This Week: Afghanistan

"Quote" of the Week

New Decider, Same Decisions

U.S. Goals in Afghanistan, Inside the Propaganda System and Out

 

Greetings,

Nygaard Notes with this issue retires the phrase "War Against Terror (the WAT?!). I always found it amusing to follow the ridiculous phrase with "The WAT?!" because it sounded like my own response the first time I heard the phrase "War on Terror." As I often do when I hear something that I can't believe I heard, I said to myself, "The WHAT?!" And the convenient fact that the acronym for the War Against Terror sounded like the incredulous response was too good to pass up.

But, just as the Obama administration has retired the phrase "War on Terror," now I retire my small attempt to emphasize the ridiculousness of the phrase (I'll now use the military's preferred acronym of GWOT, or Global War on Terror.) However, as I hope I make clear in this issue, the phrase may be gone, but what remains is a fantastically imbalanced global order that cannot be maintained without enormous violence. And thus U.S. planners will continue to find it useful to maintain the phantasm of something called "terror" against which we can have a "war" (by whatever name) which will in turn be used as a justification for maintaining our immense war machine at evermore immense levels.

This issue is all about Afghanistan, but future issues of the Notes will talk about how deeply this nation is committed to war in its various forms. Perhaps one of the blessings of the Obama administration is that a literate and articulate president may allow us to go beyond ridiculing the gaffes and absurd language to which we have become captive in the past eight years, and begin to focus on the nature of the ideology and institutions that make up the American Empire.

Maybe we can all tune in to a new TV show now. With George W. Bush many were content to see it as a sort of game show: "Laugh at the Gaffes." With Obama, my hope is that we can begin to watch a different show, one that involves a lot of audience participation. I think it's time to play Crimestoppers. May this issue of the Notes be Episode One.

Hopefully yours,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

It's a double issue this week, so there are TWO "Quotes" of the Week. The first one went almost unreported in this country, with a very few papers picking up the Associated Press story that ran over the wires on March 1st. Despite the Americocentric Headline—"2 Months into 2009, US Deaths Spike in Afghanistan"—I think the important news was in the second paragraph, which is this week's first "Quote" of the Week:

"As [U.S.] troops pour into the country and violence rises, [besides U.S. deaths] another sobering measure has also increased: More Afghan civilians are dying in U.S. and allied operations than at the hands of the Taliban, according to a count by The Associated Press. In the first two months of the year, U.S., NATO or Afghan forces have killed 100 civilians, while militants have killed 60."

What's that? The "Good Guys" are killing more innocents in Afghanistan than the "Bad Guys", by two-thirds? Seems like front-page news to me.

And here is "Quote" of the Week Number Two:

The Inter Press Service interviewed Pakistani historian, writer, and filmmaker Tariq Ali last September. The interviewer commented that "In Afghanistan, U.S.-led NATO forces are blaming the Taliban for an increase in violence." Ali's reply is this week's BONUS "Quote" of the Week:

"I do not believe that big powers occupying small countries can solve any problem, even with good intentions. The Soviet intervention
in Afghanistan created a mess which the Americans fully utilised. That is why the American intervention—Operation Freedom, as they
call it—always makes me laugh. It has been a disaster. They have set up a puppet regime. They have poured in money to sustain this puppet regime. You have large-scale corruption in the country. Recent figures given by the United Nations say that the drug trade is the worst
it's ever been in the south of the country, especially in Helmand, a province controlled by British troops. So what changed in Afghanistan? You have a thin layer of politicians implanted there by the West with no real base in the country. And then you have the old American
habit of shooting from the hip, dropping bombs from the air, indiscriminately killing people right, left and the centre. The result is
increased resistance. I don't like the Taliban, but if people in Afghanistan see the Taliban fighting the guys who are bombing and
killing, they get attracted—it's very simple."

