[Peace-discuss] Obama’s bloody “endgame” in Afghanistan

[C. G. Estabrook]

"Nearly two months after President Barack Obama announced plans for a limited 
withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, the evolution of US strategy in 
the nearly 10-year-old war points to a steady escalation of bloodshed...

"Air strikes, which under the counterinsurgency strategy first introduced by 
Gen. Stanley McChrystal in 2009 were to be sharply curtailed because of the 
hostility they provoked from the Afghan population, are now being conducted at 
record levels. According to figures released by the Pentagon, US warplanes 
carried out 652 attack runs in July, more than 20 a day. This is roughly double 
the number of air strikes carried out during the same period last year.

"Meanwhile, according to Pentagon officials, the number of commando raids by 
special operations troops has more than tripled since 2009. From the beginning 
of this year through the beginning of August, what the military refers to as its 
“hunter-killer” squads carried out 1,879 missions—roughly 300 a month—compared 
to just 675 in 2009 and 1,780 for all of last year.

"A US military spokesman boasted of the effectiveness of these night raids to 
Bloomberg news: “Even if the primary target is not killed or captured on these 
missions, 35 percent of those times, the next closest associate or another 
individual directly linked to the target is killed or captured.”

"It is precisely this feature of the special forces night raids that have 
aroused so much hatred within the Afghan population. Time after time, they have 
resulted in the killing of innocent men, women and children, while subjecting 
Afghan families to the humiliation of being brutalized and dragged out of their 
homes in the middle of the night...

"Four hundred US and other foreign occupation troops have been killed already in 
2011, which is on track to become the bloodiest year since the war began nearly 
a decade ago...

"The White House and the Pentagon have effectively dropped the pretense that the 
US is engaged in “nation-building” or winning the “hearts and minds” of the 
Afghan people. Instead, the endgame of Obama’s war is to bleed the Afghan 
resistance into submission and secure an agreement that will meet the 
imperialist aims that have driven the war from its outset.

"These aims are bound up not with a war on terrorism but with geo-strategic 
interests and corporate profits. They include establishing permanent bases in 
Afghanistan, over which “strategic partnership” negotiations are now being 
conducted between Washington and Karzai. The purpose of such bases would be to 
assert US control over the strategic energy reserves of the Caspian Basin and 
the main pipeline routes for funneling it to the West, as well as to threaten 
China, Russia and Iran...

"Trillions of dollars have been poured into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 
even as Democrats and Republicans alike insist that there is “no money” for jobs 
and vital social services.

"Public protest against the war has virtually disappeared. The official 
“antiwar” movement, dominated by a comfortable middle-class layer, has 
integrated itself into the Democratic Party and busied itself with supplying 
alibis for militarism under Obama..."

Full article at <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/pers-a18.shtml>.