Does the Military Have a New Goal of Hanging Afghanistan Failure on Obama?
On Monday, I could only reply with the Twitter equivalent of uncontrolled laughter when Robert Caruso tweeted a quote from Stanley McChrystal, who was appearing on Morning Joe to hype the paperback release of his book. Responding to a question from Al Sharpton, McChrystal said, in Caruso’s transcription, “the military doesn’t have goals…we follow the policy of the nation”.
Of course, as Michael Hastings so exquisitely documented, McChrystal and his band of merry operators had as their primary goal the advancement of their own careers while also promoting the concept of forever war. And as Gareth Porter points out, David (ass-kissing little chickenshit) Petraeus gamed Obama on the end date for the surge in Afghanistan, significantly extending the time of maximum troop presence (and maximum fund flow to contractors). It is equally important not to forget the Pentagon operation that places “analysts” with television news operations, somehow always finding analysts whose views align with Pentagon goals of forever war (and more purchases from the defense contractors who employ these same analysts when they go to the other side of the revolving door). Yes, Eisenhower foresaw all of this and yet we ignored his warning in 1961.
But somehow last night’s headline from the Wall Street Journal seems on first blush to run counter to the concept of forever war. We are now told that the military’s latest plan for a troop presence in Afghanistan beyond the end of this year (pending a signed BSA, which is certainly not a given) would be only 10,000 troops (a significant reduction from previous ideas that have been floated) and that these troops would be drawn down to essentially zero in another two years, ending precisely with Obama’s term in office. The Journal offered this by way of explanation:
The request reflects a far shorter time frame for a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan than commanders had previously envisaged after the current international mission ends this year. The new approach is intended to buy the U.S. military time to advise and train the Afghan army but still allow Mr. Obama to leave office saying he ended America’s longest war, the officials said.
So the military is pitching this latest plan as being an opportunity for Obama to claim “success” in ending the war. But we all know that the effort in Afghanistan has been an abject failure that has achieved absolutely nothing beyond killing a huge number of Afghans along with far too many coalition troops while squandering an obscene amount of US money. Instead, this looks to me more like the military moving to try to hang its failure on Obama by not extending the quagmire into yet another presidential administration. And that view seems to me to be reinforced by the military’s framing of Obama’s options:
Military leaders told Mr. Obama that if he rejects the 10,000-troop option, then it would be best to withdraw nearly all military personnel at the end of this year because a smaller troop presence wouldn’t offer adequate protection to U.S. personnel, said officials involved in the discussions.
The military wants this debacle to end during Obama’s term no matter what, and you can bet that is because their goal is to blame him for their failure.
But lest we raise our hopes that sanity has finally broken out within the walls of the Pentagon and that the generals finally have learned to hate war, we have this gem from Reuters:
Afghanistan’s government, increasingly at odds with Washington, is cracking down on advertisements that promote keeping U.S. troops in the country after 2014 and has already shut down a spot aired by the country’s most widely watched broadcasters.
The commercials – some funded by a U.S. organization – have drawn official criticism because they urge President Hamid Karzai to abandon his refusal to sign a security pact with the United States that would enable the troops to stay.
And just what US “organization” has been funding the commercials that seek to prolong the US military’s presence in Afghanistan? Why, that would be the US military itself:
Broadcasters were aware the spots were funded by ISAF or related groups, but saw “public service” advertising as a source of revenue.
Afghanistan’s most popular channel, Tolo TV, said the spots were provided by a company called Ads Village, whose officials acknowledge the funds came from ISAF or U.S. state aid agency USAID.
But ISAF insists this is all just for educational purposes:
The ISAF declined to indicate how much it spends on advertising, saying: “Public information released… is intended to inform and educate the public on the mission and operations of ISAF and our Afghan National Security Forces partners.”
The Pentagon is just so addicted to propaganda that it will pay for anything that promotes more fighting and more purchasing of war equipment. But they will consider at least a brief pause and/or change of venue in order to try to pin one of its worst failures on the president it has spent years trying to manipulate. Everywhere else, though, expect full speed ahead from our forever war fanboys.
Excellent, Jim, right on, and worthy of your inducting into the Smedley Butler Hall of Fame (if there was one).
I guess they are looking for someone to pin the loss of a war on. But I just don’t see a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, though that’s obviously what’s best.
Whatever has kept us there this long probably hasn’t changed. I think we’re looking at another situation where a government won’t give our troops immunity. And I don’t see how the money is going to stop flowing, so my wild assed guess is that there’s a new, even more privatized long term plan. Pull out the troops, yes, but replace them with all mercenaries and some JSOC.
I just don’t see the war machine walking away from Afghanistan. But I hope they do. The best way for that to happen would be for Congress to turn off the spigot. Hell, maybe that’s what is happening. If so, great. Five years too late but great.
What I’m waiting for is 24/7 big argument: ‘Look what happened to Iraq when you didn’t give us immunity and we withdrew all our troops.’
Still, it looks like Karzai has had it. But does he have enough support? Afghanistan is addicted to the billions that flow into it, as is the war machine. Then again, maybe they’ve been told they’ll keep getting the dollars but in new locations.
Let’s leave some troops in Parwan province.
Parwan, also spelled Parvan, is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 631,600, which is multi-ethnic and mostly a rural society. Charikar serves as the provincial capital.
–It is just north of Kabul.
— Bagram Air Base, which is one of the largest U.S.-military bases in Afghanistan, is located in Parwan 55 km north of Kabul.
–US troops are needed there.
But on the other hand maybe not…
McChrystal, Petraeus, and company are the worst generals since George Armstrong Custer and William Westmoreland–and for precisely the same reasons.
