[Peace-discuss] Iraq and Afghanistan

[Morton K. Brussel]

This article from the ANSWER list. To the point…
--mkb

Iraq and Afghanistan will never accept colonialism
Monday, September 21, 2009
By: Brian Becker

Gen. McChrystal, Pentagon scramble to avoid appearance of defeat

The statement below was issued by Brian Becker, National Coordinator  
of the ANSWER Coalition.

The U.S. public largely opposed the invasion of Iraq while being  
generally supportive of the invasion of Afghanistan. That is now  
changing. Majority sentiment has moved, and will continue to move, in  
opposition to the plans for a protracted war and occupation in  
Afghanistan.

There is both uncertainty and debate within the Obama administration  
and among the Pentagon brass about what to do in Afghanistan: continue  
to send ever more troops; seek a truce with the Taliban and create a  
government of "national unity" that includes the Taliban and either  
Hamid Karzai or another U.S. political puppet; or both.

Because of the division within the ruling class on its Afghanistan  
policy, it is possible that the intervention of a mass grassroots  
movement opposing the war can become a factor in domestic political  
calculations. This is precisely what happened during the Vietnam War.


Reality requires change of Pentagon’s military goals


The primary strategic objectives and goals that originally motivated  
the U.S. invasion have been significantly modified as a consequence of  
the unanticipated armed resistance, also known as the insurgency, in  
both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The political alignments in Iraq bear little or no resemblance to the  
constellation of political forces in Afghanistan and yet there is an  
overarching similarity, at least in terms of the evolved objectives of  
the U.S. invasion and occupation.

Both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, a principal goal of the Pentagon  
morphed into a much lower baseline objective: to avoid defeat or the  
appearance of defeat at the hands of an armed insurgency.

Avoiding defeat was the goal Nixon and Kissinger set for themselves  
when they took office in 1969. They, however, quickly modified the  
objective: They quickly discovered that defeat was inevitable, so they  
settled on an even lesser objective: to avoid the appearance of being  
defeated. Thus was born the fraudulent slogan "Peace with Honor." For  
this noble cause, another 30,000 young GIs perished before the  
inevitable troop pullout from Vietnam in 1973. The number of  
Vietnamese killed between 1969 and 1973 was greater by many hundreds  
of thousands.

The initial goal of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was far  
greater. "Avoiding defeat" did not enter into the calculations of  
Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld. No, they were sure that they could create in  
both countries a colonial-type state.

A colonial-type state is distinguished from a classic colonial entity.  
Classic colonialism features the acquisition by the colonial entity of  
the formal state power and with it the formal and legal administrative  
and military obligations that belong to government. The indigenous  
population provides personnel, administrators, bureaucrats and  
soldiers under the command of the hierarchal authority of the  
colonizers.

Classic colonialism also featured the complete control and direction  
of the indigenous economy by the colonizing entity for the purpose of  
acquiring natural resources, cheap labor and access to markets for the  
industrial and commercial capitalist interests of the colonizer. This  
characteristic is equally present in both classic colonialism and in  
the modern colonial-type arrangement sought by the United States. In  
the case of Iraq, its vast nationalized oil fields were to be  
privatized and controlled by U.S. and British oil interests. Its  
nationalized banking sector was to be gobbled up by Wall Street.

Kwame Nkrumah, the former president of Ghana and a leader of the Pan- 
African movement, described the features of what he called neo- 
colonialism: "The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which  
is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward  
trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system  
and thus its political policy is directed from outside."

Nkrumah prophetically described the many variants of the new  
colonialism, but placed the primacy of economic penetration as the  
"normal" and central method whereby the old colonial powers retain  
control over the former colonies.

"The methods and form of this direction can take various shapes. For  
example, in an extreme case the troops of the imperial power may  
garrison the territory of the neo-colonial State and control the  
government of it. More often, however, neo-colonialist control is  
exercised through economic or monetary means." (emphasis added)

In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, the creation of a colonial-type  
or neo-colonial state requires the garrisoning of large numbers of  
U.S. troops on U.S. military bases to dominate the political landscape  
and protect large numbers of U.S. administrators. Nkrumah called this  
"an extreme case," but it is indispensable in both Iraq and  
Afghanistan, although for widely different reasons. Without vast  
numbers of foreign forces on its soil, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan  
can function as colonial-type states. Iraq for instance—with its oil,  
significant water resources, large and educated population, potential  
military capability, and political legacy since the triumph of the  
1958 anti-colonial revolution—would resume its place as a regional  
power in the Arab world.


Hopes of new strategic axis shattered


The destruction of the Baathist state by foreign military invasion was  
supposed to blast open the possibility of large, multiple U.S.  
military bases that would remain forever in Iraq. U.S. rulers  
understood that, without foreign troops and permanent military bases  
on its soil providing protection for legions of U.S. administrators  
and technocrats, Iraq would resume its position of independence,  
notwithstanding its economic decline from years of war and sanctions.

