The Long Crisis

Posts Tagged ‘President Obama’

Wikileaks proves beyond a doubt that the truth about the war in Afghanistan is totally unwelcome by Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, every general in the war theater and throughout the military, as well as President Obama.

Actually, Wikileaks has revealed very little if any new information about conditions in Afghanistan. Most of the approximately 77,000 documents released thus far are low-level accounts of incidents and tactical situations that have been previously reported or are minor events. The only information that may be classified as new is that the Taliban have on occasion used heat seeking missiles as offensive weapons against US and NATO aircraft. Even that information should not come as a surprise as it was the US that introduced the Stinger missiles into Afghanistan that were used by the Afghans against the Soviets with effective results.

The information that seem to be so disturbing to the American war leadership was that Pakistan has been double dealing in the fight against the Taliban. However, this information is not new. It has been surmised since 2004 that the Taliban has received and is still receiving assistance from the Pakistani ISI, their version of the US CIA. The Taliban was created by the ISI, with assistance from the United States CIA, during the Soviet-Afghanistan war which ended in 1989.

Rather than be bent out of shape that this old information is once again in the news the US should acknowledge that politics in Pakistan are extremely complicated and that the power of the central government is limited. The military has long had an important position of power within Pakistan and military objectives, especially in the Interservice Intelligence unit (ISI), often are not the same as the publicly announced objectives of the Pakistani government. Pakistan does not want a government in Afghanistan that is in any way friendly with their old foe India. The United States faces extreme challenges in working through a sensible relationship with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.

The statement by Sec. of Defense Robert Gates that “blood is on the hands of Wikileaks” seems to me to be one of extreme hypocrisy. It would seem to me that blood is on the hands of Robert Gates, and President George Bush and President Obama administration’s for pursuing a ridiculous war that has killed thousands of Afghan civilians as well as over 1100 US servicemen during what is now a nine year effort in futility. The Taliban will still be in Afghanistan long after the US and Nato forces have pulled out. After all they are residents there.

Wikileaks has been and undoubtably will continue to be attacked by the present administration as well as by the military as the messenger that brings further confirmation as to how badly the war in Afghanistan has been managed by US and NATO forces. It seems that the truth is the last thing that the Obama administration wishes to reveal to the American public. This fact is a huge disappointment to those who believed that President Obama was serious about his desire to bring transparency to government as promised during his presidential campaign.

I strongly believe that this disappointment will make itself known during the November midterm elections although the war will likely be a minor political factor compared to the sorry state of the US economy.

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President Obama’s prime time speech from West Point this past Tuesday evening contained elements that only could originate in a brain dead airless Washington D.C. environment. Barack Obama used to be an intelligent man. But then he won the job of being the President and occupied the Whitehouse. As a result his brain has been quickly infected with a dangerous and probably non-curable “think tank” Washington disease. Unfortunately, most of his advisers have carried the disease for years so we have quite a negative feedback loop at work in the oval office that almost guarantees fuzzy dream thread worn thinking.

President Obama spoke of building up the government capacity in Afghanistan. As well said in Juan Cole’s Informed Comment blog when it comes to a government in Afghanistan there is no there there.

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President Barack Obama’s commitment to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending 55,000 US troops to that country (counting the 21,000 he dispatched last winter shortly after being inaugurated) depends heavily on a hope of building up an Afghan government and army over to which the US can eventually turn control. But one of the questions we seldom hear any detail about concerns the country’s governmental capacity. Does the government function? Can it deliver services?

As might be expected, governmental capacity is low, but here are some specifics. Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. There are grave suspicions that some past and present cabinet members have engaged in the embezzlement of substantial sums of money. There is little parliamentary oversight. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms last year than they did in the previous two years. Only half of the development projects for which money was allotted were even begun last year, and none was completed.
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Committing more resources to fight to support a totally corrupt government in Afghanistan is pure madness. It will surely lead to Obama being a one term President. President Obama you need to get out of the airless Washington environment and rethink Afghanistan. All our involvement there is accomplishing is to make a few corrupt politicians and warloards filthy rich. All at the expense of the drowning US taxpayer.

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As a US Vietnam veteran I saw for myself how careless the American military machine was in “protecting” the people we were supposed to be helping. No one knows for sure how many Vietnamese we dispatched to an early grave but it was probably between 2,000,000 to 3,000,000, the vast majority of them civilians. The tonnage of bombs that we dropped on that small Asian nation was more than all of the bombs dropped in World War Two.

The justification for the massive cost of the war in blood and treasure was based upon the absurd assertion that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. What complete nonsense. Pure BS is a better description and all but the most rabid of the troops who served in Vietnam for more than a month or two knew it.

The Vietnamese were first of all dedicated nationalists fighting a war to reunite the two Vietnams that emerged by decree of the allies after World War Two while the US mistook the war effort by the VC to be the first step in expanding communism across SE Asia. This misreading by US leadership as to the intentions of the Viet Cong cost the US and the Vietnamese people dearly. One clear fact is that in both Vietnam and Afghanistan the US threw its support to corrupt and inefficient governments while losing the support of the general population.

It seems that US “leaders” have learned nothing from the Vietnam experience. In Afghanistan Obama is making the same sort of claims that were made so many years ago by Johnson and Nixon about the critical nature of the Vietnam War to American security. Obama is saying that a rag tag group of probably no more than 20,000 Taliban fighters, who want foreign troops out of their country and the right to install their form of government in their own country, are a grave threat to the security of the US. The Taliban, while certainly fanatics with a style of governing that is harsh, are a local organization, not an international terrorist group.

The Bush position, now adopted and promoted by President Obama, that if the Taliban win they will give al Queda secure bases in Afghanistan from which to plot further attacks upon the US just doesn’t make sense. If we are so concerned about al Queda bases why don’t we take on al Queda in Somalia or Yemen? No matter what Dick Cheney may say the Taliban are not al Queda; in fact the Taliban considers al Queda fighters as unwanted foreigners much as they look upon US troops as unwanted foreigners. Today Al Queda is no more welcome in Afghanistan than American and NATO forces and have almost no presence in the country.

As with Vietnam the frequent use of air power by the America military and the resulting “collateral” damage to civilians is one reason that Americans are far less welcome in Afghanistan than they were eight long years ago. While the military has promised to be “more careful” in calling in air strikes the occasional bombing of peasant villages, wedding parties, and funeral processions along with the initial denials of such acts by the military until evidence of the destruction pours in, only gives strength to the Taliban. Afghanistan is really a war that American can not win. President Obama is a smart guy and deep down must know that. Or judging from his actions maybe not.

I’m very disappointed in President Obama for adopting the same mantle of hubris, arrogance, and fuzzy thinking that has kept the US mired in one war after another since World War Two. By escalating the Afghanistan War into the Af-Pak theater Obama stands a very good chance of reaping a completely unmanageable set of unintended consequences that will hasten America’s fall from status as a first rate world power.

Sadly, the refusal to admit mistakes seems to be a requirement to become President of the United States. Presidents seem to be so fearful of “losing” any war on their watch that they are willing to continue on and escalate a path of destruction even when they know the probability of a favorable outcome is poor to none.

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