Oppose Obama ’s escalation of the Afgh an-Pakistan war! Withdraw all troops now!

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Oppose Obama’s escalation of the Afghan-Pakistan war! Withdraw all
troops now!
2 December 2009

Obama’s speech last night, which packaged the deployment of an
additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan as the prelude to
withdrawal, was a cynical exercise in evasion, double-talk and
falsification.

The new deployment is a major escalation of an unpopular war that will
lead to the deaths of countless thousands of Afghanis and Pakistanis
and a significant rise in US casualties. Indeed, many of the West
Point cadets who were assembled to listen to the president’s speech
will be sent to Afghanistan to fight in a war that the majority of
Americans oppose.

Obama’s invocation of the attacks of September 11, 2001 to portray the
war as a defense against terrorism is a fraud. The real reason for the
occupation of Afghanistan—widely discussed within the foreign policy
establishment—is to maintain a dominant position in oil-rich Central
Asia in the interests of the global strategy of American imperialism.

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, which then-president Jimmy Carter denounced as an illegal
act of international aggression. What was not widely known at the time
is that the US deliberately provoked Moscow to undertake its military
adventure by financing and arming Mujahedeen guerrillas opposed to the
pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. Among those on the CIA payroll were Osama
bin Laden and current leaders of the Taliban.

The result of this imperialist policy, authored by then-national
security adviser and current foreign policy adviser to Obama, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, has been three decades of war, civil war and social
devastation. The Obama administration is intensifying this colonialist
enterprise.

No credibility can be given to Obama’s talk of beginning the
withdrawal of troops in July of 2011. This supposed timeline was
hedged by references to “conditions on the ground.” Moreover, it was
followed by statements to the effect that the war in Afghanistan is
only one of many military interventions to come.

“The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,”
Obama said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Calling this struggle an “enduring test,” Obama went on to speak of
“disorderly regions and diffuse enemies,” mentioning by name Somalia
and Yemen.

In reality, the US colonial enterprise in Central Asia is open-ended.
The Washington Post on Monday cited a US official as saying, “Our game
is to convince them [the Pakistani military] that our commitment to
Afghanistan and the region is long-term. We’re not going to pack up
our bags and leave them as soon as we’re done.”

Far from Obama’s escalation hastening an end to the war, it creates
the conditions for new and even greater military conflagrations. The
injection of additional troops will further inflame tensions in the
region and beyond—between Pakistan and India, India and China, Iran
and the US, Russia and China and the US.

Perhaps the biggest lie is the claim that the war is being waged to
protect the Afghan people. They overwhelmingly oppose the US-led
foreign occupation.

Obama’s decision means that 2010 will be a year of increased death and
destruction in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. A central focus of the
new US deployment is to “lock down” Kandahar, a center of insurgent
opposition to the US-NATO occupation. This can only mean a drive to
terrorize the local population and kill as many insurgents and
ordinary Afghans suspected of sympathizing with the resistance as
possible.

At the same time, the US is threatening to launch ground operations on
Pakistani soil, in addition to the drone missile attacks that are
killing hundreds of Pakistani civilians. The Washington Post,
reporting Monday on the recent visit to Islamabad by Obama’s national
security adviser, retired Marine General James L. Jones, cited an
American official as saying, “If Pakistan cannot deliver, he [Jones]
warned, the United States may be impelled to use any means at its
disposal to rout insurgents based along Pakistan’s western and
southern borders with Afghanistan.”

The cost to the peoples of Central Asia is incalculable. The American
people are to pay for the war policy of the US ruling elite with the
loss of thousands more lives, the squandering of trillions in
resources, unprecedented attacks on social services, and the further
erosion of democratic rights.

The most glaring contradiction in a speech shot through with
contradictions was Obama’s attempt to disentangle the war in
Afghanistan from the war in Iraq. “I opposed the war in Iraq,” he
said, “precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in
the use of military force …” But he was unable to establish any
essential difference between that criminal enterprise and his war in
Afghanistan.

Obama’s escalation is yet another flagrant violation of the will of
the American people. In one election after another, they have gone to
the polls to express their hostility to the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. In every case, their will has been ignored and the wars
have been expanded.

Obama won the presidency by running as an opponent of the Iraq war and
appealing to popular opposition to militarism. Once in office, he
quickly increased the US deployment in Afghanistan by 21,000, while
reneging on his promise to carry out a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. Now
he is increasing the total US troop level in Afghanistan to 100,000,
more than double the level under Bush.

As with his pro-Wall Street economic policy and his assault on
democratic rights, Obama, in his military and foreign policy, is
continuing and deepening the reactionary program of Bush. The decision
to expand the war in Central Asia is a devastating exposure of the
entire US political system. Both parties and Congress are instruments
of a ruling financial aristocracy, whose interests they defend in
opposition to the needs and views of the working class, the vast
majority of the population.

Of immense significance is the international line-up of imperialist
powers behind the US-led war. The participation of Britain, Germany,
France and other powers in the war constitutes an international
onslaught aimed at subordinating the entire region to imperialist
interests. Every one of these governments is acting in defiance of the
antiwar sentiments of its population.

This underscores that the fight against war requires an international
struggle of the working class against world imperialism and the
capitalist system, which is the root cause of war.

In the United States, the fight against war can be waged only as a
struggle against the Obama administration, the two-party system and
the American financial oligarchy. It must be based on a socialist and
internationalist program, and the building of a new leadership in the
working class to fuse the fight against war, unemployment, poverty and
attacks on democratic rights into an independent political struggle
for a workers’ government.

This is the program of the Socialist Equality Party and the
International Committee of the Fourth International. All those who are
opposed to imperialist war should make the decision to join and build
the SEP as the new revolutionary leadership of the working class.

World Socialist Web Site editorial board

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d02.shtml

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********