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Barack Obama uses Bush funding tactics to finance wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

April 10, 2009

President Barack Obama has requested another $83.4 billion (£57 billion) from Congress to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using a controversial special troop funding provision that he voted against as a senator.

By Philip Sherwell in New York | Thelegraph.co.uk

Last Updated: 12:33AM BST 10 Apr 2009

Antiwar congressman and activists who played a key role in Mr Obama’s election campaign criticised him for deploying the same “off the books” funding tactic that were introduced by his predecessor George W Bush.

Mr Bush was accused of trying to mask the overall cost of the two conflicts – which now stands at virtually $1 trillion – by funding them via annual “emergency” supplements rather than through the usual budgetary process.

The White House says the request, placed on Thursday evening, was needed to secure funding for the current fiscal year and that it will be the last made in this form before the first Obama budget kicks in.

“This will be the last supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan. The process by which this has been funded over the course of the past many years, the president has discussed and will change,” said Robert Gibbs, the president’s spokesman.

The request seems certain to be approved comfortably, with support from Republicans. But some liberal Democrats expressed their frustration with the increased funding and Mr Obama’s plans for the two conflict zones.

“This funding will do two things – it will prolong our occupation of Iraq through at least the end of 2011, and it will deepen and expand our military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely,” said anti-war Rep. Lynn Woolsey. “Instead of attempting to find military solutions to the problems we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama must fundamentally change the mission in both countries to focus on promoting reconciliation, economic development, humanitarian aid, and regional diplomatic efforts.”

The request would fund an average force level in Iraq of 140,000 US troops, finance Mr Obama’s initiative to boost troop levels in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 from the current 39,000 and provide $2.2 billion to accelerate the Pentagon’s plans to increase the overall size of the US military, the Associated Press reported.

Mr Obama also requested $350 million in new funding to upgrade security along the US-Mexico border and to combat narcoterrorists, along with another $400 million in counterinsurgency aid to Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the top US commander in Iraq has given warning that American combat troops may be required to remain in Iraq after Mr Obama’s June 20 withdrawal deadline to deal with al Qaeda terrorists in Mosul and Baqubah. Indeed, General Ray Odierno said that troops levels in the two troubled cities might actually rise rather than fall.

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Democrats and War Escalation

April 7, 2009

by Norman Solomon | CommonDreams.org, April 6, 2009

Top Democrats and many prominent supporters — with vocal agreement, tactical quibbles or total silence — are assisting the escalation of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The predictable results will include much more killing and destruction. Back home, on the political front, the escalation will drive deep wedges into the Democratic Party.The party has a large anti-war base, and that base will grow wider and stronger among voters as the realities of the Obama war program become more evident. The current backing or acceptance of the escalation from liberal think tanks and some online activist groups will not be able to prevent the growth of opposition among key voting blocs.In their eagerness to help the Obama presidency, many of its prominent liberal supporters — whatever their private views on the escalation — are willing to function as enablers of the expanded warfare. Many assume that opposition would undermine the administration and play into the hands of Republicans. But in the long run, going along with the escalation is not helping Obama; by putting off the days of reckoning, the acceptance of the escalation may actually help Obama destroy his own presidency.

Ideally, in 2009, Democratic lawmakers would see as role models the senators who opposed the Vietnam War — first Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, and then (years later) others including Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Earlier and stronger opposition from elected officials could have saved countless lives. The dreams of the Great Society might not have been crushed. And Richard Nixon might never have become president.

Now, everyone has the potential to help challenge the escalation of the Afghanistan-Pakistan war — on a collision course with heightened disaster.

Over the weekend, the Sunday Times of London reported that U.S. drone attacks along the Afghan-Pakistani border on Saturday killed “foreign militants” and “women and children” — while Pakistani officials asserted that “American drone attacks on the border . . . are causing a massive humanitarian emergency.” The newspaper says that “as many as 1 million people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army.”

This is standard catastrophic impact of a counterinsurgency war. In short, as former Kennedy administration official William Polk spells out in his recent book “Violent Politics,” the key elements are in place for the U.S. war in Afghanistan to fail on its own terms while heightening the death and misery on a large scale.

Citing UN poverty data, a recent essay by Tom Hayden points out that in Afghanistan and Pakistan “the levels of suffering are among the most extreme in the world, and from suffering, from having nothing to live for, comes the will to die for a cause.” While the Washington spin machine touts development aid, the humanitarian effort adds up to a few pennies for each dollar going to the U.S. war effort.

A report from the Carnegie Endowment began this year with the stark conclusion that “the only meaningful way to halt the insurgency’s momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban.” Hayden made the same point when he wrote that “military occupation, particularly a surge of U.S. troops into the Pashtun region in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the surest way to inflame nationalist resistance and greater support for the Taliban.”

Over the weekend, in his pitch for more NATO support, President Obama tried to make the U.S. war goals seem circumscribed: “I want everybody to understand that our focus is to defeat Al Qaeda.” But there’s no evidence that Al Qaeda has a significant foothold in Afghanistan. That group long since decamped to Pakistan.

In any event, the claim that a massive war is necessary to fight terrorism is hardly new. Lest we forget: After George W. Bush could no longer cling to his claims about WMDs in Iraq, he settled on the anti-terrorist rationale for continuing the Iraq occupation.

Even among allies, the anti-terrorism rationale is not flying for a troop buildup in Afghanistan. After Obama’s latest appeal to the leaders of NATO countries, as the New York Times reported Sunday, “his calls for a more lasting European troop increase for Afghanistan were politely brushed aside.”

Europe will provide no more than 5,000 new troops, and most of them just for the Afghan pre-election period till late summer. In the words of the Times: “Mr. Obama is raising the number of American troops this year to about 68,000 from the current 38,000, which will significantly Americanize the war.”

For those already concerned about Obama’s re-election prospects, such war realities may seem faraway and relatively abstract. But escalation will fracture his base inside the Democratic Party. If the president insists on leading a party of war, then activists will educate, agitate and organize to transform it into a party for peace.

