US troops out of Afghanistan

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US troops out of Afghanistan
24 September 2009

The Pentagon announced Wednesday that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the
commander of US-NATO forces in Afghanistan, will formally submit his
request that tens of thousands more American troops be sent into the
eight-year-old colonial-style war.

This request follows on the heels of a report written by
McChrystal—and leaked from the Pentagon—warning that Washington faces
defeat in Afghanistan unless it follows his prescription for a
“properly resourced” escalation of a counterinsurgency campaign aimed
at breaking the resistance of the Afghan people to foreign occupation.

This is a war that Obama has claimed as his own, having criticized the
Bush administration for allowing a “war of choice” in Iraq to divert
US military might from a “war of necessity” in Afghanistan. Last
February, he initiated the first phase of the war’s escalation,
ordering another 21,000 troops into Afghanistan and sacking the US
commander there, replacing him with General McChrystal.

However, according to media reports, McChrystal’s report and the
coming request for more troops have sparked a debate within the Obama
administration over what strategy to adopt in the face of the
deepening debacle in Afghanistan.

According to the New York Times Wednesday, Vice President Joseph Biden
has opposed a troop buildup in Afghanistan, instead advocating the
launching of a more direct US war in Pakistan. “Rather than trying to
protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would
concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan,
using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical
tactics,” the Times wrote in summarizing Biden’s position.

The real significance of this debate is unclear. The Times article
cites administration aides as saying that Obama “might just be testing
assumptions—and assuring liberals in his own party that he was not
rushing into a further expansion of the war—before ultimately agreeing
to the troop request from General McChrystal.”

In other words, Obama may merely be following his now familiar modus
operandi: attempting to project an image of “change” while maintaining
and deepening the right-wing policies of the previous administration
and bowing to the demands of America’s military-intelligence complex.

To the extent that there is any real debate, it likely mirrors
disagreements within the US military command itself, elements of which
have questioned the strategic value of Afghanistan and voiced deep
concerns that an escalation of the war, combined with the continued
occupation of Iraq, could lead to a breakdown of the all-volunteer
armed forces.

The Obama administration is in deep crisis over Afghanistan. The
American people are no longer prepared to buy his arguments about
Afghanistan representing a “good war” which must be fought if another
9/11-style Al Qaeda attack is to be avoided. Poll after poll has shown
a widening majority opposed to the war, with even greater numbers
against its escalation.

Obama’s claim, which echoes the rhetoric of the Bush administration,
is a political lie. General McChrystal has himself acknowledged that
there is no significant Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, while Osama
bin Laden has become Washington’s forgotten man.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were exploited as a pretext for
executing long-standing plans to employ America’s military might to
assert US hegemony over two of the world’s most strategically vital
energy-producing regions, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

The real origins of this war go back well before 2001. It is the
outcome of over 30 years of intense and destructive US intervention in
Afghanistan, beginning with the CIA’s backing of Islamist guerrillas
against the country’s Soviet-backed government in 1978. The agency
poured in some $5 billion in aid and weapons to foment a protracted
war that cost some 1.5 million lives and wrecked Afghan society.

Among those the CIA worked with was Osama bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda is
very much a product of the US intervention in Afghanistan.

In its present crisis over Afghanistan, the Obama administration is
reaping the results of the tragedy that US imperialism unleashed upon
the country. The dilemma confronting General McChrystal is that he is
proposing a counterinsurgency campaign in a country that has no
legitimate government, much less a functioning army.

Washington is expressing increasing frustration over the role played
by President Hamid Karzai, whose writ extends no further than the
Kabul city limits. The last pretense of legitimacy for this regime was
shattered in an August 20 presidential election dominated by wholesale
ballot stuffing, electoral fraud and intimidation.

But Karzai is a creature of the US imperialist intervention, a
long-time CIA asset whom Washington installed as a puppet president
following the October 2001 invasion.

The current disquiet over Karzai recalls the debates within the
Kennedy administration over what to do with South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh
Diem, whose corruption and abuse had alienated the population. In the
end, the decision was taken to support his overthrow and assassination
by South Vietnamese generals. This criminal episode set the stage for
a massive escalation of the US war in Vietnam. A similar fate may well
await Washington’s Afghan puppet.

The Obama administration is planning to confront the catastrophe that
imperialism has inflicted upon Afghanistan by escalating the killing
and destruction. And, no matter which of the plans supposedly being
debated in the White House is adopted, this escalation will be
accompanied by a widening US war in Pakistan, carrying with it the
threat of destabilizing the entire region and unleashing a far
bloodier conflagration.

The price for this policy will be paid, in the first instance, with
the lives of Afghan and Pakistani civilians, as well as those of US
soldiers and Marines. The projected $100 billion cost of the
intensified war will be met through redoubled attacks on jobs, living
standards and social benefits. And sustaining a wider war in the
region—which most analysts project will last a decade or more—will not
be possible without the resumption of military conscription.

Working people must oppose any escalation of the war in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and demand instead that all US troops be immediately and
unconditionally withdrawn from the region. The vast military apparatus
developed by US imperialism must be dismantled and the resources
allocated to maintain it used to provide reparations for the
devastation inflicted upon the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq and to
confront the growing social crisis engulfing workers in the US and
around the world.

The first eight months of the Obama administration have decisively
refuted the perspective of the middle-class protest groups that the
struggle against war could be waged by driving out Bush and electing
Democrats. With the Democratic Party controlling the White House and
both houses of Congress, the occupation of Iraq continues while the
war in Afghanistan is being escalated.

What is required to fight war is the independent political
mobilization of working people against the Obama administration and
the profit interests of the corporations and banks that it
represents—the real source of militarism. This means building the
Socialist Equality Party as the mass party of the working class.

Bill Van Auken

Copyright © 1998-2009 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/pers-s24.shtml

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