Enduring Freedom

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

"
Our war in Afghanistan began almost 3,000 days ago, on October 7,
2001. Our war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than World War I, World
War II, the Civil War, the Korean War, the first Gulf War in Iraq and
the second Gulf War in Iraq. If we are still fighting in Afghanistan a
year from now, the war will have lasted longer than the American
Revolution. Children who were born on the day the war began are now
halfway through grammar school.

All the bad economic news and the turmoil in the financial and housing
markets have America looking inward these days. We rarely hear
anything about Iraq anymore, and even less about Afghanistan. For the
record, and to bring everyone up to speed, the following events have
taken place in Afghanistan during the last 72 hours.

Enduring Freedom

Friday 27 March 2009

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist
(http://www.truthout.org/032709J)

http://www.truthout.org/files/images/M1_032709J_story.jpg
A Pakistani girl from the Bajur tribal region in line for bread. (Photo: AP)

     In Afghanistan, this is the problem, because everybody holds a
piece of that mirror, and they all look at it and claim that they hold
the entire truth.

    - Mohsen Makhmalbaf

    There was the battle of Mazari Sharif, and the battle of
Qala-i-Jangi, and the battle of Tora Bora, and the massacre at
Dasht-i-Leili, and the Tamak Farm incident and the slaughter of a
wedding party in Uruzgan Province.

    There was the Damadola airstrike in Pakistan made by US forces,
and there was the Battle of Lashkagar, and the battle of Panjwaii and
the Shinwar massacre. There was the battle of Chora, and the Baghlan
sugar factory bombing and the battle of Musa Qala.

    There was the Kabul Serena Hotel attack, the Kandahar bombing, the
Gora Prai airstrike, the Sarposa Prison attack and the bombing of the
Indian embassy. There was the battle of Wanat, and the Uzbin Valley
ambush, and the Azizabad airstrike and the Angoor Ada raid into
Pakistan again.

    There was Operation Anaconda and there was Operation Red Wing.
There was Operation Mountain Thrust, and Operation Medusa and
Operation Mountain Fury. There was Operation Achilles and there was
Operation Eagle's Summit.

    All of this was, and remains, Operation Enduring Freedom. All of
this was, and remains, America's war in Afghanistan.

    Our war in Afghanistan began almost 3,000 days ago, on October 7,
2001. Our war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than World War I, World
War II, the Civil War, the Korean War, the first Gulf War in Iraq and
the second Gulf War in Iraq. If we are still fighting in Afghanistan a
year from now, the war will have lasted longer than the American
Revolution. Children who were born on the day the war began are now
halfway through grammar school.

    All the bad economic news and the turmoil in the financial and
housing markets have America looking inward these days. We rarely hear
anything about Iraq anymore, and even less about Afghanistan. For the
record, and to bring everyone up to speed, the following events have
taken place in Afghanistan during the last 72 hours.

    Taliban fighters killed nine police officers. Three Australian
soldiers were wounded. Pakistan's intelligence service was accused of
aiding and abetting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Two Afghani
farmers were killed by NATO troops. A bomb killed ten civilians in
eastern Afghanistan. A Canadian woman held captive by the Taliban was
made to plead for her life. Two separate bombings in southern
Afghanistan killed 11 people.

    All told, it's been a quiet week over there. That is about to change.

     President Obama will soon be announcing his administration's
plans for the future of our conflict in Afghanistan. Reportedly, this
announcement will include the deployment of 17,000 more US soldiers
Obama promised during the campaign, and will also reportedly include
the deployment of an additional 4,000 troops, as well. "President
Obama will deploy as many as 4,000 additional U.S. troops to
Afghanistan, beyond the 17,000 he authorized last month, as trainers
and advisers to the Afghan Army, according to a senior Pentagon
official who has seen the new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy Obama will
unveil Friday," wrote The Washington Post.

    "Since the United States invaded Iraq six years ago," reported the
Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, "its attention, effort, and
military know-how has tilted toward the Gulf. Perhaps as soon as
Friday, President Obama is expected to shift that focus, announcing a
new strategy for Afghanistan and the neighbor with which it is
entwined, Pakistan. Yet the challenges presented by Afghanistan are an
order of magnitude greater than they were in Iraq - involving a state
with virtually no rule of law, a government rife with opium-fueled
corruption, and an insurgency spanning two nations and entrenched in
some of the world's most inhospitable terrain."

    "President Barack Obama insisted on Sunday that military force
alone would not end the war in Afghanistan," reported Reuters on
Sunday, "and suggested a U.S. 'exit strategy' could be part of a new
comprehensive policy he is expected to unveil soon. Obama, in an
interview on CBS's '60 Minutes' program, previewed in broad terms his
administration's review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy based on
recommendations from senior U.S. officials and consultations with
allies."

    For the last seven years, the war in Afghanistan has been a
collective effort shared among the United States and several other
countries by way of NATO. That also appears to be changing soon.
"After years of often testy cooperation with NATO and resentment over
unequal burden-sharing," reported the Washington Post on Thursday,
"the United States is taking unabashed ownership of the Afghan war.
Even as the U.S. military expands its control over the battlefield,
the number of American civilian officials will also grow by at least
50 percent - to more than 900 - under the new Afghanistan-Pakistan
strategy Obama will announce as early as tomorrow, according to
administration officials. American diplomats and development experts
plan to spread into relatively peaceful western and northern regions
of Afghanistan that until now were left to other NATO governments. New
U.S. resources and leadership also will be brought to bear over
critical issues such as counter-narcotics efforts and strengthening
local government institutions."

    "The Americanization of the war is visible in the turbulent
south," continued the Post's report, "where the regional NATO command,
led by a Dutch general, with Dutch, British, Danish and U.S. troops,
faces the primary Taliban threat. Most of the additional U.S. troops
will deploy there, and dozens of C-130 transport aircraft land at the
Kandahar airfield every day with pallets of supplies. In a dusty
parking lot not far from the main runway, more than 200 Mine Resistant
Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, await the supplementary U.S.
troops. When they arrive, there will be more American personnel at the
Kandahar base than at the current largest U.S. facility - at Bagram,
north of Kabul, the capital. 'This will become an American
headquarters,' one non-U.S. military officer in southern Afghanistan
said of Kandahar. 'They're going to have almost three times as many
troops as any other NATO member here. And that's going to mean they'll
be in charge.'"

    Is the Obama administration simply working with the hand it was
dealt by George W. Bush, or are the same Bush administration mistakes
about to be committed all over again? Norman Solomon, writing for
Truthout on Tuesday, noted, "We desperately need a substantive
national debate on US military intervention in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. While the Obama administration says that the problems of the
region cannot be solved by military means, the basic approach is
reliance on heightened military means. And so, with chillingly
familiar echoes, goes the perverse logic of escalating the war in
Afghanistan. 'Strategic patience' - more and more war - will be
necessary so that those who must die will not have died in vain."

    However this all shakes out, one thing is certain: Both the United
States and Afghanistan are likely going to be Enduring Freedom for a
long time to come.
"

Yes, we can?

Henk Elegeert

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