Op-Ed: Afghanistan troop surge shows president’s propensity for war

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While President Barack Obama’s recent announcement that he will send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to escalate the conflict comes as little surprise to most Americans — Obama campaigned on promises to continue Bush’s Afghanistan war — it is nonetheless deeply troubling.

Only a year into his term, the “hope” and “change” president is already offering us more misguided war for empire, while Americans at home struggle to secure jobs and savings in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Between U.S. involvement in Iraq — a war which is far from over — and now the renewed commitment in Afghanistan, America’s imperial projects appear to be on the brink of collapse. Afghanistan, many speculate, could prove the overzealous reach that seals the deal.

I fear Obama is gravely mistaken if he believes U.S. forces can secure lasting peace in Afghanistan. Indeed, the country is known as the “Graveyard of Empires” for good reason ­— just ask the British and the Soviets.

Former military analyst-turned-whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, in a recent interview with the Web-based Real News Network, compared the war in Afghanistan to that other nebulous, ill-conceived battlefield, Vietnam.

“No victory lies ahead in Afghanistan,” Ellsberg concedes. “American troops, short of hundreds of thousands, will not achieve anything that can be called success in Afghanistan.”

Andrew J. Bacevich makes similar connections to Vietnam in a recent essay in Harper’s Magazine. Bacevich writes: “Among Democrats and Republicans alike … Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed — much the way 50 years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. Today, as then, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.”

Yet, logistics aside, Obama’s troop surge carries with it a moral consideration. Military escalation in Afghanistan will likely only further inflame anti-American sentiment throughout the nation and the Middle East and act as a recruitment tool for future members of al-Qaeda. The nine-year-long war in Afghanistan has already claimed the lives of 916 U.S. soldiers, along with thousands of Afghan civilians. The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan recorded 1,013 overall Afghan civilian deaths from Jan. 1 to June 30.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, in a recent appearance on “Democracy Now,” summed up the situation when he claimed the Afghan people “do not want to be saved by us. They want to be saved from us.”

Kucinich went on to question where the Obama administration expects to obtain the money necessary to fund the continued fighting in Afghanistan. “We have money for Wall Street and money for war,” he pointed out to host Amy Goodman. “But we don’t have money for work, for health care. All these things are happening in our country and we’re acting like a modern day version of the Roman Empire, reaching for empire while inside we rot.” Indeed, Kucinich’s sentiments echo those of Dr. Martin Luther King, who proclaimed, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

No good will come of this decision. While I was often criticized by fellow liberals throughout the presidential campaign for suggesting Obama is just as militant as John McCain, Tuesday’s address seems to validate my claims. Obama may present himself as a kinder, gentler machine-gun president, but he is a machine-gun president nonetheless. And he can no longer foist the Afghanistan War back onto the Bush administration, claiming it to be another inherited disaster. Obama now owns the conflict. The question is what will those of us opposed to these wars of aggression do about them? Perhaps now, after months of inactivity, the long-dormant anti-war movement can once again rise up to demand real, progressive policies that support the people — not the divisive forces of war, greed and empire.

Adam Marletta is a graduate communication and journalism student who always has time for activism.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009, 1:31 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.