[Peace-discuss] Norman Soloman -- Afghanistan thoughts

[Brussel Morton K.]

Soloman worries about the current D.C. mood. --mkb

The Silent Winter of Escalation

by Norman Solomon
Sunday morning, before dawn, I read in the New York Times that "the  
Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan"  
within the next 18 months -- "raising American force levels to about  
58,000" in that country. Then I scraped ice off a windshield and  
drove to the C-SPAN studios, where a picture window showed a serene  
daybreak over the Capitol dome.

While I was on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" for a live interview,  
the program aired some rarely seen footage with the voices of two  
courageous politicians who challenged the warfare state.

So, on Sunday morning, viewers across the country saw Barbara Lee  
speaking on the House floor three days after 9/11 -- just before she  
became the only member of Congress to vote against the president's  
green-light resolution to begin the U.S. military attack on Afghanistan.

"However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of  
restraint," she said. The date was Sept. 14, 2001. Congresswoman Lee  
continued: "Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must  
say, Let's step back for a moment, let's just pause just for a  
minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so  
that this does not spiral out of control."

And she said: "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."

The footage of Barbara Lee was an excerpt from the "War Made Easy"  
documentary film (based on my book of the same name). As she appeared  
on a TV monitor, I glanced out the picture window. The glowing blue  
sky and streaky clouds above the Hill looked postcard-serene.

But the silence now enveloping the political non-response to plans  
for the Afghanistan war is a message of acquiescence that echoes what  
happened when the escalation of the Vietnam War gathered momentum.

During the mid-1960s, the conventional wisdom was what everyone with  
a modicum of smarts kept saying: higher U.S. troop levels in Vietnam  
were absolutely necessary. Today, the conventional wisdom is that  
higher U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are absolutely necessary.

Many people who think otherwise -- including, I'd guess, quite a few  
members of Congress -- are keeping their thoughts to themselves,  
heads down and mouths shut, for roughly the same reasons that so many  
remained quiet as the deployment numbers rolled upward like an  
odometer of political mileage on the road to death in Vietnam.

Right now, the basic ingredients of further Afghan disasters are in  
place -- including, pivotally, a dire lack of wide-ranging debate  
over Washington's options. In an atmosphere reminiscent of 1965, when  
almost all of the esteemed public voices concurred with the decision  
by newly elected President Lyndon Johnson to deploy more troops to  
Vietnam, the tenet that the United States must send additional troops  
to Afghanistan is axiomatic in U.S. news media, on Capitol Hill and  
-- as far as can be discerned -- at the top of the incoming  
administration.

But the problem with such a foreign-policy "no brainer" is that the  
parameters of thinking have already been put in the rough equivalent  
of a lockbox. Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson  
approached Vietnam policy options no more rigidly than Hillary  
Clinton, Robert Gates and Barack Obama appear poised to pursue  
Afghanistan policy options.

I was thinking about this when I left the C-SPAN building in the full  
light of day. The morning glow made the Capitol look majestic. Yet it  
was almost possible to see, streaked across the dome, an invisible  
new stain of blood and shattered bones.

Along with the grim patterns, there's a tradition of brave dissent on  
Capitol Hill. It's epitomized by Barbara Lee's prophetic statement  
just after 9/11 -- and by an earlier kindred spirit, the fierce  
Vietnam War opponent Senator Wayne Morse. If you'd like to see  
historic footage of them, retrieved from the nation's Orwellian  
memory hole, watch the "Washington Journal" segment by clicking here.

This morning, USA Today reports that the top U.S. commander in  
Afghanistan "has asked the Pentagon for more than 20,000 soldiers,  
Marines and airmen" to raise the U.S. troop level in Afghanistan to  
55,000 or 60,000. General David McKiernan says that is "needed until  
we get to this tipping point where the Afghan army and the Afghan  
police have both the capacity and capability to provide security for  
their people." Such a tipping point "is at least three or four more  
years away," the general explained. So, "if we put these additional  
forces in here, it's going to be for the next few years. It's not a  
temporary increase of combat strength."

Is Afghanistan the same as Vietnam? Of course, competent geographers  
would say no. But the United States is the United States -- with  
domestic continuity between two eras of military intervention,  
spanning five decades, much more significant than we might think.

Bedrock faith in the Pentagon's massive capacity for inflicting  
violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy  
experts. The echo chamber is echoing: the Afghanistan war is worth  
the cost that others will pay.


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