The mirage of wise counterinsurgency has been re-conjured by the Obama White House, echoing the “best and brightest” from Democratic administrations of the 1960s. But the party affiliation of the U.S. president will make no difference to people far away who mourn the loss of loved ones. And, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or the United States, the president will be held to the astute standard that Barack Obama laid out as he addressed unfriendly foreign leaders in his inaugural speech: “People will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

Norman Solomon is a journalist, historian, and progressive activist. His book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. His most recent book is “Made Love, Got War.” He is a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign.

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NATO backs US escalation of war in Central Asia

April 6, 2009
By Chris Marsden | wsws.org, 6 April 2009

The NATO 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, ended with a headline commitment for Europe to provide “up to” 5,000 additional troops for Afghanistan.

This was the smallest commitment the European leaders could make without delivering an open rebuke to the United States. Nevertheless it paves the way for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan and its extension across the border into Pakistan—aims which are at the centre of the foreign policy of the Obama administration.

While keeping substantial troop forces in Iraq, President Barack Obama has championed the shift in military focus long demanded by sections of the US bourgeoisie towards Central and indeed Southern Asia, which is a strategic focus for US imperialism. A military success in Afghanistan is seen as key in countering both Russian and Chinese global influence and securing US hegemony over strategic concerns such as oil, pipelines, transit routes and markets.

Control over Afghanistan gives the US access to traditional areas of Russian influence such as the Caucasus, ex-Soviet Central Asia, as well as Iran. It also threatens China’s main ally in the Indian sub-continent, Pakistan.

To this end Obama has announced an Iraq-style military “surge” ahead of the Afghan presidential elections in August. The US is to send 21,000 additional troops, and Obama is considering a further deployment of 10,000. America already has 38,000 troops out of the total of 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, and its forces make up a considerably larger proportion of those engaged in a combat role.

Fully 12,000 US troops operate separately from NATO.

By bringing America’s military presence to over 60,000, Obama hopes to reinforce US control of this strategic territory. But he still wants a substantial increase of European logistical and military backing to offset spiralling costs and to tie Europe firmly to the war.

At a public address in Strasbourg, France, on Friday, Obama emphasized that the war in Afghanistan will continue despite the change in presidencies. While the administration has ceased referring to the “war on terror,” Obama said, “I think that it is important for Europe to understand that even though I’m now president and George Bush is no longer president, Al Qaeda is still a threat…. It is going to be a very difficult challenge”.

In continuing the US occupation of Iraq and escalating attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama has adopted the same basic pretexts employed by the Bush administration to justify its neo-colonialist actions—including the supposed threat posed by Al Qaeda. These pretexts have not been challenged by any of the European powers.

The European powers are happy to maintain a foothold in the Afghan operation to avoid it becoming the exclusive province of the US, and they do not want to see it degenerate into a worse debacle than Iraq. But they are also anxious to avoid being sucked into a worsening conflict that is deeply unpopular at home—a situation indicated by the 30,000 protesters gathered at the two-day summit in Kehl, Germany, and then Strasbourg, France.

Obama proclaimed that the NATO partners had agreed to deploy about 5,000 troops and trainers “to advance [Washington’s] new strategy”. The White House claimed a total of ten countries had pledged new forces. Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stated, “The bottom line is that when it comes to Afghanistan, this summit, and this alliance, have delivered”.

This is not the case. Even these small numbers are only temporary—up until the presidential elections—and are largely in a non-combat capacity.

Obama’s main ally in seeking a troop expansion is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The day before the summit, Brown had offered up to 1,000 troops in agreement with Obama, in the hope of pressuring others to follow suit. Britain currently has 8,100 troops in Afghanistan. However, the Independent noted that Obama had in fact pressed for 2,000 to 3,000 additional UK troops permanently in the country, but this had met with “stiff opposition within the government, including the Treasury, which blocked the move on cost grounds”.

This smaller temporary deployment ending in October also includes 250 already sent earlier this year.

In any event, Brown’s gambit failed. The summit’s co-host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, rejected any additional military commitment from France, only agreeing to 150 military police to help train Afghan civilian police.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not shift from an earlier agreement to send another 600 soldiers up to the Afghan election, bringing Germany’s troop levels to 4,100. These are operating in a non-combat capacity in the north.

Steve Flanagan, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, described the commitments as “the basic minimum…. The hard part of the mission is going to become more and more a US-led coalition. You still have the NATO flag, but when you look at the numbers, it’s not a great division of labour”.

Obama could not hide his disappointment, calling the commitments only a “strong down payment”. The Sunday Times commented acidly, “He is right, but he may also be optimistic if he expects further payments to follow. If a new American president armed with the most goodwill that he will ever have in office cannot persuade NATO to do more now, he never will”.

Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been a consistent demand for a greater and more independent European military role, with a disagreement only over whether this should be within or external to the NATO alliance.

Obama wanted the Strasbourg summit to re-cement US-European ties. He has been championing a new “Declaration on Alliance Security”, endorsed at Strasbourg, which states, “NATO recognizes the importance of a stronger and more capable European defence and welcomes the European Union’s efforts to strengthen its capabilities and its capacity to address common security challenges…. We are determined to ensure that the NATO-EU relationship is a truly functioning strategic partnership as agreed by NATO and by the EU”.

At the public meeting prior to the Strasbourg summit, Obama declared, “We must be honest with ourselves. In recent years we have allowed our alliance to drift. I know there have been honest disagreements over policies, but we also know there has been something more that has crept into our relationship”.

Europe has a 25,000-strong NATO Response Force and the EU Rapid Defence Force of 60,000 soldiers. But continued collaboration with NATO comes with a price and is conducted in the European bourgeoisie’s own interests—as a means of projecting itself as a military force globally in a way it cannot do alone.

Strasbourg came after Sarkozy had secured the agreement for France to rejoin the command structures of NATO, 43 years after President Charles de Gaulle withdrew and set up an independent nuclear deterrent.

Sarkozy took the decision with the support of Merkel as part of their combined efforts witnessed earlier during the G20 summit to project a stronger and unified European position. At the summit Sarkozy made clear that providing troops to Afghanistan and elsewhere depended on asserting French influence. “We commit the lives of our soldiers, but do not participate in the committee that defines strategy and operations”, he said. “The time has come to put an end to this situation”.