New Decider, Same Decisions

In 2001 the United States was led by a man who described himself as The Decider. Perhaps his most fateful decision came in the wake of the September 11th terror attacks, when he decided to declare a Global War On Terror, or GWOT (as it's been known in military circles). This decision by The Decider had (at least) two major consequences, one most likely intended and the other likely not.

The first, intended, consequence was to place the U.S. back on a perpetual war footing at the fever pitch of the decades-long Cold War. The goal of apprehending and prosecuting as criminals the people who planned the 9/11 attacks appeared to have near-universal support around the globe in late 2001, but The Decider chose instead to frame the struggle as a "war" against an implacable enemy, and a never-ending one at that. Just like the Cold War.

I say "back" on a war footing not because the U.S. was ever really on any other footing, but because the intensity of the rhetoric of fear that accompanied the Cold War had declined a bit since the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. The myth of the Cold War had been used for forty years before that to justify building the most awesome and terrifying military machine in modern history, and once that "war" was over it got a little bit harder for U.S. planners to justify continuing on such a fiercely-militarized course. (I wrote a bit about the origins of our war-based economy in Nygaard Notes #165 "Fully Cognizant of the Threats").

Bush's 2001 declaration of war served to elevate the 9/11 perpetrators from universally-condemned criminals to feared military adversaries. Thus the second consequence of the choice to declare a GWOT was to legitimize and strengthen not only Al Qaeda, but anyone who looks or sounds like them. By declaring them to be adversaries instead of fugitives, the U.S. bestowed a touch of legitimacy to the cause, allowing the 9/11 planners and sympathizers to paint themselves as David to the U.S. Goliath, which makes recruiting easier than is would otherwise be. In a battle between David and Goliath, many will be drawn to support David, especially when Goliath is widely seen to be a bully, and a greedy and corrupt bully at that. In the eyes of many around the world, the U.S. has long been seen as just this sort of greedy and corrupt Goliath.

As one illustration of the unintended consequences of our GWOT, the Associated Press reported in January that Afghan President Hamid Karzai "said the killing of innocent Afghans during U.S. military operations ‘is strengthening the terrorists.'"

The Name Changes, the GWOT Continues

"Obama Brings Swift End to Bush Era's War on Terror" was the headline in my local paper, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, three days after Obama's inauguration. Under that headline, the Star Trib reported that "Mr. Obama signed executive orders closing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year; ending the Central Intelligence Agency's secret prisons; and requiring all interrogations to follow the noncoercive methods of the Army Field Manual."

And just last week the Associated Press headline read "Clinton: New Team Not Using 'War on Terror' Term," in which it reported that Hilary Clinton "told reporters [on March 31st] that the Obama administration has quit using that line to describe the effort to fight terrorism around the world."

No more "War on Terror" in either word or deed? Well....hold on a second!

In his major address on Afghanistan on March 27th, President Obama said that the goal in Afghanistan was to "defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan," which is "a cause that could not be more just." Added the President, "to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you."

In addition to extralegal detention camps, secret prisons, and torture, one hallmark of the GWOT has been the wanton killing of innocents in countries far removed from the U.S. "homeland." Besides being morally wrong to kill innocent people, such killing is widely understood to be counterproductive if the real goal is to "defeat al Qaeda," as the Afghan President's comment above makes clear.

Yet, on January 23rd, the same day that the local paper announced that Obama had ended the GWOT, the Associated Press reported that "Suspected U.S. missiles killed 18 people on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border... At least five foreign militants were among those killed in the strikes by unmanned aircraft in two parts of the frontier region, an intelligence official said without naming them. There was no information on the identities of the others."

No information on the nameless "others." There never is.

