[Peace-discuss] Why are we in Afghanistan?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A generally good column with a huge gap: it doesn't grasp why we are in ("in" = 
killing people somewhere) Afghanistan. Lindorff writes, "...as stupid and 
pointless and immoral as was the war in Iraq, Obama has found himself mired in 
an even more stupid, pointless and immoral war in Afghanistan."  Immoral 
certainly, but not I'm afraid stupid and pointless: both wars had a point, if a 
bad one. (That's why the were pursued in the same way by such different 
presidents.)  For two generations the cornerstone of US world policy has been 
control of Mideast energy resources, not because we use them ourselves, but 
because control of them gives us an advantage over our economic rivals in Europe 
and Asia. But even Obama couldn't convince us to kill and die for that, if he 
were honest. --CGE]

	March 29, 2010
	Obama in Afghanistan
	By DAVE LINDORFF

How pathetic a scene was this: The president of the United States, commander- 
in-chief of the mightiest war machine the world has ever known, sneaking into 
one of the poorest countries in the world and meeting with the corrupt leader of 
that country, where he has committed 100,000 troops to battle, to beg with that 
corrupt leader to “clean up” his corrupt and profoundly inept government.

Already, a thousand American soldiers as well as many civilian aid workers, not 
to mention tens of thousands of innocent Afghans, have died in an eight-year war 
that the US launched in 2001, originally with the intent solely of ousting the 
existing Taliban government and destroying the bases of mostly Arab fighters who 
had been assisting the Taliban in their fight against Russian-allied warlords.

Over the years, with the Al Qaeda fighters destroyed or pushed out of 
Afghanistan, the war has grown and morphed into a grinding and so far losing 
battle against indigenous Taliban fighters and Afghan nationalists and 
tribalists who are trying trying to drive out the US. But after eight years of 
fighting, the goal of the war, on the American side, has only become less and 
less clear.

That goal now appears to be: crushing the Taliban and creating a modern, 
functioning nation state with a government that at least has the grudging 
respect of the populace.

But none of that is really likely to happen.

The US military recently staged a fake, movie-set battle in a rural area of 
southeastern Afghanistan, claiming it was assaulting a large town of 80,000, 
allegedly infested with Taliban fighters--an alleged center of the insurgency. 
With the support of an either duped or incredibly corrupt US press corps, the 
military went into the area, which was actually a group of scattered farming 
villages with a central market, claiming it would operate under new rules of 
engagement designed to protect civilians, and then, after clearing out the 
Taliban, set up a model government administration.

Things went badly from the start, when the Marines fired a rocket salvo into a 
home and killed 12 innocent civilians, including children. In the end some 30 
civilians were killed, very few actual Taliban fighters were killed or captured, 
as they fled the scene in the weeks leading up to the highly advertised 
offensive, and to cap it off, the Afghan soldiers who hung behind as the Marines 
went into the area, when they did finally enter the battle zone themselves, 
proceeded to strip the market area, stealing anything of value.

A new “mayor” brought in from outside to administer the “liberated” Marjah 
region, turned out to be a killer and a thug. So far, a month after the end of 
the fighting in Marjah, there is no clean new administration there, and there 
probably never will be. The focus of the US military is now on the one-million 
population city of Kandahar.

Good luck to the civilians living there.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the war in Afghanistan, scraped 
together a cheering section of 2500 US marines and soldiers to give some 
“Boo-yahs!” to the visiting commander-in-chief, but it’s hard to believe that 
the rest of the over 70,000 US troops in the country are cheering. (And forget 
the NATO “allies,” most of whom are preparing to pack it up and go home.)

The government US forces are propping up is so weak and corrupt that it doesn’t 
really “rule” anything but the capital city of Kabul, and it, and its police and 
army enforcers, are largely viewed by the majority of Afghans as little more 
than an official mafia. It is well known that President Hamid Karzai stole the 
last election and thumbed his nose at world opinion (his opponent simply quit 
the race in disgust during the ballot counting).

And it was this usurper Karzai whom the visiting Obama was left to plead with to 
clean up the mess of a government he runs. Clean up how? Karzai’s own brother is 
a leading warlord and opium baron. Even the country’s opium crap is being left 
untouched by US forces, for fear of alienating the country’s farmers, so we’re 
actually in there fighting to defend the world’s leading producer of opium for 
the heroin trade! How on earth do you “clean up” a government in a country like 
that?

Incredibly, as stupid and pointless and immoral as was the war in Iraq, Obama 
has found himself mired in an even more stupid, pointless and immoral war in 
Afghanistan. And because he has chosen, in his first year in office, to escalate 
that war instead of wind it down and end it, and has doubled the rate of US 
casualties in that war, President Obama now cannot do the right thing and end it 
even if he wants to, because then, how to explain all those pointless deaths? 
Instead, he is forced to clap soldiers, perhaps some of them already doomed, on 
the back in the cafeteria at Bagram Air Base, and tell them, in an echo or 
George Bush’s famous sneak visit to Iraq, “I’m proud of you. You guys are doing 
great work, each and every day.”

What a pathetic joke. The only thing missing was the plastic turkey.

But then again, at least there was a turkey there.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book 
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in 
paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff at mindspring.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff03292010.html

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