The growing tensions between the US and Europe notwithstanding, the NATO summit will nevertheless signal a continued resort to colonial-style militarism led by Washington with the blessings and assistance of Paris, Berlin, London and Rome.

The only open conflict over Afghanistan, other than over troop numbers, was Afghan President Hamid Kharzai’s endorsing of a law governing family relations for the Shia minority. The United Nation’s Fund for Women said the law “legalises rape” within marriage by obligating wives to have sex when this is demanded, states that women should not leave their homes without a husband’s permission, gives automatic custody of children to fathers and made provision for marriage between minors. It is now to be reviewed.

Nothing was said in opposition to either the surge in Afghanistan, the US missile attacks on Pakistan’s border that have flattened entire villages and left over half a million people officially refugees, or the threat of a full-scale war in the nation of 173 million.

Rather, Obama, Merkel and Sarkozy combined together to make sure that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was nominated as the new secretary-general of NATO. Rasmussen was a staunch ally and friend of Bush in the war against Iraq, hailing his defence of “the ideals of liberty and against submission” and supporting the imprisoning without trial carried out at Guantanamo Bay. A leading figure in defending the provocation by the Jyllands-Posten daily, when it published cartoons of Mohammed, his nomination is itself provocative if not aggressive in its implications. Turkey’s opposition was bought off with various NATO jobs and a promise that its appeal for accession to the EU would move forward.

Even now what still unites the US and Europe is a common desire to face off any challenge from Russia and China to their global influence. Two new eastern European states joined NATO at Strasbourg: Albania and Croatia. The continued integration of former Warsaw pact countries into NATO has angered Russia, leading to sharp conflicts over US plans to establish its so-called Nuclear Missile Shield stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic and over NATO support for Georgia on the ongoing conflict over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The “Declaration on Alliance Security” combines praise for NATO enlargement as “an historic success in bringing us closer to our vision of a Europe whole and free” and a promise that “NATO’s door will remain open to all European democracies” with pledges to maintain a “strong, cooperative partnership between NATO and Russia”. And there has even been talk of offering Russia NATO membership.

Moscow, however, knows that it is under threat. During the G20 summit, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned of further NATO expansion eastwards. “Before making decisions about expanding the bloc, one must think about the consequences”, he said. “I said this frankly to my new comrade, US President Barack Obama. NATO needs to think about preserving its unity and not harming relations with its neighbours”.

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Obama’s Neoliberals: Selling His Afghan War One Report at a Time

April 6, 2009

In its support for the Afghan war, the Center for American Progress is aligning itself with the “experts” who have been wrong about pretty much everything

By Jeremy Scahill | RebelReports, APRIL 6, 2009

An image from the CAP report supporting Obama’s Afghanistan war.

Reading the Center for American Progress’ new report supporting President Obama’s escalation of the US war against Afghanistan is a very powerful reminder of how much neoliberals and neocons are alike. This, of course, is not some genius observation, particularly since CAP and the neocons are making it hard to miss, what with their love triangle with the war. Indeed, CAP’s launch event for its report, “Sustainable Security in Afghanistan: Crafting an Effective and Responsible Strategy for the Forgotten Front,” included a leading neocon, Frederick Kagan and was promoted by William Kristol’s new version of the Project for a New American Century, the Foreign Policy Initiative. So, here is part of what we are seeing unfold: Running parallel to the bi-partisan war machine within the official government is a coordinated campaign in the shadow government—the think tanks. Or, as Naomi Klein describes them, the people paid to think by the makers of tanks. CAPs particular role in this campaign appears to be attempting to sell Obama’s war.

“The problem is not that the Bush administration’s effort in Afghanistan failed,” CAP declares. “The problem is that it was never given a chance to succeed.” The report is replete with the language of Empire and phrases like, “vital U.S. interests” and “U.S. national interests.” The phrase “Afghan interests” is never used. CAP also calls for a continuation of the US bombing raids in Pakistan. In calling for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, CAP relies on the classic hubris of empire, saying, “U.S. policymakers and military leaders must be aware that throughout their history Afghans have resisted large numbers of foreign forces on their soil, but today the situation is different.” Why is it different? According to CAP, “Nearly two-thirds of Afghans still support U.S. forces throughout the country.” This claim would be funny if it wasn’t so lethally misleading.

US-backed leader Hamid Karzai can barely step foot outside of his palace without risking being killed. “Some intelligence officials estimate that the government of president Hamid Karzai now controls approximately one-third of Afghan territory,” CAP acknowledges. How on earth, then, do they pretend to know that Afghans actually love the US occupation? Well, check the footnotes in CAPs report and you see that CAP is basing its claim on an ABC News poll, “Public Opinion Trends in Afghanistan,” which is based on 1,534 interviews conducted in December 2008/January 2009. When you actually take the time to read the details of the poll CAP cites, that claim that “two-thirds” of Afghans “support…U.S. forces throughout the country” is extremely dubious and outright misleading. The poll actually says that 52% of Afghans have an “unfavorable” view of the United States—up from 14% in 2005. It also says Afghans give the US a 32% performance rating, down from 68% in 2005. Only 37% of Afghans say there is “support” in their area for US/NATO/ISAF forces. The statistic the CAP report singles out for its “two-thirds support” claim is one labeled “Presence of US Forces in Afghanistan,” which says that 63% of Afghans support it. However, in the next graph, only 18% of Afghans say they want the force increased and 44% want it decreased. So, read into this what you will, but do read it before buying CAP’s claim.

In its report, CAP acknowledges the growing global unpopularity of the US occupation of Afghanistan, saying, “In a U.S. poll taken in mid-March, 42 percent of the respondents said the United States made a mistake in sending military forces to Afghanistan, up from 30 percent just a month before and from 6 percent in January 2002. Europeans are even more skeptical, with majorities in Germany, Britain, France, and Italy opposing increased troop commitments to the conflict.” Such public opinion is worrying to CAP and the report says, “Convincing the American people, our NATO allies, and the countries in the region why an increased effort in Afghanistan is essential to their vital security interests will be one of the most difficult challenges facing the new administration.” In its report, CAP called on Obama to forcefully make the case for escalating the war in Afghanistan and Obama certainly did his best on his trip through Europe for the G20. The bottom line for CAP’s argument, which is also Obama’s, is this: “Unlike the war in Iraq, which was always a war of choice, the war in Afghanistan was and still is a war of necessity.” This line is hardly new. The report says “vital US interests will be served” by:

—“Ensur[ing] that Afghanistan does not again become a launching pad for international terrorism.”
—“Prevent[ing] a power vacuum in Afghanistan that would further destabilize Pakistan and the region.”
—“Prevent[ing] Afghanistan from being ruled by extreme elements of the Taliban and other extremist groups.”