Although the Associated Press report on the first Obama-ordered killings in Pakistan never mentioned The Erstwhile Decider, the foreign press was less hesitant. The London Times online edition, for instance, reporting on the same January 23rd U.S. strike, called it "a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed." The other Times, the one in New York, made much the same point in an April 3rd article on the Obama administration, headlined, "The Words Change, if Not the Policies." Said the NY Times, "Mr. Obama has come into office determined to sweep all [the War on Terror] rhetoric away, even if he is keeping much of the policy that underlies it. . . Indeed, for all the shifting words, Mr. Obama has left the bulk of Mr. Bush's national security architecture intact so far."

It appears that, while we have elected a new Decider, we are getting many of the old decisions.

Europe and the GWOT

Not only has the militarized Bush approach to "terror" not changed under Obama, but the rationale—that the only way to keep the world safe is a "war" in South Asia—has not changed either. Recall what George Bush said on October 7th, 2001, when he announced that the U.S. had begun its attack on Afghanistan: We did not ask for this mission." Now, in his March 27th speech on Afghanistan President Obama says much the same thing: "The United States of America did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan." Lost in the mists of time is the Taliban's offer to negotiate the extradition of Osama Bin Laden. Such an offer—first reported on October 2nd, 2001, less than a week before the U.S. attacked Afghanistan—could have prevented war, but was rejected out of hand by the Bush administration.

Whatever Obama meant by saying that "America did not choose to fight a war," it certainly sounds like an acceptance of the legitimacy of Bush's military response to the attacks of September 11th. And thus Obama undertook his first trip to Europe this week, only to encounter a near-universal reluctance on the part of NATO allies to commit troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

While this reluctance has been widely reported in the U.S., rarely is the reason for the reluctance reported. So let's go abroad, to the Straits Times of Singapore, for part of the answer to that question. They said, on March 29, "The Europeans have been reluctant to accept the US view—held by Mr Obama and former president George W. Bush—that Al-Qaeda is a threat to the existence of democratic societies."

The European reluctance to support the war effort is entirely predictable, and in fact has been present from the beginning. Here I would like to remind readers of the Gallup poll of 37 countries taken at the end of September 2001, just days before the U.S. launched its attack on Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks. This survey—reported in Nygaard Notes at the time, and literally nowhere else in the United States, to my knowledge—asked people around the world a simple question: "In your opinion, once the identity of the [9/11] terrorists is known, should the American government launch a military attack on the country or countries where the terrorists are based or should the American government seek to extradite the terrorists to stand trial?" An overwhelming majority of the world's citizens chose extradition over war—on the order of 70 to 90 percent in most countries—including 23 countries in Europe.

Obama's failure to reject the Bush military approach in Afghanistan—"We will defeat you," says the New Decider—is wrong on so many levels that it makes one wonder what the real goals are in that operation. And that is the subject to which we now turn.

U.S. Goals in Afghanistan, Inside the Propaganda System and Out

The New York Times reported on April 3rd that "Mr. Obama and his team are busily scrubbing former President George W. Bush's national security lexicon, if not necessarily all of his policies." And we see this scrubbing applied to Afghanistan, as well; the rhetoric is somewhat different, but the substance seems depressingly familiar.

On March 27th Mr. Obama announced that "We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future." But then he said that, in order "to succeed" in that country, "we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban's gains, and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government." Well, that sounds a little bit like dictating its future, but we'll leave that alone for the moment. Let's look at that word "accountable."

The question is, accountable to whom? In addition to the "accountable government" goal, Obama clearly laid out a second goal, "a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future."

The first goal is "success" in building an "accountable" government, sometimes called "nation-building." The second goal, which the Obama administration is emphasizing over the first, is self-defense against the imminent threat of al Qaeda.

Defeating al Qaeda in the interests of defending the U.S. and Europe may be the U.S. goal, although I doubt it for reasons I'll get to in a moment. But for now let's say it is. Then let's consider a poll of the Afghan people done by the Gallup organization a couple of months ago. Gallup's report, released on February 27th, stated "While stabilizing the security situation may be the primary objective of the Obama administration, Afghans are more focused on the economy." And, sure enough, when asked "What is the single most important problem your family faces?", 41 percent of Afghans said "Bad economy," 16 percent said "Unemployment," and only 12 percent said "Security." Yet "security" appears to be the top goal of the U.S./NATO occupation forces. And while Mr. Obama promises "a dramatic increase in our civilian effort" in Afghanistan, the dollar amounts have not yet been announced.

