- The US government (White House and Congress)
spends $10 billion dollars a month, or $120 billion a year, to fight an
estimated "50 -75 'Al Qaeda types' in Afghanistan", according
to the CIA and quoted in the FinancialTimes of London (6/25 -26/11,
p. 5). During the past 30 months of the Obama presidency, Washington has
spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan, which adds up to $4 billion
dollars for each alleged 'Al Queda type'. If we multiply this by the two
dozen or so sites and countries where the White House claims 'Al Qaeda'
terrorists have been spotted, we begin to understand why the US budget
deficit has grown astronomically to over $1.6 trillion for the current
fiscal year.
-
- During Obama's Presidency, Social Security's cost-of-living adjustment
has been frozen, resulting in a net decrease of over 8 percent, which is
exactly the amount spent chasing just 5 dozen 'Al Qaeda terrorists' in
the mountains bordering Pakistan.
-
- It is absurd to believe that the Pentagon
and White House would spend $10 billion a month just to hunt down a handful
of terrorists ensconced in the mountains of Afghanistan. So what
is the war in Afghanistan about? The answer one most frequently
reads and hears is that the war is really against the Taliban, a mass-based
Islamic nationalist guerrilla movement with tens of thousands of activists.
The Taliban, however, have never engaged in any terrorist act against
the territorial United States or its overseas presence. The Taliban
have always maintained their fight was for the expulsion of foreign
forces occupying Afghanistan. Hence the Taliban is not part
of any "international terrorist network". If the US war
in Afghanistan is not about defeating terrorism, then why the
massive expenditure of funds and manpower for over a decade?
-
- Several hypotheses come to mind:
-
- The first is the geopolitics of Afghanistan:
The US is actively establishing forward military bases, surrounding
and bordering on China.
-
- Secondly,
US bases in Afghanistan serve as launching pads to
foment "dissident separatist" armed ethnic conflicts and apply
the tactics of 'divide and conquer' against Iran, China, Russia and
Central Asian republics.
-
- Thirdly,
Washington's launch of the Afghan war (2001) and the easy initial conquest
encouraged the Pentagon to believe that a low cost, easy military victory
was at hand, one that could enhance the image of the USas an invincible
power, capable of imposing its rule anywhere in the world, unlike the disastrous
experience of the USSR.
-
- Fourthly,
the early success of the Afghan war was seen as a prelude to the launching
of a sequence of successful wars, first against Iraq and
to be followed by Iran, Syria and beyond. These would serve
the triple purpose of enhancing Israeli regional power, controlling strategic
oil resources and enlarging the arc of US military bases from
South and Central Asia, through the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.
-
- The strategic policies, formulated by the
militarists and Zionists in the Bush and Obama Administrations, assumed
that guns, money, force and bribes could build stable satellite states
firmly within the orbit of the post-Soviet US empire. Afghanistan was
seen as an easy first conquest the initial step to sequential
wars. Each victory, it was assumed would undermine domestic and allied
(European) opposition. The initial costs of imperial war, the Neo-Cons
claimed, would be paid for by wealth extracted from the conquered countries,
especially from the oil producing regions.
-
- The rapid US defeat of the Taliban government
confirmed the belief of the military strategists that "backward",
lightly armed Islamic peoples were no match up for the US powerhouse
and its astute leaders.
-
-
-
- Wrong Assumptions, Mistaken Strategies: The Trillion
Dollar Disaster
-
- Every assumption, formulated by these civilian
strategists and their military counterparts, has been proven wrong. Al
Qaeda was and is a marginal adversary; the real force capable of sustaining
a prolonged peoples wars against an imperial occupier, inflicting heavy
casualties, undermining any local puppet regime and accumulating mass support
is the Taliban and related nationalist resistance movements.
Israeli-influenced US think-tanks, experts and advisers who portrayed
the Islamic adversaries as inept, ineffective and cowardly, totally misread
the Afghan resistance. Blinded by ideological antipathy, these high-ranking
advisers and White House/Pentagon civilian-office holders failed to recognize
the tactical and strategic, political and military acumen of the top and
middle-level Islamist nationalist leaders and their tremendous reserve
of mass support in neighboring Pakistan and beyond.
-
- The Obama White House, heavily dependent
on Islamophobic pro-Israel experts, further isolated the UStroops
and alienated the Afghan population by tripling the number of troops, further
establishing the credentials of the Taliban as the authentic alternative
to a foreign occupation.
-
- As for the neo-conservative pipe dreams of
successful sequential wars, cooked up by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Feith,
Abrams, Libby et al, to eliminate Israel's adversaries and turn the Persian
Gulf into a Hebrew lake, the prolonged wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
has, in fact, strengthened Iran's regional influence, turned the entire
Pakistani people against the US and strengthened mass movements against
US clients throughout the Middle East.