Of course, there are opponents of the Obama administration’s escalation in Afghanistan who argue for a withdrawal from Afghanistan on moral grounds, as the War Resisters League, Peace Action and others have. “Others have laid out reasons ­from Afghanistan’s topography to the U.S. economic crisis ­that would make an expanded war in Afghanistan ‘unwinnable,’” declared the WRL in a recent statement. “WRL does not base our opposition on such arguments. While they may be correct, we challenge the very idea of a ‘winnable’ war and oppose this one as we oppose all war: not solely for practical and strategic reasons, but because of our, and [Martin Luther] King Jr.’s, decades-long commitment to nonviolence.” That position is very clear. However, there are others who agree with Obama and CAP in their basic portrayal of the “threats,” but who still question the military escalation, arguing that it will make the situation even worse. As Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin recently argued, “the decision to send 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan — and possibly an additional 10,000 troops next year — before fully confronting the terrorist safe havens and instability in Pakistan could very well prove ineffective, or worse, counterproductive. So long as the Taliban can flee into Pakistan and operate from there with relative ease, any gains against them in Afghanistan may well be temporary at best. Meanwhile, our troops would be threatened by forces who are largely beyond their reach, in Pakistan, while our increased military presence in Afghanistan could stoke resentment among the Afghan people.”

In late March, a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent Obama a letter arguing, “The 2001 authorization to use military force in Afghanistan allowed military action ‘to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.’ Continuing to fight a counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan does not appear to us to be in keeping with these directives and an escalation may actually harm US security.”

CAP, however, is clearly not listening to “progressive” or anti-war lawmakers. In fact, CAP says that Bush did the war against Afghanistan “on the cheap and committed too few troops and resources.” Therefore, CAP is calling for a stunning expansion of the scope of the military occupation of Afghanistan, a “nearly 300 percent increase over the average force level for the period from 2002 to 2007,” according to the report. CAP goes beyond what Obama has already committed to and calls for 70,000 US troops and an additional 30,000 allied troops—a total of 100,000 troops, plus an expanded Afghan Army and police force. CAP calls for “a prolonged U.S. engagement using all elements of U.S. national power—diplomatic, economic, and military—in a sustained effort that could last as long as another 10 years.”

To pay for this, CAP in part suggests taking what it claims will be a $330 billion savings from “reduced combat missions in Iraq” and applying $25 billion of it every year for five years to the “increased U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan” with another $5 billion per year “to increase U.S. foreign aid and diplomatic operations.” While there is a much bigger argument to be had here about spending priorities while millions of Americans are suffering from the economic meltdown, there is serious reason to question the idea that somehow we are going to be seeing any substantial “savings” in Iraq spending (except, of course, through the kind of creative accounting that masks actual US military expenditures, particularly relating to Iraq).

While calling for the US military to hammer the regions of Afghanistan where opposition to the occupation and the puppet regime in Kabul is strongest, CAP suggests the US “disperse economic assets and development teams to more stable and cooperative parts of the country.” The goal of this is to “reward the allied population with improved economic conditions and to demonstrate to the adversarial population the tangible benefits of cooperating with U.S. and allied forces.” This is similar to the US economic wars against Iraq and Cuba where the population is punished for its leadership and the US attempts to force them into submission to occupation or subjugation.

CAP acknowledges the “Taliban’s increasing power and influence,” adding that “many Afghan leaders have become increasingly critical of the conduct of international military operations in the country… Primarily because of the increasing and understandable unpopularity of NATO and U.S. air strikes,” but doesn’t call for a halt to them. Instead, CAP concludes, “it should be noted that violent insurgent attacks, particularly the proliferation of suicide bombings, still inflict the majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.”

CAP doesn’t just limit its belligerence for the Afghans. The report bluntly states that Obama must “Maintain capability to conduct missile strikes in Pakistan’s border regions absent Pakistani capability and will to do so itself.” Perhaps CAP should check in with retired United States Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and ask him why he recently declared that the U.S. should halt all Air and Predator drone strikes against Pakistan.

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald just returned from Afghanistan as part of his important documentary series, Rethink Afghanistan, which he is producing as a rolling web-based work-in-progress. In a climate where anti-war voices are being systematically kept off the corporate airwaves, Greenwald has managed to break up the party a bit, even making it onto MSNBC where he said “there is a significant belief that troops are not the answer.” While Greenwald is not exactly storming the White House to demand the immediate withdrawal of all US troops, his Brave New Films Foundation has issued a petition calling for hearings in both the House and Senate before Obama deploys more troops to Afghanistan, saying, “At a time when our country faces a credibility crisis around the world, record casualties in Afghanistan, and an economic meltdown at home, oversight hearings are needed now more than ever.” That is the least Congress could do and Greenwald’s ever-expanding film would be a good starting place for lawmakers to do some (overdue) fact-finding. The folks at CAP would be wise to watch them as well before putting out any more reports.

Here is the bottom line: the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse. As CAP states, “Last year was the deadliest on record for American troops, and fatalities in the first two months of 2009 are outpacing 2008 figures for a similar period. Afghan civilian casualties skyrocketed 40 percent in 2008—their highest since the beginning of the war.” According to the UN 2,118 civilians were killed in 2008 (other estimates put the number much higher). CAP even admits, “U.S. and NATO efforts to respond to the rise in attacks, have led to a dramatic increase in the number of civilian casualties suffered by the Afghan people.”

And yet somehow, in the eyes of CAP, all of these statistics seem to just beg for even more US troops in Afghanistan, continued bombing and sustaining the missile strikes in Pakistan. Those opposed to an escalation of the war in Afghanistan can take heart in the justice of their cause: on this issue, CAP is not on the side of those who were right about Iraq, who confronted the WMD lie, who stood up to the illegal war. No, instead, CAP is on the side of the neocons, the “experts” who know so little about so much who have been wrong about, well, almost everything for a long time.

Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill is author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute.

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Wrong on Afghanistan!

April 4, 2009

By Bill Fletcher Jr. | ZNet, April 4, 2009
Source: BlackCommentator.com

Sometimes I feel like I am reliving the era of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The era of ‘guns and butter,’ as they called it. At the same time that Johnson was launching his ‘War on Poverty’ he was escalating the US war against the people of Vietnam and Laos, as well as carrying out the criminal invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965). Not only did these interventions (and others!) isolate the USA and set back the efforts of these various countries at self- determination, but they wrecked the US economy, siphoning off badly needed resources.

So, here we are today with the Obama administration carrying out a cautious and VERY partial withdrawal from Iraq (50,000 US troops will remain), while at the same time escalating the US troop presence in Afghanistan. Compounding this situation are US military attacks within Pakistan, an activity that is the equivalent of pouring kerosene on an open fire.

And just like President Johnson, President Obama has an ambitious domestic agenda.

It has been difficult for many liberals and progressives to outright oppose the Afghanistan war. This was true when Bush first invaded in 2001, and it remains true today. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, many people in the USA, including but not limited to the Bush administration, were looking for revenge. In fact, there were those who said quite explicitly that revenge should take precedence over justice. And so we got it- revenge that is.

The Afghanistan war was never a ‘good war.’ Yes, Al Qaeda had bases in Afghanistan. So, let’s think about another situation and how it was handled. The Nicaraguan Contras, the US-backed terrorists who waged a war against the Sandinista government in the 1980s, were based in Honduras. The Honduran government did not control those bases, even if they turned a blind-eye to them. And, to emphasize the point, the Contras were supplied, resupplied, and further supplied by the US government. In fact, the USA mined Nicaraguan harbors, a clear act of war by one government against another.

So, should the Sandinistas have attacked Honduras, overthrown the Honduran government, and perhaps have attacked Miami for good measure? How do you think that much of the world would have responded? In fact, the Sandinistas went to the World Court and brought charges against the USA. The Nicaraguans prevailed in the Court, to the surprise of everyone, yet it did not matter because the USA ignored the judgment of the Court.

The Taliban government of Afghanistan, as despicable as they were, did not carry out the assault on 11 September 2001. It was easier, however, for Bush to carry out a conventional assault against the people that only a few short months prior they had been treating as potential business partners. In carrying out that invasion the US walked into a quagmire that anyone who studied Central Asia could have (and many had) predicted. In fact, the Soviet Union had a horrific experience in Afghanistan a dozen years earlier.

So, now we are being told that the USA must continue its ‘good war’ in Afghanistan in order to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The problem is that when something starts off wrong, it rarely gets much better. In fact, not only has the military situation been worsening due to a combination of bungling, corruption and cultural blindness by the invaders, but the regional political situation has been deteriorating.
A popular movement in Pakistan brought an end to the military regime of President Musharaff. At the same time, right-wing Islamists began their own military actions against the Pakistan government, the US, Pakistani Shiites, and, when they had some free time, the Indian government. It should be noted that these are not the same Taliban as are operating in Afghanistan, but these distinctions never seem to matter to the USA. Each time the USA carries out a drone attack on alleged terrorist positions in Pakistan, they strengthen the arguments and support of the right-wing Islamists.

Further US involvement in Afghanistan brings no assurance of victory. More importantly, the conflict must be resolved politically. The puppet regime in Kabul has so alienated the population that they have little control outside of the city itself. The population which, in some cases welcomed the US invasion has turned against the US and their NATO and warlord allies even if they have no love for the Taliban. There is nothing that should lead anyone to believe that this will change with the introduction of even more US forces, even if the USA spreads money around the way that they did in Iraq in order to buy off opposition.

It is not just that furthering the Afghanistan aggression takes badly needed funds away from domestic projects in the USA. That should be a given. More importantly, the Afghanistan situation is integrally linked to the internal situation in Pakistan as well as the Pakistani conflict with India (over the Kashmir). There is little that the Obama administration is currently doing that seems to recognize the extent of the potential spillover affect from further military escalation. This in a region where there are two nuclear powers within minutes of turning each other into ashes, and seem to be driven toward this end.

[BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA.]


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Judge Rules Some Prisoners at Bagram Have Right of Habeas Corpus

April 4, 2009

by Charlie Savage | The New York Times, April 3, 2009

WASHINGTON – A federal judge ruled on Thursday that some prisoners held by the United States military in Afghanistan have a right to challenge their imprisonment, dealing a blow to government efforts to detain terrorism suspects for extended periods without court oversight.

[Attiqullah 10, son of Hafizullah Shahbaz Khiel, an Afghan detainee shows documents proclaiming Hafizullah's innocence during an interview with Associated Press at his uncle's house on the outskirts of Kabul,Afghanistan, Tuesday, Jan 20, 2009. He is being held at Bagram Air Base.(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) ]Attiqullah 10, son of Hafizullah Shahbaz Khiel, an Afghan detainee shows documents proclaiming Hafizullah’s innocence during an interview with Associated Press at his uncle’s house on the outskirts of Kabul,Afghanistan, Tuesday, Jan 20, 2009. He is being held at Bagram Air Base.(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

In a 53-page ruling that rejected a claim of unfettered executive power advanced by both the Bush and Obama administrations, United States District Judge John D. Bates said that three detainees at the United States’ Bagram Air Base had the same legal rights that the Supreme Court last year granted to prisoners held at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The three detainees – two Yemenis and a Tunisian – say that they were captured outside Afghanistan and taken to Bagram, and that they have been imprisoned for more than six years without trials. Arguing that they were not enemy combatants, the detainees want a civilian judge to review the evidence against them and order their release, under the constitutional right of habeas corpus.

The importance of Bagram as a holding site for terrorism suspects captured outside Afghanistan and Iraq has increased under the Obama administration, which prohibited the Central Intelligence Agency from using its secret prisons for long-term detention and ordered the military prison at Guantánamo closed within a year. The administration had sought to preserve Bagram as a haven where it could detain terrorism suspects beyond the reach of American courts, telling Judge Bates in February that it agreed with the Bush administration’s view that courts had no jurisdiction over detainees there.

