Obama does Oslo this week. There’s been a lot of commentary on this, including my own, so I won’t add much at this point. Suffice to say, he’s collecting the award the Norwegian Nobel committee gave the people of the United States for electing someone who isn’t totally bug-fuck nuts and for putting the enormous American imperial locomotive back onto its tracks. Yeah, it’s still belching toxic smoke and running people over, but it’s doing it along a predictable line, pulling a bunch of lesser cars behind it, and that makes people a lot more comfortable. Let’s face it – Dubya thought the train was a go-cart. He drove it on the grass, into the middle of the street, through people’s living rooms, etc., to the point where no one wanted to hitch-up their boxcar anymore (except our trusty coal-car Britain and, I don’t know, Palau). Now that choo-choo Charlie has chugged his scrawny ass back to Texas, everybody wants back onto the empire gravy train. So… give the guy a medal. Civilization is saved!

Such as it is, anyway. We’ve got an administration that’s committed to pouring more soldiers and resources into Afghanistan (while slowly drawing them out of Iraq), even though it seems clear that, in a variety of ways, we are funding the very forces we seek to defeat. We’ve got a justice department that is refusing to hold domestic war criminals (or “terrorists,” if you prefer) accountable for their actions, providing legal cover for the likes of John Yoo, one of the primary genius theorists behind the Bush administration’s decision to implement its systematic policy of detainee abuse and torture. We’ve got a state department that has apparently reconciled itself with the ratification of the Honduran coup regime, accepting the results of a coup-administered “election” and allowing the establishment of a dangerous precedent for Latin American military overthrows, 2010-style. And we have a military procurement and contracting system that continues to run amok, allocating billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars for questionable weapons systems, well-connected logistics firms, and gun-for-hire mercenary forces like Blackwater that set new standards for unaccountable criminality.

I think it was Jonathan Turley who pointed out the painful irony of Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel at this time, when his justice department has just filed an amicus curiae brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to drop charges against Yoo. They are supporting the Bush contention that providing good faith and frank advice to the President should not make someone liable to even civil litigation. This is pretty much the same defense used by Nazi jurists and advisors before the Nuremberg tribunal. You are, in effect, defending the logic of war criminals, Mr. President. Let’s talk about it when you get back from Oslo. (No, really… we should talk. Put the medal away first.)

What the hell is this, opposite week? C’mon, Barry. You know better… or you ought to, anyway.

luv u,

jp

Nice speech, Mr. President.

Now explain to me why, when committing 30,000 more Americans to this endless debacle in Afghanistan, you aren’t asking those of us who are not in the military to make some real sacrifices. You invoked the noble acts of some of your predecessors, but they were not reluctant to ask for the able-bodied to serve (even if many had “other priorities”) or the relatively well-heeled to pay more taxes. Why are you so reluctant? Don’t feel as though I’m singling you out. I could, of course, ask this question of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and the sainted Ronald Reagan with equal justice. The difference, I believe, is that you are probably brighter and more worldly than any of them. I know what their excuses would have been. What is yours?

Explain, also, why it is so much more urgent to keep Al Qaeda, violent extremists, the Taliban, etc., from taking hold in Afghanistan than in, say, Jordan or Syria, where literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees are living in squalor, driven from homes they will likely never see again. You and your advisors seem eager to draw dubious lessons from Bush’s “surge” in Iraq, but not so eager to consider the broader implications of massive land army invasions of foreign lands and the misery they generate. If we’re going to pour resources into preventing extremism in the Muslim world, it might be a good idea to start where we’ve made the biggest mess and spend some serious cash on helping those people whose world we turned inside-out (admittedly prior to your tenure) instead of investing in similar mayhem directed at others. Remember – Al Qaeda is more than just a group; it’s a brand, and one that can easily be emulated by disaffected and disenfranchised people anywhere.

You have said that this will not be an “open-ended commitment” to defending the Afghan government. That’s all well and good, but how do we determine when, in the cold light of failure, it is time to leave? Indeed, we do not even seem to be aware of how self-defeating our efforts in Afghanistan truly are. An article by Aram Roston in The Nation described how our practice of contracting out logistical operations is providing a substantial revenue stream for the Taliban. For safe passage through hostile territory, contractors are paying protection money, in essence, to the insurgents. Roston writes:

US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents. 

Now, I’m not a Pentagon analyst, but last time I looked, the Taliban was not a resource-intensive organization like the U.S. military. “Hundreds of millions of dollars” is likely still a lot of money in their world of warcraft. If the claims of these U.S. military officials are even partly true, it sounds to me like we may be underwriting something close to the total cost of Mullah Omar’s war effort. Is your plan going to address this? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to deny them those funds, rather than pour more lives and money into this rathole?

Isn’t this an enormous mistake, Mr. President? Just askin’.

luv u,

jp