[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on New American Imperialism

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Drawing the lessons of Vietnam...]

	Kissinger warns on Afghan exit strategy
	By Daniel Dombey in Washington
	Published: June 28 2010 23:21

Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, has warned that Washington’s 
plan to begin handing over responsibility to national forces in Afghanistan in 
July next year “provides a mechanism for failure”.

The people “must be prepared for a long struggle” in what is already the US’s 
longest war, Mr Kissinger said in the wake of Barack Obama’s decision to remove 
General Stanley McChrystal as commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The president should rethink the deadline and the way the strategy had been 
designed, since in his view its goals were too ambitious and too focused on a 
Kabul government with limited influence in the rest of the country. “[The 
strategy] needs adaptation to realities,” he said, suggesting the task of 
adapting it would best fall to Gen David Petraeus, nominated as Gen McChrystal’s 
successor.

The Republican’s comments come as Gen Petraeus, architect of the US surge in 
Iraq, is due to appear before the Senate to be confirmed in his new post. 
Republicans say they will push him on the realism of the July 2011 date, while 
Democrats will call for Afghan forces to take a larger share of the fighting.

Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, said it was 
“unacceptable” that only 5,300 of 119,000 Afghan army troops were to take part 
in a push on Kandahar this year. Mr Levin and other Democrats say the July 2011 
date is vital to maintain US support for the war and give Afghans the incentive 
to take responsibility for their security.

While the administration says the rate of the handover will be determined by 
conditions on the ground, figures such as Joe Biden, vice-president, and Rahm 
Emanuel, White House chief of staff, have said US troops will start leaving next 
July. Mr Obama himself has been more cautious in his recent statements.

“The basic premise that you can work towards a national government that can 
replace the American security effort in a deadline of 12 months provides a 
mechanism for failure,” Mr Kissinger said. “On the other hand, if we are willing 
to pursue the stated [war] objective the public must be prepared for a long 
struggle. This is a choice that needs to be made explicitly.”

  ● Nita Lowey, chairman of the House Appropriations foreign operations 
subcommittee, has vowed to halt non-humanitarian aid to Afghanistan after 
reports Kabul was blocking corruption inquiries and that $3bn (€2.4bn, £2bn) had 
been flown out of Kabul airport during the past three years.


On 6/28/10 8:53 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> What brought the Vietnam War to a close was, in order of decreasing importance,
>
> (a) the resistance of the Vietnamese people to the American invasion of South
> Vietnam;
>
> (b) the revolt of the conscript army the US had sent on an imperial mission; and
>
> (c) the conclusion by about 70% of the American public by the late 1960s that
> the war was "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake" (in the words of
> the longitudinal poll by Chicago Council on Foreign Relations).
>
> And with the close of the war the Vietnamese experiment in building an
> economically successful post-colonial society was destroyed. Since the principal
> US war aim was to prevent that from happening, the US won the war.
>
>
> On 6/28/10 4:30 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:
>> Good point Stuart even if it may be a little optimistic. It is good to
>> understand and respect one's enemies and their capabilities; but it is not so
>> good to hope in the face of past history and experience for those who are easily
>> deceived to become less so or for those who went along to get along before to
>> suddenly see the light and stand up against the machine. It is certainly
>> optimistic to assume that the masses will take up arms against the establishment
>> and become anything more than "paper tigers" armed with words until their
>> personal interests are at stake in a real and immediate way. Should that happen,
>> they will become frightened sheep who will follow anyone who appears to offer
>> simple answers and courses of action that play to the fears. The tea party
>> movement, the Arizona reaction to immigration, the white power movements, etc.
>> tend to give evidence to this and serve as potential examples and illustrations
>> just as the McCarthyism, the racist, and the anti-immigrant movements of the
>> past did.
>>
>> The almost complete bureaucratization, transformation from an industrialized
>> society into a high tech service society, and the corporatization of the U.s.
>> and most of the Western world has changed the conditions drastically from what
>> existed even in the 1960 so as to alter the possibilities for rebellion and
>> revolt of the masses back then which influenced the establishment and brought
>> the Viet Nam war to a close. The substantive disregard for the beliefs,
>> interests, and desires of masses (or even those who voted for him) by the Obama
>> administration with respect to policies, practices, and actions gives ample
>> evidence of this change in that we hear all kinds of disparaging comments and
>> talk but little actual rebellion by the masses - even the collage age members of
>> the public. We certainly do not see the working classes or the poor out on the
>> streets disrupting business as usual, refusing to volunteer for service in the
>> military establishment, cutting back on their conspicuous consumption and
>> consumerism, etc. The fact that they are hurting economically has effectively
>> restricted their ability to engage in consumerism and conspicuous consumption;
>> but it has not curbed their desire to do so if they were given the capability to
>> do so. They complain about losses of jobs to China, Mexico, and other third
>> world countries while on their way to shop at Wal-Mart so as to buy cheap
>> products produced by low wage workers in those third world countries.
>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------
>> From: "Stuart Levy" <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
>> Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 3:40 PM
>> To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
>> Cc: <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Chomsky on New American Imperialism
>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 02:35:33PM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>> Of course, it's not an excuse for 'staying' (i.e., continuing to kill
>>>> people) or a justification of aggression and occupation to say that that is
>>>> the policy of the entire US political establishment. That's what we've
>>>> been saying all along, in the face of those who thought Obama would save us
>>>> from the Awful McCain (or Palin! or the Teapartiers!) - and so we had to
>>>> support him...
>>>>
>>>> Like Ophelia, we were the more deceived.
>>>
>>> Right -- it's nothing like an excuse. But it is good for us to understand
>>> the dynamics of wars, who gains what from them, and how they're sustained,
>>> in order to be able to fit arguments against them.
>>>
>>> If the strongest thing sustaining our Af/Pak war is US "political necessity",
>>> that actually seems encouraging, because a raucous movement saying that
>>> it's a war that the American people don't want could change that political fact.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 6/28/10 1:58 PM, Stuart Levy wrote:
>>>>> ... One comment that surprised me was that, from Obama's point of view,
>>>>> Chomsky thinks the dominant reasons for sticking with the war in
>>>>> Afghanistan,
>>>>> at this point, are domestic ones: backing out would be political suicide.
>>>
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