We do know something about the military costs. The Washington Post reported (March 27) that "President Obama's new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy will require significantly higher levels of U.S. funding for both countries, with U.S. military expenses in Afghanistan alone, currently about $2 billion a month, increasing by about 60 percent this year." And that's only the spending that is reported, and doesn't include the "covert" and "secret" operations that also cost plenty. The announced military costs alone thus come to a little over $38 billion per year.

Obama did give some figures for development aid to Pakistan in his March 27th speech. He spoke of "$1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years." If this amount is generally reflective of the relative importance of military vs "civilian" operations, then it is telling that the reported military spending, in Afghanistan alone, comes to about 25 times the budget for "direct support to the Pakistani people." When Obama does announce his budget for Afghanistan operations I think it's safe to predict that it will also be heavy on the U.S. priorities and low on the Afghan priorities. (I'll try to report on this when the numbers are announced.)

Building a Nation? Or Building an Empire?

As I said earlier, the Obama administration is talking about shifting from the creation of an "accountable" government in Afghanistan—sometimes called "nation-building"—to a narrower goal of self-defense. The media constantly underlines this propaganda point. In a March 23rd story on Afghanistan, for example, the New York Times contrasted Obama's Afghanistan plans with "the Bush administration's more broad strategy of promoting democracy, civil society and governance..." On March 26th the McClatchy papers reported on the Obama plan of "Shifting U.S. objectives in Afghanistan away from the Bush administration's promise to build a Western-style democracy..." Hilary Clinton was cited in the NY Times on March 31st as saying that "the United States would present a pragmatic strategy built on defeating Al Qaeda rather than trying to transform Afghanistan into a Western-style democracy." In regard to Iraq and Afghanistan, said the Times in yet another article, "President Bush spoke of lofty goals that included building nations that could stand as models of democracy in the Muslim world."

Yet, just days earlier (on March 19th) the NY Times published this little-noticed tidbit on page 8: "President Obama and his advisers have decided to significantly expand Afghanistan's security forces in the hope that a much larger professional army and national police force could fill a void left by the central government and do more to promote stability in the country, according to senior administration and Pentagon officials." The level upon which they have "decided" was reported to be "about 400,000 troops and national police officers, more than twice the forces' current size, and more than three times the size that American officials believed would be adequate for Afghanistan in 2002..."

Nowhere in the article—nor in any article I have seen on the subject—is there any mention of any Afghan people being involved in the decision about the size of the Afghan security force. This is but one tell-tale sign of the nature of the actual U.S. operation in Afghanistan, and it's never been nation-building. It has always been Empire building.

One definition of colonialism is the "exploitation by a stronger country of a weaker one; the use of the weaker country's resources to strengthen and enrich the stronger country." Fundamental to the nature of an Empire is that it maintains a colonial relationship to the weaker countries that fall within the Empire. In such a situation, decisions are made in service to the interests of the imperial power, not the subject population. And this is what we see in Afghanistan, where important decisions are being made by a U.S. occupation force that "ignores the social realities of the Afghan state," as Pakistani historian and activist Tariq Ali put it in a recent interview.

This pattern of ignoring the realities of the Afghan state—and its people—explains how a U.S.-only decision about the size of the Afghan security forces could be reported without comment in the U.S. media. The reporters and editors responsible for reporting the Obama decision, as well as most of their readers, I suspect, find nothing remarkable about the U.S. making basic decisions about another country's internal policies.