Judge Bates, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001, was not persuaded. He said transferring captured terrorism suspects to the prison inside Afghanistan and claiming they were beyond the jurisdiction of American courts “resurrects the same specter of limitless executive power the Supreme Court sought to guard against” in its 2008 ruling that Guantánamo prisoners have a right to habeas corpus.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said that the administration was reviewing the decision and that it had made no decision about whether to appeal.

Judge Bates emphasized that his ruling was “quite narrow.” He said that it did not apply to prisoners captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and that a determination of whether prisoners might challenge their detention in court would depend on a case-by-case analysis of factors like their citizenship and location of capture.

“It is one thing to detain those captured on the surrounding battlefield at a place like Bagram, which respondents correctly maintain is in a theater of war,” the judge wrote. “It is quite another thing to apprehend people in foreign countries – far from any Afghan battlefield – and then bring them to a theater of war, where the Constitution arguably may not reach.”

Moreover, the judge has put off ruling that a fourth prisoner – also captured outside Afghanistan, but holding Afghan citizenship – had a right to challenge his detention. He said any order to release the detainee could lead to frictions with the Afghan government, and asked for additional briefings on that case.

The United States is holding about 600 people at Bagram without charges and in spartan conditions. United States officials have never provided a full accounting of the prison population, but an American government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because it is against policy to discuss details of the Bagram prison, said that fewer than a dozen detainees fell into the category affected by the ruling – non-Afghans captured beyond Afghan borders.

Judge Bates has been involved in several high-profile executive power cases. In 2002, he sided with the Bush administration in a lawsuit over whether Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force records were required to be disclosed. But in 2008, he sided with Congress in an executive-privilege dispute over whether top aides to Mr. Bush were immune from subpoenas related to the firing of federal prosecutors.

David Rivkin, an associate White House counsel in the administration of the first President Bush, predicted that Judge Bates’s ruling would be overturned on appeal. He warned that the ruling “gravely undermined” the country’s “ability to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities worldwide.”

But Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network, which is representing the four Bagram detainees, praised Judge Bates’s decision as “a very good day for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Ms. Foster said that the Bagram ruling meant that changes to the Bush detention policies would go beyond merely closing Guantánamo and extend “to any place where the United States seeks to hold individuals in a legal black hole.”

The power of federal judges to review decisions by the executive branch to imprison a terrorism suspect was among the most contentious legal issues that arose after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The Bush administration began a policy of holding prisoners indefinitely and without trials, arguing that federal judges had no authority to second-guess its decisions about whom to name an “enemy combatant.”

But human-rights lawyers challenged those policies, winning Supreme Court decisions in 2004, 2006 and 2008 that gradually expanded the reach of the American legal system over detainees.

After taking office, Mr. Obama ordered a review of the evidence against each of the roughly 240 prisoners at Guantánamo as a first step toward closing the prison within a year.

He did not extend the steps he was taking to resolve the fate of the Guantánamo prisoners to those held at Bagram, although a comprehensive review of detainee policies is due to be completed in July. Ms. Foster said that the Bagram case may force the administration to speed up its decisions.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

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US drone hits Pakistan compound

April 4, 2009

Al Jazeera, April 4, 2009

There has been growing anger in Pakistan
against US aerial attacks [EPA]

Up to 13 people have been killed in a suspected US drone attack in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region near the Afghan border, security officials say.

The attack on Saturday occurred in an area 35km west of the region’s main town of Miranshah.

The death toll is 13, including some foreigners, but  information is very sketchy because it’s a town which is very  remote,” one security official said on condition of anonymity.

Pakistani officials use the word “foreigner” to refer to suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, but the precise identities of the dead was not confirmed.

A local official said the compound that was hit belonged to Tariq Khan, who was described as a “facilitator of the Taliban”.

Amir Shah, a resident of Waziristan, said drones were still flying over the area several hours after the attack.

‘Safe haven’

With violence intensifying in Afghanistan, the US has launched more drone attacks on the Pakistani side of the border to destroy what it describes as “safe havens” for anti-government fighters.

The Pakistani government has protested to Washington against the drone strikes, saying they violated its territorial sovereignty.

But the US has kept up with its aerial attacks, accusing Islamabad of not doing enough to crack down on fighters who cross the border to attack US and Nato troops in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters sought refuge in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001.

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Beyond Afghanistan: Choosing Nonviolence

April 3, 2009

Published on Thursday, April 2, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

War Resisters League

As we approach the April 4 anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s great 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech in New York City’s Riverside Church, the War Resisters League reiterates King’s urgent cry for nonviolence­ and nonviolent resistance. The parallels between the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. war against Vietnam fill us with foreboding. While we adamantly oppose continued U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we also call upon people of conscience to think beyond Afghanistan and challenge, as King did, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”

Others have laid out reasons­from Afghanistan’s topography to the U.S. economic crisis­ that would make an expanded war in Afghanistan “unwinnable.” But WRL does not base our opposition on such arguments. While they may be correct, we challenge the very idea of a “winnable” war and oppose this one as we oppose all war: not solely for practical and strategic reasons, but because of our, and King’s, decades-long commitment to nonviolence.

Purveyor of Violence

Much has changed in the 40-plus years since King made that speech, yet the United States remains, as he named it then, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” WRL stands, as he did, against that violence, which is not only wrong in itself, but cures nothing and rebounds on its perpetrators.

King declared that the people of Vietnam “must see Americans as strange liberators.” The assessment applies today to the people of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has lost more than two million civilian lives to war in the last 30 years alone, and the toll is rising again, in a dreadful example of the ways in which violence boomerangs and warfare begets only devastation and more warfare (including attacks by groups like Al Qaeda). For centuries that battered land has been subject to imperial aggression and intervention. The Taliban rose to power with the support of the U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services, intervening against the USSR’s invasion. Today, Afghanistan’s infrastructure is destroyed. Each year, pregnancy and childbirth kill 25,000 women, and diarrhea kills 85,000 children. Landmines planted in turn by troops of the Soviet Union, the Northern Alliance, and the Taliban kill 600 people per year and maim so many that manufacturing artificial limbs is a major industry. The infamous U.S. “detention center” at Bagram continues to hold more prisoners than Guantánamo. Rather than bombing and shelling Afghanistan­and maintaining a prison there ­the United States could promote economic development, public health, education, food security, women’s empowerment, and de-mining efforts.