Of course, the military want to blame anything and everything except for the fact that empires can do genocide but they can’t do coinsurgency short of genocide. And the American people, craven as we are, are not quite up to full-scale, open, in-your-face genocide quite yet. After the national security state gets full autonomy in the double government, but that sort of openness has not yet happened although Congress is beginning to act like the Roman Imperial Senate.
The generals use “troops” as tools of their own advancement, trying to synchronize with politicians who keep funding wars to ‘support the troops” and really to financially support their own political campaigns.
But “troops” actually have feelings, some of them negative. So the suicide rate of active troops is double the US national average, and of veterans is is EIGHT TIMES the national average.
Each President has had an almost equal amount of time in Afghanistan. They both get equal blame. Idiot 1 decided to stay, Idiot 2 maintained the staus quo.
More and more this reminds me of Vietnam and the Civil War.
By the end of Vietnam, ended by Nixon who was elected as the peace candidate (no that isn’t a joke), even the military was eager to leave. Then within a decade or so it became all about how “we could have won” but the politicians stopped us. These days people will with all seriousness even claim that it was a Democrat who ended the war even as the military was ready for victory.
With the Civil war the historian Shelby Foote noted that shortly after the loss stories started appearing in the south about the failures of Jefferson Davis including the famous legend that he surrendered while wearing women’s clothes. The point, Foote notes, was that these legends were not being started by northerners or about the generals. Southerners refused to believe that the generals lost the war it had to be the politicans fault.
This feels like more of the same.
The military leaders who want Mr O blamed for ‘losing Afghanistan’ should face the facts: they’re the ones who have been giving him advice on how to run that war, and it’s been bad advice. It comes back to them, every time.
@P J Evans: And I don’t think that generally people blame war losses on politicians.
As long as the careerist, the senior leadership get paid for this strategic failure, it’s all good.
Ah, yes, the old “stab in the back” excuse offered up by every defeated and discredited imperial military in the history of the human race. As far as concerns the post-WWII U.S. military, just pick an impoverished foreign country that never attacked America, then invade, then occupy, then retreat, then studiously refuse to ask:
“Who killed Davey Moore?
Why? And what’s the reason for?” — Bob Dylan
Instead ostentatiously demand to know who — other than the perpetrators — to blame:
Does the United States corporate/military/political class really think they can stage yet another performance of this bogus kabuki theater farce?
I think Eisenhower was prompted to make that speech because he had been exposed over the years to people like the Dulles boys, Skull and Bones manipulators W. Averill Harriman, Prescott Bush and his CIA agent son, George, and Richard Nixon and his criminal entourage. The stench emitting from those huge loads of excrement had to give Ike reasons to worry about the future of the country.
To Mr. Bacon:
Gen. Butler was talking about those who viewed soldiers as nothing more than pawns…”That’s what they are their for!”
War is the failure of diplomacy.
I am amused that the POTUS is excused for any executive failings. Foreign policy is supposed to be the presidency’s strongest suit and this administration is doing its damned best not to wear it.
Merely obliging that the ‘men in the arena’ do what they are paid to do…die.
To C: It is more akin to the end of the Mexican-American War…We all know what conflict was next.
I had so many friends who thought it was really going to be different this time…How sad, terribly sad.
from Smedley Butler’s ‘War Is A Racket’ (1935):
It’s worse now. The suicide rate of veterans is eight times the US national average.
Dead Metaphors
We serve as a symbol to shield those who screw us
The clueless, crass cretins who crap on our creed
We perform the foul deeds they can only do through us
Then lay ourselves down in the dark while we bleed
Through cheap Sunday slogans they sought to imbue us
With lust for limp legacy laughably lean
Yet the Pyrrhic parade only served to undo us
We die now for duty, not “honor” obscene
We carried out plans that the lunatics drew us
Their oil-spotted, fly paper, domino dream
Then we fought for the leftover bones that they threw us
While carpetbag contractors cleaned up the cream
We stood at attention so they could review us
Like bugs on display in a cage made of glass
We hurried, then waited, so they could subdue us
Yet somewhere inside something said: “kiss my ass.”
We did the George Custer scene Rumsfeld gave to us
We took ourselves targets to arrows and bows
While the brass punched their tickets, the Indians slew us
A “strategy” ranking with History’s lows
When veterans balked they contrived to pooh-pooh us
With sneers at our “syndrome” of Vietnam sick
When that didn’t work they set out to voodoo us
With sewer boat slanderers paid to be slick
The wad-shooting gambler comes once more to woo us
His PR team planning precise photo ops
For to sell his used war he’ll have need to construe us
As witless weak wallpaper campaign-ad props
The nuts and the dolts in their suits really blew us
They made our life’s meaning a dead metaphor
Still, no matter how Furies and Fate may pursue us
The Fig Leaf Contingent has been here before
The years pass in darkness and graveyards accrue us
As early returns on investments gone wrong
So the next time “supporters” of troops ballyhoo us
Remember to vomit in tune to this song.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2005
“Charles Oman, in his classic study of war, spoke of the veterans of the battles of the Middle Ages as ‘the best of soldiers while the war lasted … [but] a most dangerous and unruly race in times of truce or peace.'”– Robert Jay Lifton, Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans, neither victims nor executioners
The abused veteran of a meaningless war either takes out his rage and shame on himself, or he joins the police force and takes it out on the civilians who sent him away without giving a second’s thought to what might come back from years spent abusing hapless foreigners.
The human brain, they have recently determined, doesn’t fully mature until about age thirty, depending of course upon the nature and extent of personal experiences. So the military machine works on teenagers and twenty-somethings to influence them toward state goals. They are quite successful at it, until the realization comes, with maturity, that they’ve been used. Used up, in fact. We see the results on many street-corners, the ones still alive.
But hey, let’s keep 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. How much harm can it do?