which risks his domestic agenda, his Democratic base, and possibly even his presidency.
The expediency of his decision was transparent. Satisfy the generals by sending 30,000 more troops. Satisfy the public and peace movement with a timeline for beginning withdrawals of those same troops, with no timeline for completing a withdrawal.
Obama's timeline for the proposed Afghan military surge mirrors exactly the eighteen-month Petraeus timeline for the surge in Iraq.
We'll see. To be clear: I'll support Obama down the road against Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs or any of the pitchfork carriers for the pre-Obama era. But no bumper sticker until the withdrawal strategy is fully carried out.
But for now, the fight is on.
This is not like the previous conflict with Bush and Cheney, who were easy to ridicule. Now this orphan of a war has a persuasive advocate, a formidable debater who will be arguing for support from the liberal center--one who wants to win back his Democratic base.
The antiwar movement will have to solidify support from the two-thirds of Democratic voters who so far question this war. Continuing analysis from The Nation and Robert Greenwald's videos have a major role to play. Public opinion will have to become a growing factor in the mind of Congress, where Representative Jim McGovern's resolution favoring an exit strategy has 100 co-sponsors and Rep. Barbara Lee's tougher bill to prevent funding for escalation is now at 23.
Key political questions in the immediate future are whether Representative David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, will oppose Afghanistan funding without a surtax is only bluffing, and whether Senator Russ Feingold will step up with legislation for a withdrawal timetable.
Beyond public persuasion and pressuring Congress, activists are sure to be hitting the streets and precincts in the year ahead. The antiwar movement has a certain leverage based on the current doubt in the minds of voters and policy experts, and the potential dissent from within the Obama base. Democratic turnout increased 2.6 percent in 2008 over 2004, while Republican votes dropped by 1.3 percent. Twenty-two million more young people voted in 2008 than in 2004. The unprecedented energies of those young people who volunteered their time, money and hope could drain away by 2012, if not sooner.
In addition, the peace movement will be globalizing its reach as Obama seeks to extract more troop concessions from wary NATO countries. Opposition is particularly strong in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France. When Obama accepts the Nobel Prize in Oslo on December 10, he may address as many as ten thousand protestors.
Adding 30,000 to 35,000 US troops will raise the US death toll by over 1,000 by 2011 on Obama's watch, in addition to the 750 who died under Bush. The numbers of US wounded are rising faster than ever, with 300 counted in the past three months. Civilian casualties are under-reported according to the UN mission in Afghanistan. The budgetary costs are growing to $75 billion annually, and could become another trillion-dollar war.
The albatross of the Karzai government will threaten any plans to rapidly expand the Afghan army and police, themselves divided along sectarian lines. In 2005, the Kabul regime ranked 117th on the list compiled by Transparency International; by this year it was 176th.
There are alternatives. There is evidence that the Taliban in Afghanistan are seeking a peace settlement without havens for Al Qaeda. There also is an October 11 statement by Gulbaddin Hekmatyer of Hezb-I-Islam Afghanistan, a mujahadeen leader and former prime minister in the 1990s, once funded by the CIA. Never reported in the US media, the letter proposes an honorable exit strategy, including
• relocation of Western troops from Afghan cities, plus a logical and practical time schedule for their withdrawal;
• transfer of power to an interim government independent of the parties currently fighting;
• new elections under an independent election commission;
• release of political prisoners;
• a possible peacekeeping force from neutral Islamic countries;
• and, more importantly for the Obama agenda, the document states: Hezb-I-Islami is prepared to discuss the exit of all foreign fighters (non-Afghan, be it forces of the West, or embedded with the Mujahideen). We assure all sides that we agree that neither the embedded fighters with the Mujahideen nor foreign military forces be allowed to remain or to establish military bases or training camps in Afghanistan.
But instead of pursuing an Afghan-based political settlement without havens for Al Qaeda, the US strategy is to pursue the same goal through more boodshed, leaving Afghanistan somewhere between the Stone Age and ashes. What is obsessive about this approach is the fact that there is no longer an Al Qaeda haven in Afghanistan, which means the US troops are fighting Afghan insurgents in their own country. But if your primary tool is a hammer, as the saying goes, all problems appear to be nails.
The war clearly is shifting to Pakistan, a far more clandestine and dangerous conflict fought by American secret operatives on the ground and drones from the sky. The targets are twofold: (1) to eliminate the Afghan Taliban from their enclave in Quetta instead of negotiating with them, and (2), using US advisers and drones, to push Pakistan's army into a war against Pakistan's homegrown Taliban and other insurgents now in the tribal areas, impoverished and unrepresented in Pakistan's institutions. This approach so far has caused a sharp expansion of violent attacks and suicide bombings across the region. The fear of a destabilized Pakistan with scores of nuclear weapons may lead Obama's advisers to soon present the president with a more apocalyptic scenario than anything so far, if they have not already.
This article originally appeared in The Nation on December 1, 2009.
Reader Comments (26)
I feel dumber just for having read your article.
As a description, this is fine. But what is the explanation for Obama seemingly betraying everything he supposedly stood for?
"I'll support Obama down the road against Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs or any of the pitchfork carriers for the pre-Obama era. But no bumper sticker until the withdrawal strategy is fully carried out.
But for now, the fight is on."
