Opposition rises against U.S. wars and occupations

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Notwithstanding the Taliban’s regressive social agenda, it appears to have won the allegiance of broad sectors of the Afghan population, who despise the U.S.-installed Karzai regime and Socialist Action juLY 2010 3 The United National Antiwar Conference, in Albany, N.Y., July 23-25, takes place against the backdrop of mounting opposition to the U.S. wars in the Middle East and to the devastating effects of a crisis-ridden economy on the security and livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans.

Conference organizers have made important progress in bringing together a movement that has often been marked by internal divisions. This combines with the ebbing of illusions that President Obama would chart a course fundamentally different from his predecessor. Indeed, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party majority in Congress have exceeded George Bush and Co. in war spending and in allotting unprecedented trillions to bail out the rich at the expense of the vast majority.

The mobilization of the working-class majority is central to countering the warmakers and corporate elite on every front. The challenge before the movement today is to close the gap between belief and action—ultimately leading to the organization of massive antiwar protests in the streets.

“Nine Years On,” reads a June 27 Christian Science Monitor headline, “Only 41 Percent of Americans Believe U.S. Can ‘Win’ in Afghanistan.” This marks an important shift in the thinking of those who believed that the United States was not only invincible but also justified in its wars in Iraq and especially in Afghanistan.

Although the U.S. possesses the most sophisticated array of weapons of mass destruction, 100,000 troops, an equal number of mercenary forces and close to a trillion dollars a year in military expenditures, exceeding all other nations combined, the majority of Americans are today skeptical about the U.S. capacity to defeat a group with no highgrade weaponry in one of the poorest countries on earth. There is little doubt that a good portion of this skepticism stems from the fact that increasing numbers of Americans have come to believe that they have no stake in this imperial project in the first place.

America’s top military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was fired in late June by President Obama, supposedly for some still unsubstantiated remarks he and his aides made to the pop-culture rock ’n roll magazine, Rolling Stone.

The June 29 Congressional hearings to confirm the U.S. and NATO’s top gun in the Middle East as McChrystal’s replacement, Gen. David H. Petraeus of “Iraq surge” fame, suggest that more Virginia Mayo / AP was at stake than Rolling Stone’s “quotations”—which have been wildly misrepresented as the general’s challenging “civilian control over the military.”

Like all generals in the service of capitalism, McChrystal’s assignment, public relations statements aside, was to kill as many Afghan insurgents as possible and let the ruling class’s assigned “negotiators” decide how the spoils of war are to be allocated—if the U.S. wins. The spoils include everything from permanent military bases to be used against capitalist competitors in the region like Russia and China, multi-billion-dollar grants to Blackwater and related forprofit mercenary operations, construction of or access to oil pipelines, and control over the recently revealed but long ago discovered mineral wealth of Afghanistan—which the Pentagon valued at about $1 trillion.

A number of Congress members did press Petraeus during his confirmation hearing as to whether he would continue McChrystal’s claimed policy of curbing the most outrageous of the U.S. air strikes and artillery bombardments that regularly take a heavy toll on Afghan civilians. The clever Petreaus dodged the question, only to state that protecting the lives of U.S. troops has always been central to U.S. objectives. That is, Petraeus would drop as many, if not more, bombs as McChrystal while negotiations with the “enemy” proceeded under cover of both McChrystal’s and Petraeus’s so-called humane method of conducting modern warfare.

In less “civilized” times—as in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam—body counts were proudly reported to the media to demonstrate the success of U.S. military operations. Today’s humane standards of mass murder require that the number of “enemy” dead be left to speculators, while the U.S. insists that its “smart bombs,” “precision bombing,” and “rules of engagement” enable it to pinpoint the bad guys— thus minimizing civilian casualties!

But media obfuscation aside, there is no such thing as a clean war. The Vietnam War saw the U.S. slaughter some 4 million Vietnamese, the vast majority, non-combatants. Iraq War figures are approaching 2 million—again, mostly his well-bribed local henchmen.

civilians.