The Bush administration and the Pentagon initially envisioned laying  
the foundation for a new strategic axis for the Middle East. It would  
be the Washington-Baghdad-Tel Aviv partnership that would police the  
oil-rich Middle East on behalf of U.S. interests. That would require  
turning Iraq into a colonial-type state.

It was a policy that had some historical resonance. It was a throwback  
to the golden days of a Washington-Tel Aviv-Tehran axis policing the  
oil-rich Gulf. The Shah of Iran was a loyal puppet, and the Israelis  
functioned as a dependent garrison state striking out at any  
expression of Arab nationalism that threatened U.S. domination  
strategies.

But the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld strategy was a fantasy that has been  
shattered by subsequent events. Starting in 2007, the Pentagon  
adjusted its approach. The 2007 so-called surge of troops in Iraq was  
basically propaganda masking the actual new strategy, which was to pay  
the insurgents to stop shooting at U.S. troops and blowing them up  
with IEDs. This would allow the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces in  
an orderly way thus avoiding the appearance that the empire had been  
defeated or had been unable to succeed in Iraq.

The humongous U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was conceived as the directing  
body of the new colonial-type state in Iraq. It is the largest in the  
world. Conceived for more than 1,000 U.S. personnel to function as  
behind-the-scenes administrators, the embassy would serve as the  
management arm of the new colonial-type state.

This, too, will turn out to be unviable. Iraq has been economically  
devastated, but the aspirations for a colonial-type state administered  
by the U.S. Embassy in downtown Baghdad are incompatible with the  
reality of Iraq. The Iraqi people are imbued with anti-colonial  
consciousness directly resulting from 90 years of struggle—dating back  
to at least the 1920 national rebellion that defeated British colonial  
forces.

Iraqi reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi became a national hero when he  
risked death and endured terrible torture for hurling his shoes at  
Bush. His words on Sept. 15 upon his release and the depth of the  
support he continues to receive from throughout Iraq speak volumes  
about the political intensity of Iraqi anti-colonial sentiment:

"They [U.S. officials] will boast about the deceit and the means they  
used in order to gain their objective. It is not strange, not much  
different from what happened to the Native Americans at the hands of  
colonialists. Here I say to them (the occupiers) and to all who follow  
their steps, and all those who support them and spoke up for their  
cause: Never. Because we are a people who would rather die than face  
humiliation."


Afghanistan: perception and reality


In the United States, a large sector of the population recognized that  
the Iraq invasion was a war of aggression, pure and simple.

It was different with Afghanistan. Public opinion was largely  
supportive of the invasion, because the Bush administration and all  
Democratic Party leaders promoted the idea that Afghanistan was the  
source of the Sept. 11 attacks. After all, Osama Bin Laden was a  
"guest" of the Taliban government in Kabul at the time of the attack.

The cold fact is that there were no Iraqis or Afghans on the planes  
that were hijacked on Sept. 11, yet hundreds of thousands of Iraqis  
and Afghans are dead because of the U.S. invasion. Millions more live  
as refugees.

Afghanistan, according to the Bush administration and the Pentagon,  
was to serve as the military pivot for policing U.S. interests. Huge  
forward bases for the Pentagon throughout the country would change the  
relationship of forces in Central Asia.

Afghanistan shares extensive borders with Iran to the west and a long  
border with Pakistan to the south and east. It borders China to the  
northeast and the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan  
and Uzbekistan to the north.

As with Iraq, the Bush and Pentagon military strategy in Afghanistan— 
now officially the policy of the Obama administration—has morphed, as  
the goals of the occupation have had to be scaled back. When asked to  
explain what a victory in Afghanistan would mean, U.S. government and  
Pentagon officials can only dish out vagaries. They cannot actually  
tell the truth because then more soldiers and marines and their  
families would hesitate to continue to act as bait and cannon fodder.


Stirring up the anti-war movement


The real and rarely mentioned goal is now to avoid defeat. Or, and  
this is important, to avoid the perception of defeat. Thus, tens of  
thousands more troops are being rushed into the country because the  
Pentagon cannot figure out what else to do.

General David Petraeus became a hero in the imperialist establishment  
because he was the architect of the so-called surge followed by the  
announced intention to withdraw from Iraq. In short, glory and  
reverential honor befalls the great general, not because he put U.S.  
forces on track to victory but because his policy may permit the  
withdrawal of military forces on conditions far less humiliating than  
the Pentagon’s rushed exit from Vietnam in the 1970s.

The people of the United States need to rise up and go into the  
streets demanding the immediate and full withdrawal from Afghanistan.  
The vast majority of the people of Afghanistan, including large  
numbers of those who despise the odious policies of the Taliban,  
revile the colonial character of the occupation. As the bodies of  
civilians pile up in an escalating conflict, the hatred for the U.S./ 
NATO occupiers will only grow. The mission is doomed.
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