BRATTLEBORO — The reasons justifying the American presence in Afghanistan and their strategy change from day to day. Neither the lunatics running this misguided affair nor their media experts can adequately explain why we are there.
According to British General Richard Dannatt, it is nation building. How do you build a nation, which has a foreign culture that you know nothing about? The notion is an absurd idea of an arrogant imperial mind. How many times have the Brits tried this and failed?
The American imperialists are treading the same path. Other great reasons propounded by the experts are that we are there to stamp out corruption, destroy the drug trade, teach them all about democracy (a little patronizing, when our democracy is so threadbare).
And perhaps lurking in the background is our old favorite, Unocal (now Chevron), and its planned pipeline across Afghanistan, or some other variation on that theme.
The best reason given is to fight the Islamic fundamentalists over there, so that they do not attack us over here. This smacks of denial. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have yet to be honestly confronted. Why did these hijackers go to such extremes to attack us? Why was there cheering across the Islamic world when 9-11 happened?
The Empire suffered a retaliatory attack (which in no way can be condoned), and the American imperialists must shoulder their part of the blame. The answers lie in our foreign policy, in our relentless interference in other countries, in our alliances with repressive dictatorships, and in all our shenanigans around the world.
As to the strategy, this resembles a chameleon. General Stanley A. McChrystal (the much-touted counterinsurgency expert) talked of the “hearts and minds” and the great need to win this struggle. The fact that this country has shredded village after village with drones, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, did not seem to matter.
According to McChrystal, there is a new strategy where they will not be “wasting” civilians but they will be protecting them from those evil Taliban. And in the process they will win the hearts and minds, conveniently forgetting all the death and destruction.
How can one possibly guard every single Afghan against the Taliban? The whole idea is absurd. His delusional disconnect from reality could not be more stark.
Both General McChrystal and his boss, Admiral Michael Mullen, tell us that a central theme of their new strategy will be to hold ground and bring in plenty of civilian experts for reconstruction. The Taliban, adhering to guerilla principles, will never contest ground but will simply melt away and move to another area.
The way this new strategy will work is when the imperial forces move into a new area, they will then hold that ground and prevent the Taliban from retaking it.
Pressed to its logical conclusion, for the strategy to be effective, Americans would need to guard every inch of Afghanistan (and also Pakistan). Clearly guarding the whole of Afghanistan is impossible and idiotic. Wasn't this tried in Vietnam? Didn't it fail?
The other leg to this new strategy is bringing in civilians to deal with the reconstruction. Everyone will have to be guarded around the clock; otherwise, their job will be suicidal. (I imagine the civilian contractors will be identified by white headbands, like the Kamikaze pilots of old, resplendent with American slogans like “Change is coming.”) And how does reconstruction take place in the middle of a guerilla war? Absurd.
Recently we have McChrystal requesting huge troop increases; otherwise, he and the American expeditionary force in Afghanistan are doomed. Adding more troops does not address the problem - it exacerbates it.
The harder they try to quell the insurgency, the more it lashes back against the military. The Taliban are amongst the people - they are the Afghan people. This is a political war. That means that the people doing the shooting have to be negotiated with. Even if there were half a million troops (as there were in Vietnam at one point) the U.S. will not win.
The strategy completely misses the point of what a guerilla war is about. It is a war of ideas. You cannot kill an idea or a national dream, the only form of success is replacing it with a counter idea. If an idea from one side galvanizes the people, those fighting for that idea will win no matter how much brutality and death is inflicted on them.
And here the Afghans have to decide their own future: what form of government they want - Islamic or secular - a decision which is theirs alone.
Vietnam is a perfect example. Reunification under a socialist system of goverment and the ejection of foreign occupation was the noble cause. The American military did everything it possibly could to crush the idea and failed - dismally.
Even today, as we slowly descend into the quagmire of another guerilla war, many American imperialists still don't get it. Weaned on their own infinite superiority (especially over dark people), supposed majestic power (the shock and awe, yada, yada) and their delusional triumphalism, all the warnings are ignored.
Their pronouncements reveal that they do not understand what a guerilla war or insurgency is about. They do not understand the delicate path that has to be trodden between eliciting the help of the people politically and of damping down the insurgency - and all the subtleties along this path.
Their whole mentality is steeped in American militarism, which revolves around incremental applications of military force. When they do not get their way, then more violence is applied.
So here we go again with another all American exercise in futility. Hubris and ignorance will trump all else. We will pour hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars into this war and in the end will have absolutely nothing to show for it - just like Iraq.
Many defense-industry corporations will make a killing with excellent profits, and there will be a lot of dead people. This war will undoubtedly spill over into Pakistan and other “-stans” - think of the endless profit for the defense industry.
This must be America's favorite pastime - spreading death and destruction around the globe and shredding countries, all in the name of freedom, democracy, and hypocrisy. And the deaths of young Americans - that's irrelevant to the Democrats or the Republicans. They get their political bills paid by the defense industries, and they hold onto power.
The other end of the spectrum can be found in Brattleboro's Harmony parking lot, where one can find large groups of young people, many from broken families, with rudimentary education and no hope of a decent job, destined to a life of poverty.
I'm sure we are all very proud of our government and think it is okay to spend billions on pointless wars. “Heck of a job, Brownie!”
It is disgusting, yet we keep voting the same lunatic imperialists (Democrat and Republican) into power.