The real problem facing the U.S. in Afghanistan is that the war and occupation are universally hated by the Afghan people. After nine years it is widely admitted that U.S. efforts to construct an effective Afghan Army have come to naught, with its U.S.-supplied weapons routinely turned over to the Afghan resistance.

Notwithstanding the Taliban’s regressive social agenda, it appears to have won the allegiance of broad sectors of the Afghan population, who despise the U.S.-installed Hamid Karzai regime and his well-bribed coterie of local henchmen. History once again demonstrates that the Afghan people, as with oppressed people everywhere, prefer to resolve their own problems rather than be subject to foreign rule.

The same Rasmussen poll, in which only 41 percent of Americans believed that the U.S. could “win” in Afghanistan, indicated that a plurality, 48 percent, believed that “ending the Afghanistan War is more important than winning it.” The post-9/11 patriotic and “antiterrorism” fervor whipped up for a decade by the corporate media to justify the 2001 takeover of Afghanistan and the 2003 “conquest” of Iraq has steadily given way to a deep questioning of U.S. war aims everywhere.

Few if any believe that the real enemy is the tiny core of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda or the former Taliban government officials—once U.S. allies—with whom both “President” Karzai and U.S. diplomats today negotiate, albeit with different factions, regarding a “solution.” Even fewer believe that the trillions gifted to bail out U.S. banks and other financial institutions have anything to do with the welfare of the American people.

U.S. generals and diplomats are currently outraged at President Karzai’s efforts to broker an agreement with various Taliban factions only because Karzai’s proposed future partners in the exploitation of Afghanistan are different from those the U.S. deems as likely players in their game. Karzai is more than willing to cede future control over some Taliban/Pashtun-dominated provinces in Afghanistan and to Olivier Douliery / Abaca Press / MCT (Above) Protesters at Senate committee hearing to confirm appointment of Gen. David Petraeus as head of troops in Afghanistan.

(Left) Gen. Petraeus speaks July 1 at NATO’s Brussels headquarters.

find an accommodation with Pakistani military officers who favor similar solutions to placate their own Pashtundominated portions of Pakistan.

Karzai is motivated by the knowledge, and openly states the view, that the U.S. can’t win in Afghanistan—as the U.S. could not win in Vietnam. While a few Republican Congress members pressed Petraeus during the recent hearings to repudiate President Obama’s “pledge” to “begin” the withdrawal of U.S. forces by July 2010, Petraeus deftly side-stepped this issue, knowing full well that the U.S. has no intention of leaving Afghanistan in defeat even if currently confronted with the bitter fact that there is no prospect of victory in sight.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is moving to enforce the recent UN-imposed sanctions against Iran, another critical issue that will undoubtedly be before the Albany antiwar conference. Noam Chomsky, the conference’s keynote speaker (via a video recording) warned against U.S. “imperial” intentions in a June 28 article entitled, “The Iranian Threat.”

Says Chomsky, “The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding its offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the U.S. could build the massive base it uses for attacking the Middle East and Central Asia. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group.

“According to a U.S. Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 ‘bunker busters’ used for blasting hardened underground structures. Planning for these ‘massive ordnance penetrators,’ the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished. On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran.”

Chomsky continues with a revealing quote from Dan Plesch, director of the (continued on page 4)

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... Justifications collapse for war in Afghanistan (continued from page 1: “Justifications collapse for U.S. war in Afghanistan”) ghanistan. But up until now, the main advantage was the possibility of running a pipeline through the country to tap Central Asian oil. There was such a project sponsored by Unocal, but it was abandoned because of the dim prospects for assuring the stability of the country.

Exports of minerals, such as iron, would require even greater stability and much more ambitious infrastructure, such as roads and railroads. The U.S. client ruler Karzai immediately tried to capitalize on the report to attract foreign investors.

In fact, potential investors will need local political allies, but such allies would need to be able to guarantee security, and at the moment the only local force capable of that seems to be the Taliban. That fact ads spice to the speculation about foreign competition for Afghan mineral resources.