The Enemy of the Poor

War wreaks its devastation within our own country as well. In this period of increased global instability and recession, the world is undergoing a tectonic shift in its assumptions about the institutions of capitalism. That re-evaluation must include its assumptions about the institution of war.

“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube,” King said in 1967. Substitute “Iraq and Afghanistan” for Vietnam, and the sentence is equally, terribly true today.

Here as abroad, war remains, as King called it, the “enemy of the poor.” While the Pentagon pours billions of tax dollars into implements of destruction and rains down bombs on poor civilians in Afghanistan, our own infrastructure crumbles, and our own people are struggling without decent schools, healthcare, and employment. The funds that we need to provide housing and care at home end up diverted into killing people thousands of miles away, and people of color, immigrants, and lower-income whites are targeted by military recruiters to do the killing. Massive bailouts line the pockets of bankers, unemployment skyrockets, and military recruiters are having the easiest time meeting their quotas in years.

Nonviolence in Afghanistan and at Home

Despite the monumental obstacles they face, many in Afghanistan and Pakistan are working nonviolently for peace and to repair the ravages of war and warmaking. In Afghanistan, Parliamentarian Malalai Joya­despite illegal suspension from Parliament and assassination attempts ­has continued to denounce the warlords and call for human rights, women’s rights, and governmental accountability. Thousands of peace advocates in northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan have met in the assemblies called jirgas to imagine and formulate peace and reconstruction initiatives. The lawyers’ campaign in Pakistan has mobilized thousands, despite beatings and arrests, to reverse the military’s control over the courts. Others are building schools and countering the bitter legacy of violence against women. U.S. peace advocates should be promoting and publicizing these nonviolent actions to rebuild Afghan and Pakistani society in the midst of war, devastation, warlordism, and patriarchal control.

In our own country as well, there are increasingly loud voices against war and for a reordering of our priorities­for affordable housing, universal healthcare, gender justice, disability rights, clean energy, quality education, restorative justice, fair food, and an anti-racist society. Among these allies are newcomers to the United States, people who have survived and resisted wars and challenged immigration policies that facilitate the extraction of profits from cheap labor, even while being criminalized, imprisoned, deported, and denied citizenship. Some of those most forsaken by the U.S. government have continued to build organizations and networks for those with no safety net.

The Choice

The War Resisters League urges everyone to join us in organizing, protesting, and demanding the closing of Bagram prison (and all such “detention centers”) and an end to military actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan and across the globe. Organizing against military recruitment is as important as ever now that ­the military is preying on those most affected by the battered economy. Support the voices and actions of the survivors of war. Listen to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; create space for their heartbreaking stories of remorse and harrowing accounts of the worst kinds of violence and dehumanization. Stop funding war – ­become a war tax resister. Instead of paying to train men and women to kill, foster ways to help all of us rebuild our communities.

The so-called “war on terrorism,” with its occupations and detentions, its torture and carnage, has failed because military action can never lead to security. We don’t have easy answers, but we know that the cycle of violence has to end, and we have to help end it. While thousands of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan are finding the courage to risk their lives to work for nonviolent solutions, we have a responsibility to lift our voices. We must reject the notions of good wars and bad wars, legal or illegal wars, winnable and unwinnable wars. We must decide whether our identity as a nation will be based on a culture of cultivating life or dealing death. As King declared, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. … We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.” Together, let’s choose the path of nonviolence.

For suggestions for actions opposing war in Afghanistan, see United for Peace and Justice, the antiwar coalition to which WRL belongs, www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=4044..

The United States’ oldest secular pacifist organization, the War Resisters League has been resisting war at home and war abroad since 1923. Our work for nonviolent revolution has spanned decades and has been shaped by the new visions and strategies of each generation’s peacemakers.

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US seeks Nato boost for Afghan war

April 3, 2009

Al Jazeera, April 3, 2009

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary-general, steps down in July [Reuters]

Barack Obama, the US president, is to meet the French president and German chancellor in an attempt to convince them to send extra troops to Afghanistan, before a Nato summit likely to focus on the alliance’s role there.

Obama will talk to Nicolas Sarkozy in Strasbourg on Friday before crossing into Germany to meet Angela Merkel, hours before the summit opens in the German town of Baden-Baden.

The US president is set to unveil more details of his plan to tackle a resurgent Taliban-led opposition in Afghanistan and Pakistan at the summit.

Demonstrations were held on the eve of the summit on Thursday, with French police making about 300 arrests amid heavy clashes in Strasbourg, where the summit’s key discussions will be held.

At least 107 people arrested in the protests are still being held, French police have said.

Troops sought

After Obama introduces his Afghanistan strategy to Nato members, he is expected to call for greater support on troop deployments needed to bolster his plan.

In depth

What is France’s Nato role
Al Jazeera joins French troops on the Afghan front

European nations have been reluctant to commit extra troops to Afghanistan in support of about 70,000 mostly Nato soldiers already stationed there.”The United States has already said that it will deploy another 17,000 troops to the country, which was followed up by an announcement that another 4,000 US troops will be going there to train Afghan security forces,” Hamish MacDonald, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Strasbourg, said.

“What we will see over the coming days is the US lobbying very hard to see European allies send more troops as well. Whether or not they will do that is another question entirely.”

However, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Friday that Obama will not push Nato members on the numbers of troops they can deploy.

“The Nato summit is not a pledging conference,” she said.

Obama’s national security adviser is confident that Nato members will agree to send extra forces eventually.

General James Jones had said on Thursday: “It would be wrong to conclude that we will not get any contributions, either manpower or resources, because I think that’s not going to be the case.”

Russia relations

Jones praised efforts by Joe Biden, the US vice-president, Clinton and other US officials to consult Nato allies in advance of the introduction of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy.

“I think there’s a feeling that we’re all in this together, and we’ll wait and see exactly how far that takes us,” he said.