-
- Sequential imperial defeats have resulted in a massive
hemorrhage of the US treasury, rather than the promised flood
of oil wealth from tributary clients. According to a recent scholarly
study, the military cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan andPakistan have
exceeded $3.2 trillion dollars ("The Costs of War Since 2001",
Eisenhower Study Group, June 2011) and is growing at over ten billion a
month. Meanwhile the Taliban "tightens (its) psychological grip"
on Afghanistan (FT 6/30/2011, p. 8). According to the latest
reports even the most guarded 5-star hotel in the center of Kabul, the
Intercontinental, was vulnerable to a sustained assault and take over by
militants, because "high security Afghan forces" are infiltrated
and the Taliban operate everywhere, having established "shadow"
governments in most cities, towns and villages (FT 6/30/11 p.8).
-
- Imperial Decline, Empty Treasury and the Specter of a
Smash-Up
-
- The crumbling empire has depleted the US treasury.
As the Congress and White House fight over raising the debt ceiling, the
cost of war aggressively erodes any possibility of maintaining stable living
standards for the American middle and working classes and heightens growing
inequalities between the top 1% and the rest of the American people. Imperial
wars are based on the pillage of the US treasury. The imperial
state has, via extraordinary tax exemptions, concentrated wealth in the
hands of the super-rich while the middle and working classes have been
pushed downward, as only low paid jobs are available.
-
- In 1974, the top 1% of US individuals accounted for 8%
of total national income but as of 2008 they earned 18% of national income.
And most of this 18% is concentrated in the hands of a tiny super-rich
1% of that 1%, or 0.01% of the American population, (FT 6/28/11, p.
4 and 6/30/11, p. 6). While the super-rich plunder the treasury and intensify
the exploitation of labor, the number of middle income jobs is plunging:
From 1993 to 2006, over 7% of middle income jobs disappeared (FT 6/30/11,
p. 4). While inequalities may be rising throughout the world, the US now
has the greatest inequalities among all the leading capitalist countries.
-
- The burden of sustaining a declining empire, with its
the monstrous growth in military spending, has fallen disproportionately
on middle and working class taxpayers and wage earners. The military and
financial elites' pillage of the economy and treasury has set in motion
a steep decline in living standards, income and job opportunities. Between
1970 -2009, while gross domestic product more than doubled, US median
pay stagnated in real terms (FT7/28/11, p. 4). If we factor in the added
fixed costs of pensions, health and education, real income for wage and
salaried workers, especially since the 1990's, has been declining sharply.
-
- Even greater blows are to come in the second half 2011:
As the Obama White House expands its imperial interventions in Pakistan,
Libya and Yemen, increasing military and police-state spending, Obama is
set to reach budgetary agreements with the far right Republicans, which
will savage government health care programs, like MEDICARE and MEDICAID,
as well as Social Security, the national retirement program. Prolonged
wars have pushed the budget to the breaking point, while the deficit undermines
any capacity to revive the economy as it heads toward a 'repeat recession'.
-
- The entire political establishment is bizarrely
oblivious to the fact that their multi-hundred- billion-dollar pursuit of
an estimated 50-75 phantom Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan has
hastened the disappearance of middle income jobs in the US.
-
- The entire political spectrum has turned
decisively to the Right and the Far-Right. The debate between Democrats
and Republicans is over whether to slash four trillion or more from
the last remnants of our country's social programs.
-
- The Democrats and the Far-Right are united
as they pursue multiple wars while currying favor and funds from upper
0.01% super-rich, financial and real estate moguls whose wealth has grown
so dramatically during the crisis!
-
-
- Conclusion
-
- But there is a deep and quiet discomfort
within the leading circles of the Obama regime: The "best and brightest"
among his top officials are scampering to jump ship before the
coming deluge: the Economic Guru Larry Summers, Rahm Emmanuel,
Stuart Levey, Peter Orzag, Bob Gates, Tim Geithner and others, responsible
for the disastrous wars, economic catastrophes, the gross concentration
of wealth and the savaging of our living standards, have walked out or
have announced their 'retirement', leaving it to the smiling con-men -
President Obama and Vice-President 'Joe' Biden - and their 'last and clueless loyalists'
to take the blame when the economy tanks and our social programs are wiped
out. How else can we explain their less-than-courageous departures (to 'spend
more time with the family') in the face of such a deepening crisis? The
hasty retreat of these top officials is motivated by their desire to avoid
political responsibility and to escape history's indictment for their role
in the impending economic debacle. They are eager to hide from a
future judgment over which policy makers and leaders and what policies
led to the destruction of the American middle and working classes with
their good jobs, stable pensions, Social Security, decent health care and
respected place in the world.
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