Obama made no secret of his intent to widen the war in Afghanistan when you and your fellow bourgeois liberal s were organizing 'Progressives for Obama" and busily digging another grave for an antiwar movement.. And what knid of 'fight' do you expect to have if you are pledging your vote from the outset? What leverage exactly do you intend to exert to bring out the Ghandi-like figure in Obama that you inexplicably know lurks underneath the preening, war-mongering bank and corporation coddling President who now rules the land?
I saw you speak recently. And the only remarkable thing about your speech was the outrageous extent of your apologetics for Obama. That and your complete lack of outrage and moral conviction in regard to the wars. I believe 'stupid' was the strongest word you could come up with for moral travesty in Iraq. You were quoting Obama at the time, and over-praising the tepid allegedly antiwar speech Obama made so many years ago, before he took to calling King a foolish dreamer in the most bellicose Nobel prize speech ever given.
During your talk in my neighborhood, it seemed as if you didn't even believe what you were saying. You looked for all the world like a party functionary sent out to quell the rumblings about betrayal one hears more and more among the true believers. Like Obama, you are all about appearances.. So long as you continue to 'fight' you can feel less complicit, less bought-and-paid for than you are even if you know your fight won't win squat. If you really wanted a fight, you would leave the Democratic Party and encourage others to do likewise, since your strategy of 'changing it from within' has been an unmitigated failure proven each election cycle.
For better and also for worse, it will be a very different world going into the next Presidential election and it is unlikely anyone will take you seriously the next time around. Why not do us all a favor and get out of the way now?
Tom, you have no clout, but if you did, I would heartily recommend that you keep up you deranged campaign. Because I want Sarah Palin to be President!
About Obama's disillusioned supporters:
They served as an Obama campaign wing. They got him elected based on his radical socialist agenda and that “change” they desperately wanted. He’s grabbing private industry, corporations, and banks in accordance with his socialist policies. Isn’t that what they wanted? A government crackdown on ‘evil captialists’? Instead of letting the free market determine who was financially fit to stay in business, they wanted a dictator to take control of even the most unworthy—as long as it benefit the disenfranchised poor—in the name of ’social justice’. He’s shredded the Constitution without so much as a peep out of the Left.
They wanted a ‘president’ that would improve America’s ‘image’ by presenting a conciliatory posture towards the offended world; for all past transgressions, real or imagined.
He schmoozed with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Evo Morales on his Latin-America apology tour, only to get lectured on American “imperialism”. He’s trying to ‘make up’ for the Great Satan’s insolent reprisals for the atrocities committed by Islamofascist countries on our soil. He bowed to the Saudi king and plays patty-cake with Iran, which might content his adoring hometown crowd, but the goons in the Middle East aren’t satisfied yet.
He did backtrack on GITMO. Even an idiot like Obama has second thoughts about releasing unremorseful jihadist cutthoats back out into society. He’s also reneged on the “immediate pullout” from Iraq and Afghanistan, because he doesn’t want to fold the winning hand passed to him by George Bush.
And for that, the Left is perfunctorily outraged.
He ran as the ‘people’s candidate’; a ‘community organizer’ with a Leninist ’spread the wealth’ agenda. Having that kind of political package wrapped in dark skin was a plus for the fawning Left.
On the other hand, Republicans prefer substance over pigment.
Save for a few glitches, the Left basically got what they demanded. They have a majority in Congress and Senate, as well as an apparatchik in the White House.
I said at the beginning of Obama’s regime that they will only get their panties in a wad if he doesn’t fulfill their leftwing expectations. All of them.
We have about 3 years remaining to see how many more of Obama’s worshipers turn apostate.
One minor correction: "He did backtrack on GITMO. Even an idiot like Obama has second thoughts about releasing unremorseful jihadist cutthoats back out into society ", is no longer true.
It turns out that he IS that big of an idiot. The upcoming NYC trials and release of GITMO prisoners who pick up where they left off, proves as much.
Well I've payed attention to the Obama Presidency and reactions so far... you stop supporting Obama and take his bumper sticker off your car? Ok.
The only reason for lack of support for Obama is racism, or coded racism, or masked racism, or hidden racism.. When exactly did you become an extremist and racist? Clearly we should ignore you because you're analogous to the KKK and nothing you can say will have any bearing.
What? We were told this over and over during and after the election; only racism explains the dislike or distrust of Obama... so clearly you've now become racist. That or maybe those arguments are, and always have been specious? Naah, that many liberals can't be that wrong; you must be a racist now. Is this a sudden change, or have you always been a racist?
This is all just about hatin' on a black man.
And also the damaged limbic system of right wing haters like Tom Hayden. It's science!
Pathological wisdom-free morons who hate the United States; why; you probably hate your parents, too. Try psychotherapy, but stay out of politics--or move to Cuba, or even France to get a dose of reality about your "humane" state.*
Alternatively, stop being a ten-year-old, like your buddy Obama.
*PS: moving to Canada doesn't count. Canada rides piggyback, at best (parasite at worst) on "evil" USA, be it cheap drugs or a lot more.
Tom was apparently not listening during the campaign when Obama kept calling the war in Afghanistan a war of necessity. Don't worry though. He doesn't really know how to win a war. If he did, there would be no mention of off ramps or exit strategies. The Afghans have been fighting for 700 years. They can wait us out for 18 months or so. Lots of rocks, dust and caves in that country. If he wants to win, Napalm with a little lard mixed in would be a good start.