However, mining operations, unlike a pipeline, would be local, and that raises the possibility of conflict among the ethnic groups and warlords that could tear the country apart. Because of their needs for labor, large-scale mining operations would also be disruptive of the traditional social structures. Mining development would probably require the emergence of an Afghan neocolonial bourgeoisie, which, when developed, would be a new social layer in the country.

It is also possible that more easily transportable minerals, like gold, platinum, and precious stones, could be looted by pirates working for different corporations, as is the case today in the Congo-Kinshasa. That ... Opposition rises (continued from page 3)

Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London:

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,”

says Plesch. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours. The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003.” Chomsky adds, “accelerating under Obama.”

U.S. threats of war today extend to North Korea. Obama administration officials blame a North Korean mini-submarine for the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan. Although no evidence has been produced to substantiate this charge, it serves the U.S. need to justify new interventions and additional billions in military expenditures to prime its failing economy. The highly monopolized military-industrial complex is among the few sectors of the U.S. economy where the virtual absence of competition, domestic or foreign, provides for stupendous profit rates far in excess of the pitiful levels that today prevail in the general industrial sectors.

Antiwar activists are mobilizing across the country to join the discussions and debates in Albany that have the potential of re-activating an antiwar movement that had been momentarily disarmed by illusions that the election of Barack Obama represented a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

These illusions are rapidly being shattered as it becomes clear that there are no saviors in capitalist America other than the organized masses themselves. When they take the field to challenge the status quo, what seemed impossible only a few months ago can be the order of the day today. n 4 Socialist Action juLY 2010 Justin Sullivan / Getty Images (Above) U.S. and Afghan medics carry a wounded soldier near Kandahar, June 29, as fighting escalates in the region.

would likely lead to more violent competition among many international actors.

There has been much comment on apparent efforts by Karzai to make a deal with the Taliban. The Taliban leadership has fervently denied any possibility of that.

A problem for any deal with the Taliban is the Pushtun national-chauvinist history of that Islamist movement. Under Taliban rule, the Hazaras (9 percent of the population), a predominately Shiite Persian-speaking people, suffered special oppression. Moreover, the Uzbeks (9 percent of the population) and Tadzhiks (27 percent of the population) were the backbone of the Northern Alliance, which was continuing a civil war against the Taliban at the time of U.S. intervention.

An article in the June 26 New York Times documented the opposition to a deal with the Taliban among the ethnic minorities. For example: “‘Karzai has begun the ethnic war,’ said Mohammed Mohaqeq, a Hazara leader and a former ally of the president. ‘The future is very dark.’” About 100,000 Afghanis died in the civil war between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban.

In this context, the U.S. authorities might maintain that a continued U.S. military presence is necessary to maintain the stability of the country, as they have in a similar situation in Iraq. But there is no way the U.S. could do that in Afghanistan. The U.S. has failed to defeat the Taliban, and it is hard to foresee that the Taliban would accept a continued U.S. presence in their country.

The McChrystal scandal also revealed the fundamental impossibility of a foreign occupation in pacifying Afghanistan. Much of the commentary over McChrystal’s firing stressed that he was unpopular with the troops because the restrictions he imposed on them, trying to reduce the slaughter of innocent civilians.

In fact, despite the restrictions, atrocious killings of innocents have continued. The basic problem is that the foreign troops are intruders. They do not know the local populations, and since it is local people who attack them, they tend to view all the locals as enemies or potential enemies who threaten their lives. This encourages a maximum, indiscriminate response to any threat, and a dynamic of vengeance on the population for the killing of soldiers.

This tendency was well documented already in the 1950s in the eventually futile attempt of the French military to suppress the Algerian independence movement (at the cost of a million Algerian dead).

