More troops for the “good war”?

AS THE U.S. war on Afghanistan begins its ninth year, Barack Obama--who won the votes of millions of people because he seemed to be the "peace candidate" in last year's election--is poised to further escalate the war.

The contrast between rhetoric and reality could not have been starker. Within days of the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama was discussing a drastic increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan. Press reports indicated that the administration was debating whether to add 40,000 U.S. troops to the 68,000 who are already in Afghanistan--but 80,000 more is the number that Gen. Stanley McChrystal is aiming for.

White House officials signaled that they may put off the decision until Afghanistan's election crisis is resolved. The United Nations commission that investigated the disputed August 20 elections threw out nearly one-third of ballots claimed by President Hamid Karzai as fraudulent. That pushed Karzai into a runoff against the second-place finisher, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah--though Karzai resisted this and only accepted a second election after a lot of diplomatic pressure.

The U.S. wanted Karzai to back down. Appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel stressed that the U.S. would need a "credible Afghan partner" before making a decision on a surge of troops.

The U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan is a disaster, and the Obama administration is scrambling for answers. But the debate in Washington has been relegated to how, not whether, to continue the war in Afghanistan. Any talk of a withdrawal is off the table.

From Dianne Feinstein to Joe Lieberman to Lindsay Graham, U.S. lawmakers all claim that if the U.S. withdraws, Afghanistan will be left to the Taliban to take over, and al-Qaeda and "jihadists" everywhere will gain a vital foothold.

As Obama told a crowd of military service members in August, "[W]e must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again."

Unlike Bush's war in Iraq--which Obama criticized on the campaign trail as a distraction from the "real" war on terrorism--Afghanistan is the war the U.S. must win, the argument goes. "We are here in Afghanistan because people attacked us [from] here in the most significant attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor," Sen. John Kerry--who has said that he opposes sending additional troops to Afghanistan--told CNN during a visit to Kabul. "We are here because there are still people at large who are plotting against the United States of America."

But the longer U.S. troops stay, the more unstable Afghanistan becomes, and the more the Taliban may look like an alternative to the victims of the U.S. war.

The U.S.'s grand promises of bringing liberation and democracy to Afghans were left behind long ago. Today, the population continues to live with dire poverty and the daily brutalities of war. The Defense Department's own report, released in January and titled "Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan," estimates unemployment rates in Afghanistan at 40 percent, with over 50 percent of the population living below the poverty line.

It's also worth pointing out that some of the old methods the Bush administration used to rationalize its invasion of Iraq--linking everything and everyone to potential terrorism against the U.S.--are being used by the Obama administration today.

For instance, Washington politicians claim that if U.S. troops were to leave, the Taliban would allow al-Qaeda back into Afghanistan. But this scenario is greatly overstated. Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, cites two former senior intelligence analysts who argue that the Taliban has much less cooperation with al-Qaeda than before the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.--because the Taliban blames its previous alliance with al-Qaeda for its ouster from power.

John McCreary, formerly a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote, "The premise that Afghanistan would become an al-Qaeda safe haven under any future government is alarmist and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the Pashtuns on this issue and a superficial knowledge of recent Afghan history."

RATHER THAN representing a significant break with the Bush administration's foreign policy aims, Obama's war in Afghanistan represents a continuation of past U.S. foreign policy. As Andrew Bacevich wrote in the Boston Globe on October 11:

If the president assents to McChrystal's request, he will void his promise of change, at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more American combat deaths--costs that the hawks are loath to acknowledge.

It is essential for opponents of U.S. wars to challenge the ongoing U.S. war in Afghanistan. Washington's occupation only makes it more difficult for the people of Afghanistan--and anywhere the U.S. decides to intervene--to rule their own countries.

As the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan said in a statement sent to international antiwar activists:

Afghan people and especially its women are still living in disastrous conditions under the occupation forces and its puppet regime which is full of many criminal warlords who have been responsible for war crimes and brutalities against Afghan people.

Afghan people know very well that the so-called war on terror is a hoax and a dirty game played by big powers led by the U.S. government. So they reject this occupation. We want liberation and democracy and an end to this occupation. We know no nation will liberate another nation; it is the obligation of our own people to fight for their liberation...

Please continue your antiwar efforts, and voice your opposition to the wrong policies of your government and stop Obama from sending more troops to Afghanistan because it will bring more sufferings and civilian deaths to our country.