It's almost impossible to stretch one's mind so far, but let's try to imagine the reverse: Imagine that another country has occupied the United States and has announced that it has decided how many members there should be in the U.S. security forces. One cannot even get outraged about the idea because it's so laughable. Yet it's not only believable, but unremarkable when the situation is viewed from the imperial perspective. Well, after all, Ms. Clinton did say that the U.S. was not trying to "transform Afghanistan into a Western-style democracy." She didn't say anything about a Western-style colony.

Newsweek told its readers in a February 9 cover story that "Afghanistan has always been seen as the right and necessary war to fight." And that, we are told, is because it is all about preventing terrorism and "promoting democracy." In fact, within the U.S. propaganda system, the big difference between the goals of Mr. Bush and the goals of Mr. Obama in Afghanistan are that Obama's goals of "defeat[ing] al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan" are more "modest" and "narrow" than the "more broad strategy" of democracy promotion pursued by Mr. Bush.

If you believe that, I have a large bridge in San Francisco that I'd like to sell you.

If It Looks Like a Empire and Acts Like an Empire...

There are other ways to understand U.S. goals in Afghanistan. I don't pretend to know what the "real" goals are, and I imagine that they shift and change and are debated within the halls of U.S. power. So I'll just list a few possibilities that I imagine may be animating the discussions in Washington DC.

PSYCHOLOGICAL: Tariq Ali mentions revenge as a motive for the 2001 U.S. attack on Afghanistan. The rage in the U.S. after 9/11 was so great that "something had to be done."

DOMESTIC POLITICS: Seven years into the quagmire, perhaps revenge has been partly replaced by fear. Judging by his statements in Europe last week, Obama either believes, or wants others to believe, that he is doing something to protect the world from "the terrorists who threaten all of us."

GEOPOLITICAL: Ali also mentioned, in a recent presentation at Harvard, a comment by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer that "Western armies' ongoing role in the region is meant to ‘contain China'". Since Afghanistan is near the center of an oil-rich and strategically important region, other major powers who might want some of the same things that U.S. leaders want also may need to be "contained." India, for instance, or Russia, or even neighboring Iran. Asia Times reported in 2005 that "The United States is beefing up its military presence in Afghanistan, at the same time encircling Iran. Washington will set up nine new bases in Afghanistan in the provinces of Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia." Writer and former humanitarian aid worker Ann Jones wrote in January of this year that "Most Afghans now believe that. . . the Bush administration's real goal [was] to set up permanent bases in Afghanistan and occupy the country forever." Are they right? I don't know, but it would be nice to see the possibility discussed in the U.S. media and elsewhere.

STRATEGIC ALLIANCES: NATO is the issue here. As the London Economist put it in December of 2007, "Defeat [in Afghanistan] would be a body blow . . . to the NATO alliance..." Justifying the existence of NATO and extending its reach requires a perpetual, terrifying enemy to replace the Soviet threat that supplied the original justification for the Alliance.

On March 27th, President Obama said: "We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan..." This is typical of White House attempts to frame the war in Afghanistan as a defensive war. And the Associated Press, in an April 5th story, reinforced that idea, complaining that "the Europeans have also long been reluctant to accept the U.S. view that al-Qaida and, to a lesser extent, the Taliban, remain a threat to the existence of democratic societies."

Although he was writing almost a year earlier, the following words from Tariq Ali seem almost like a brief but elegant response such propaganda. Mr. Ali's states it succinctly:

"To portray the invasion [of Afghanistan] as a ‘war of self-defence' for NATO makes a mockery of international law, which was perverted to twist a flukishly successful attack by a tiny, terrorist Arab groupuscule into an excuse for an open-ended American military thrust into the Middle East and Central Eurasia."

The good news here is that our leaders appear to believe that most of us will not support such a military thrust in the service of Empire-building. That's why they need to frame it as a war of self-defense. The job of activists and peace-makers is to convince large numbers of people that real security in the United States will come not from superior military force, but from a reorientation away from building Empire and toward building a system of international cooperation that exists to serve justice.