However, it is precisely the slaughter and terrorizing of innocent civilians that provided the basic impetus for the revival of the Taliban after their initial rout at the hands of the interventionists. Thus, foreign occupiers are in an inescapable dilemma. (In Iraq, they were extricated, at least partially, from their dilemma by al-Qaeda’s sectarian slaughter of Shi’ites, which divided the Iraqi resistance.)

Commentary on McChrystal’s antagonism to the civilian authorities also stressed that This background was in “special ops,” that is, covert operations largely outside the law and outside of civilian purview. So, it is hardly surprising that he came to view the civilian authorities as antagonists. Some commentators noted that in the modern “volunteer” army, a military culture is developing that is distinct from and hostile to the civilian political world.

The privatization of U.S. military forces—that is, an increasingly reliance on mercenary forces recruited by murder-for-profit companies—has also contributed to building a separate obscure world.

The New York Times of June 22 reported a congressional study of the role of mercenaries in Afghanistan: “The 79-page report, entitled ‘Warlord Inc.,’ paints an anarchic picture of contemporary Afghanistan, with the country’s major highways being controlled by groups of freelance gunmen who answer to no one— and who are being paid for by the United States.

“Afghanistan, the investigation found, plays host to hundreds of unregistered private security companies employing as many as 70,000 largely unsupervised gunmen. ‘The principal private security subcontractors,’ the report said, “are warlords, strongmen, commanders and militia leaders who compete with the Afghan central government for power and authority.”

However, they not only “compete” with the Afghan government, but they apparently are complicit with corrupt components of it. “Mr. Ruhullah,” The Times reported, “commands a force of about 600 gunmen that works for Watan Risk Management, a security firm overseen by Rashid and Rateb Popal, who are cousins of President Hamid Karzai.

“At the heart of the problem, the investigation found, is that the American military pays trucking companies to move its supplies across Afghanistan—and leaves it up to the trucking companies to protect themselves. The trucking companies in turn pay warlords and commanders to provide security.

“These subcontracts, the investigation found, are handed out without any oversight from the Department of Defense, despite clear instructions from Congress that the department provide such oversight. The report states that military officers in Kabul had little idea whom the trucking companies were paying to provide security or how much they spent for it, and had rarely if ever inspected a convoy to find out.”

In all, this region is a basket of snakes for any foreign governments that want to intervene or for private interests that may want to exploit local resources. And one of the biggest snakes is the Pakistan intelligence agency, the ISI. The report on ISI support for the Taliban by a team at the London School of Economics, released June 13, confirmed the double game that the Pakistani authorities continue to play, covertly supporting the Taliban, while claiming to be U.S. allies against it.

The Pakistani government has made deals with the Taliban before in its tribal areas, alleging that it cannot fight the whole Taliban at once. Thus, it is currently fighting the Taliban in South Wazirstan, and leaving a refuge for Taliban fighters in North Wazirstan. The basis for this understanding seems to be that Pakistan will leave the Taliban alone as long it focuses on Afghanistan, and attack it when it threatens the Pakistan authorities. Allegedly, the Pakistani authorities have been seeking to maintain a relationship with the Taliban to use it as a pawn against growing Indian influence in Afghanistan. The central focus of the ISI has long been waging a covert war against India.

According to the London School of Economics report, the ISI is even represented on the Taliban governing body. Al Jazeera reported June 16: “It [the report] claims the ISI provides funding and training for the Taliban, and that the agency has representatives on the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s leadership council, which is believed to meet in Pakistan.”

The author of the report, Matt Waldman, wrote: “The Pakistan government’s apparent duplicity—and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment—could have enormous geopolitical implications. Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency.”

All in all, the conditions of Afghanistan clearly represent a tangle that is beyond even the resources of the United States to dominate, even if it is ready to throw away trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. And the polls show that the American public has begun to realize that. It is going to become harder and harder for U.S. politicians, all of whom serve big business (so far the only parties that have profited from the war), to continue to defend it.

But the apparent determination of the Obama administration to continue the war, despite all the damaging revelations, shows that only the active protest of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the streets can force the U.S. authorities to disengage from this quagmire. n