Russia’s war in Georgia has highlighted tensions between Nato and Moscow [AFP]

“But having been at Nato and having been around since 2003 working on Afghanistan, I can tell you that there is a new spirit and there’s a new feeling.”The summit, which marks Nato’s 60th anniversary, will also examine the alliance’s relations with Russia, which deteriorated after Moscow’s war with Georgia in August.

The Russian government has repeatedly stressed its opposition to what it calls the creeping of Nato into what Moscow deems its traditional sphere of influence.

Both Georgia and Ukraine, which were members of the former Soviet Union, have in recent months signalled their intention to join Nato.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a defence analyst and columnist for the Moscow-based Novaya Gazeta newspaper, told Al Jazeera that Russia may consider helping Nato in its mission in Afghanistan if the alliance refrains from expanding towards the Russian border.

“Russia does not like Nato much but it also does not like the Taliban in Afghanistan, which is Nato’s main enemy. Right now, Russia is ready to help Nato in Afghanistan but Nato will have to take into account certain interests [of Russia].

“There is a degree of tension and most of that is because of [the war in] Georgia. For Russia, Nato is not seen as a separate player but a continuation of Washington. Moscow does not want Nato to expand into the post-Soviet space and take on Georgia and Ukraine.

“Moscow wants to see a kind of working relationship. When we give our help with logistics in Afghanistan it must come in exchange for Nato not moving into our back yard.”

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“Af-Pak: Obama’s War”

April 3, 2009

by Immanuel Wallerstein ,  commentary No. 254, April 1, 2009

Af-Pak is the new acronym the U.S. government has invented for Afghanistan-Pakistan. Its meaning is that there is a geopolitical concern of the United States in which the strategy that the United States wishes to pursue involves both countries simultaneously and they cannot be considered separately. The United States has emphasized this policy by appointing a single Special Representative to the two countries, Richard Holbrooke.

It was George W. Bush who sent U.S. troops into Afghanistan. And it was George W. Bush who initiated the policy of using U.S. drones to bomb sites in Pakistan. But, now that Barack Obama, after a “careful policy review,” has embraced both policies, it has become Barack Obama’s war. This comes as no enormous surprise since, during the presidential campaign, Obama indicated that he would do these things. Still, now he has done it.

This decision is likely to be seen in retrospect as Obama’s single biggest decision concerning U.S. foreign policy, one that will be noticed by future historians as imprinting its stamp on his reputation. And it is likely to be seen as well as his single biggest mistake. For, as Vice-President Biden apparently warned in the inner policy debate on the issue, it is likely to be a quagmire from which it will be as easy to disengage as the Vietnam war.

There are therefore two questions. Why did he do it? And what are likely to be the consequences during his term of office?

Let us begin with his own explanation of why he did it. He said that “the situation is increasingly perilous,” that “the future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan,” and that “for the American people, [Pakistan’s] border region [with Afghanistan] has become the most dangerous place in the world.”

And why is it so dangerous? Quite simply, it is because it is a safe haven for al-Qaeda to “train terrorists” and to “plot attacks” – not only against Afghanistan and the United States but everywhere in the world. The fight against al-Qaeda is no longer called the “war on terrorism” but is hard to see the difference. Obama claims that the Bush administration had lost its “focus” and that he has now installed a “comprehensive, new strategy.” In short, Obama is going to do this better than Bush.

What then are the new elements? The United States will send more troops to Afghanistan – 17,000 combat troops and 4000 trainers of the Afghan forces. It will send more money. It proposes to give Pakistan $1.5 billion a year for five years to “build schools and roads and hospitals.” It proposes to send “agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers” to Afghanistan to “develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.” In short, Obama says that he believes that “a campaign against extremism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone.”

However, implicitly unlike Bush, this will not be a “blank check” to the two governments. “Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders.” As for Afghanistan, the United States “will seek a new compact with the Afghan government that cracks down on corrupt behavior.” The Afghan and Pakistani governments are pleased to be getting the new resources. They haven’t said that they will meet Obama’s conditions. And Obama hasn’t said what he will do if the two governments don’t meet his conditions.

As for the way forward, Obama asserts that “there will be no peace without reconciliation with former enemies.” Reconciliation? Well, not with the “uncompromising core of the Taliban,” or with al-Qaeda, but with those Taliban “who’ve taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price.” To do this, Obama wants assistance. He proposes to create a new Contact Group that will include not only “our NATO allies” but also “the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations and Iran, Russia, India and China.”

The most striking aspect of this major commitment is how little enthusiasm it has evoked around the world. In the United States, it has been applauded by the remnants of the neo-cons and McCain. So far, other politicians and the press have been reserved. Iran, Russia, India, and China have not exactly jumped on the bandwagon. They are particularly cool about the idea of reconciliation with so-called moderate Taliban. And both the Guardian and McClatchy report that the Taliban themselves have reacted by creating unity within their hitherto divided ranks – presumably the opposite of what Obama is trying to achieve.

So, where will we probably be six months from now? There will be more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the U.S. commanders will probably say that the 21,000 Obama is sending are not enough. There will be further withdrawals of NATO troops from there – a repeat of the Iraq scenario. There will be further, perhaps more extensive, bombings in Pakistan, and consequently even more intensive anti-American sentiments throughout the country. The Pakistani government will not be moving against the Taliban for at least three reasons. The still very influential ISI component of the Pakistani army actually supports the Taliban. The rest of the army is conflicted and in any case probably too weak to do the job. The government will not really press them to do more because it will only thereby strengthen its main rival party which opposes such action and the result may be another army coup.

In short, the “clear and focused goal” that Obama proposes – “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future” – will probably be further than ever from accomplishment. The question is what can Obama do then? He can “stay the course” (shades of Rumsfeld in Iraq), constantly escalate the troop commitment, while changing the local political leadership (shades of Kennedy/Johnson and Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam), or he can turn tail and pull out (as the United States finally did in Vietnam). He is not going to be cheered for any of these choices.

I have the impression that Obama thinks that his speech left him some wiggle room. I think he will find out rather how few choices he will have that are palatable. I think therefore he made a big, probably irreparable, mistake.

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